Two army veterans, a former Marine and a former National Guard officer, hold arms before the only scheduled debate between the vice presidential candidates, an appointment that will be practically the last word of the campaigns of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump before a national television audience, as a second debate between the two has been ruled out. The face to face of Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance, Democratic and Republican candidates for vice president, will be held on Tuesday night under the premise of not making mistakes: voters do not elect the number two of the future Administration, because it’s standard, but the first rule of the protagonists’ running mates is not to harm them with added absurdities.
Added, because, five weeks before the elections, Vance appears at the appointment, which will be televised live in prime time, under the shadow of several blunders: his comments on Harris’ unsuitability to be president for not having had children; the strange story of Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield (Ohio), his statements about Ukraine and, to top it all off, a snub to Volodymyr Zelensky just one day after the president of Ukraine met with Trump. The former president assumes Vance’s presence as that of a son who, by virtue of being one, is tolerated with venial sins and errors, but those of the young senator from Ohio offer Walz a clear flank for attack.
Vance is the worst-rated vice presidential candidate in history, and one of the unknowns raised by the appointment is whether he will be able to improve that negative image. Walz has a much higher degree of acceptance, but also inexperience at the national level. The Democrat has demonstrated political instinct in interviews, but he is making his debut in a debate in which he will have to refute attacks and return blows. If with its repeated allusions to rarity (weirdin English) of the Republican candidates had their moment of glory on the networks—the memes about the word weird were a trend for weeks—discussing proposals and ideas on a television set puts you in a completely unknown position.
Unless he chooses to persevere in them, Vance will not only have to admit his mistakes; also of the contradictions with respect to his boss: for example, in the cases of Ukraine and abortion, when he said that Trump would veto the national ban on abortion derived from the Supreme Court’s decision on the doctrine Roe v. Wadesomething that the former president rejected in the last debate although his position on the matter remains ambiguous and undefined.
One of the potentially most controversial points of the confrontation will be the military history of both. Walz hesitated in a recent CNN interview when asked about this issue; his quick thinking and wit seemed to freeze on the screen. In early August, Vance had a tough time after the Democratic campaign released a video of Walz talking about gun control and, specifically, the “common sense” ban on assault rifles. “We must make sure that those weapons of war, which I carried in the war, are only used in wars,” Walz says in the video. Vance immediately countered by asking him what conflict he has been in: “Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when have you been in war? When was that?” Walz was in the National Guard for 24 years, retiring in 2005 to run for Congress. He briefly became a sergeant major, but that was not the rank he held at the time of his retirement, as he claimed in 2006. Vance, a former Marine who fought in Iraq, is the first former officer to seek the White House since the also Republican John McCain in 2008.
Vance will insist on showing his rival as someone too liberal – the same message that the Republican campaign spreads about Harris -, delving precisely into his period as governor of Minnesota and underlining the apparent weakness he showed during the Minneapolis riots that followed the death at the hands of police of the African American George Floyd in the spring of 2020. Vance could paint a portrait of a Walz overwhelmed by street anger, who took too long, according to Republicans, to call in the National Guard. He can also attack his rival for, in his opinion, repeatedly distorting parts of his personal history, which in his case are synonymous with his political career.
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As for the rules of the game, the campaigns have willingly accepted those imposed by CBS for the debate: there will be no live audience and the microphones will remain open during the 90 minutes that the broadcast will last, with two four-minute advertising breaks. each one, although the producers reserve the right to silence them in case of guirigay, as announced on Friday by the network. Nothing to do with the muted microphones in the two presidential debates, the one in June between Joe Biden and Trump, and the one between Harris and Trump in Philadelphia in September.
For the first time since 2008, the vice presidential candidates will not sit at a table to debate, but will instead stand at a lectern. Without opening messages or introductions, the order of interventions was decided in a draw favorable to Vance, who reserved the last word. The debate will be hosted by the presenters of two of CBS’s star news programs, with rounds of questions to the candidates and two-minute shifts for response and reply, plus one minute provided for counter-replies. As a novelty, the channel will offer a special QR code that will refer viewers to a real-time data verification system.
