A ‘happy warrior’ VP debate leaves questions unanswered for the top of the tickets

An important note about this clash: This debate covered a lot more substance and was a lot more serious in tone than the debate we’ve seen featuring the tops of the tickets. About the only major issues that weren’t touched on that I would have liked to see more about was the broader threat China poses to the Pacific region generally and the specific issue of Taiwan.

But kudos to the CBS News team for a solid issue matrix; for the most part, it covered a lot of ground that voters would like to talk about. And in defense of CBS News, neither China nor Ukraine is seen as a top issue by voters, even if both could be among the most consequential challenges for the next president of the United States.

But there’s something else nagging at me with this debate. It’s not hard to conclude that former President Donald Trump himself makes it nearly impossible to have the type of debate Vance and Walz participated in Tuesday night. And that’s too bad. We could really use a presidential-level debate that is similar to what we witnessed Tuesday night.

But Trump has never participated in a debate that didn’t devolve into something more pugilistic and even immature and juvenile at times. (Need I mention hand sizes?) I’m curious whether the tone and tenor of this debate ends up hurting Trump simply because it reminds voters what politics could be when Trump isn’t onstage.

But the real question about this debate in the short term is whether it will have any impact on this current campaign.

History says this debate will have little or no impact. The tell from each campaign about how important this debate was will come by the weekend: How many debate moments will either campaign be trying to amplify beyond the next 24 hours? My guess is nothing or next to nothing, but we will learn together! 

Going into this debate, I assumed that both vice presidential nominees would be more focused on the tops of the tickets. And for the most part, the two played to type. In just about every answer, Walz went after Trump and regularly looked for ways to praise Vance in a way that made him look anti-Trump. Vance similarly would try and throw shade at Walz by praising the governor’s empathy and concern about an issue while contrasting it to Vice President Kamala Harris.

But what was a bit surprising to me was that Walz turned out to be more aggressive against Trump than Vance was against Harris.

Ultimately, the No. 1 job of the VP candidate in these debates is to make the case against the top of the ticket. So it’s quite interesting to me that the strategy Vance chose to engage in was one that seemed designed to improve his own personal ratings.

Perhaps if he improves his personal ratings, it could help the entire ticket, but I’m skeptical that helps much at all. Dan Quayle was quite unpopular in 1988, especially after his poor debate performance, and yet his unpopularity had no impact on the top of the ticket. In fact, Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic running mate that year, may have ended the campaign as the most personally popular of the four candidates on the tickets. And yet, that didn’t help the top of the Democratic ticket at all.

Vance may have made a lot of progress in fixing his image for a future run for president — say, in 2028. But I’m not sure how much this will help Trump. And I’m still surprised at how little Vance tried to remind viewers that Harris was still part of the Biden administration.

He actually seemed to ignore Biden by name, instead invoking only Harris on a number of occasions. It’s an interesting decision given how it seems as if the Trump campaign team desperately wants to re-attach Biden’s unpopular brand to Harris. I’m not sure Vance was as aggressive on this front as one might have expected if his role was to simply be “the attack dog.”

As for Walz, his performance was the very definition of uneven. His nervousness came through quite a bit, especially at the start. Clearly, he was telling the truth when he reportedly told Harris during the VP vetting process that debating wasn’t a strong suit for him. But Walz was strong at times when he was prosecuting a case against Trump, particularly on Jan. 6 and abortion. He was less good at defending Biden-Harris actions in general.

His worst moment is quite obvious at this point: His inability to admit he exaggerated when he was in China in and around the Tiananmen Square was painful to watch. He eventually got there, but he came across like a kid trying to rationalize why he was cheating on a test by looking at note cards.

This was a moment that was totally avoidable by the Harris-Walz campaign if it had simply done one thing: let Walz sit down and handle an array of accountability interviews, like Sunday shows. But the Harris-Walz operation is so convinced that tough media interviews could become distractions from keeping a focus on Trump that it is sticking with this form of “prevent defense.”

Now, prevent defenses do work more than they don’t in preventing losses in football games. But what they also do is guarantee that the contest will be closer by the end. Sitting down for more interviews may seem risky, but if the Harris campaign would like to see whether it can win by more than a percentage point in one battleground state, perhaps these interviews can also serve to reassure the gettable swing voters that this ticket is up to the job.

The real unknown fallout from this debate is whether this will be the last one of this presidential cycle.

Trump continues to indicate he thinks it’s too late for one more debate. But after tonight, as a viewer, I know I’d like to see more follow-up on what I heard from the potential VPs. Both have a lot more questions I would like to see them answer onstage together. I think there are quite a few undecided voters or semi-decided voters who would also like one more crack at assessing the mettle of the two nominees.

I think Trump and his team are convinced Harris needs another debate more than Trump does. And the Trump team isn’t in denial about how poorly the first match-up went for Trump. While I’m not sure another debate would be helpful to Trump, he still needs a big stage to make a closing argument — and the only stage big enough is a debate.

If Tuesday night was the last word, the good news is both VP wannabes left fairly positive impressions on voters, perhaps more positive than any of us so-called experts would have ever predicted.