Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz participate in a debate in New York, on Oct. 1.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump met for a debate in September, their willingness to shake hands made headlines.
At the vice-presidential debate in New York on Tuesday evening, their running mates shook hands multiple times, then took turns expressing agreement with each other. In an American political arena where viciousness has grown commonplace, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance offered something rare: a glimpse of civility. They found points of agreement on the severity of problems at the border, on potential solutions for child care, on the heartbreak of gun violence.
But if the debate offered a brief lowering of the temperature in the pitched battle for American votes, it also underscored deeply differing visions for a country that is now barely a month from its presidential election.
Here are six take-aways.
On election denial, no satisfying answer
Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? His running mate would not say. “I’m focused on the future,” Mr. Vance said. It was, Mr. Walz replied, “a damning nonanswer” – and a revealing one.
Democrats have warned that Mr. Trump constitutes a grievous threat to U.S. democracy because of his unwillingness to accept his 2020 loss and because of his repeated attacks on the electoral system.
But Mr. Vance argued that a more serious threat to the fundamental institutions of American life lies in censorship. “It’s big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens,” he said, arguing that government attempts to quiet misinformation amount to abridging a fundamental right.
Mr. Walz countered that not all speech is protected: “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre.”
Mr. Vance’s response: “You guys wanted to kick people off of Facebook for saying that toddlers shouldn’t wear masks.”
Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance clashed on Tuesday at a vice presidential debate that was surprisingly civil in the final stretch of an ugly election campaign marred by inflammatory rhetoric and two assassination attempts.
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Analysis: Vice-presidential candidates had one job to do during debate – do no harm
A less combative stand on abortion
Republicans cheered when the U.S. Supreme Court, newly flush with conservative justices appointed by Mr. Trump, eliminated Americans’ national right to abortions by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. But the harsh anti-abortion measures subsequently adopted by some states have created opportunity for Democrats and left Republicans on the defensive.
“My party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue, where they frankly just don’t trust us,” Mr. Vance acknowledged in a rare admission of political vulnerability.
He proposed a solution: embracing an approach that is “pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.” He suggested easing burdens on mothers to allow them to afford children and helping families to afford homes. He argued that Democrats, by contrast, “have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance.”
Not so, Mr. Walz said.
“We’re pro-women. We’re pro-freedom to make your own choice,” he added.
The ‘wisdom’ of Donald Trump
Mr. Trump has been many things – a property developer, an entertainer, a politician – but it’s not often that he has been called wise. Still, Mr. Vance sought to make the case that the former president, who specializes in bombast and insults, deserves higher regard than scholars and experts.
“You say ‘trust the experts,’” Mr. Vance said to Mr. Walz. “But those same experts for 40 years said that if we shipped our manufacturing base off to China, we’d get cheaper goods. They lied about that. They said if we shipped our industrial base off to other countries – to Mexico and elsewhere – it would make the middle class stronger. They were wrong about that.”
Mr. Trump, he said, was right to defy the economists, with their PhDs and their advocacy for the free international exchange of goods. The former president is now campaigning on a plan to impose sweeping tariffs on imports.
“For the first time in a generation, Donald Trump had the wisdom and the courage to say to that bipartisan consensus: we’re not doing it any more. We’re bringing American manufacturing back.”
A personal moment on guns
Political families have always formed part of the backdrop to elections. But Gus Walz, Mr. Walz’s 17-year-old son, has taken on an unusual profile in his father’s campaign. In Chicago, at the Democratic National Convention, he won hearts with his sobbing exclamation – “That’s my dad!” – when Mr. Walz accepted the party’s nomination.
On Tuesday, it was Gus who once again brought unexpected humanity to the debate stage. Mr. Walz described how his son had witnessed a shooting at a community centre while playing volleyball. “Those things don’t leave you,” Mr. Walz said, as he described his own evolving views on guns. Among other things, he has reversed his opposition to an assault weapons ban.
It was Gus, too, who brought a personal dimension to the deadly threats of the Jan. 6 protests. While protesters in Washington violently entered the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Walz recalled, another group gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol “and said, ‘We’re marching to the Governor’s residence – and there may be casualties.’”
“The only person there was my son and his dog, who was rushed out crying.”
Where was Tim Walz in 1989?
Before he became a vice-presidential candidate, Mr. Walz often spoke about the many trips he took to China. He visited frequently during his career as a teacher prior to entering politics. His very first trip was particularly memorable, he has said, because he was in Hong Kong on June 4, 1989, the day Chinese forces massacred student protesters around Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
But news reports from 1989 make clear that Mr. Walz did not actually arrive in Hong Kong until August of that year. Asked to explain the discrepancy, he asked for sympathy.
“I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said after a long, dissembling digression. When pressed by a moderator, he admitted that he had misspoken.
“Many times, I will talk a lot, I will get caught up in the rhetoric,” he said.
For years, Mr. Trump’s relationship to the truth has brought him intense criticism. But Republicans have sought to turn that spotlight on Mr. Walz. The questions about his time in Asia follow revelations of past inaccurate statements he has made about his military record.
At the debate, Mr. Walz argued that his time in China was important in shaping his understanding of the world.
“I would make the case that Donald Trump should have come on one of those trips with us,” he said. “I guarantee you he wouldn’t be praising Xi Jinping about COVID.”
Master of understatement
Mr. Walz regularly tried to play up his folksy, small-town image, even issuing an apology for interrupting Dancing with the Stars for the debate. And he went for understatement when he tried making an appeal across ideological lines.
“I’m as surprised as anybody of this coalition that Kamala Harris has built – from Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift and a whole bunch of folks in between there,” he said.
“And they don’t all agree on everything, but they are truly optimistic people.”
Mr. Sanders is a self-described socialist, and Mr. Cheney is a Republican former vice-president and architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.