OCTOBER 5, 2016
Photo: AP
Well, that’s not what I expected.
Tuesday night’s single Vice-Presidential debate took place at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia with Indiana’s Republican Governor Mike Pence and Virginia’s Democratic Senator Tim Kaine facing off for the first and only time.
They’re supposedly really nice guys, so I was expecting a snooze-fest. It didn’t turn out that way.
I love Tim Kaine, but he was definitely over-caffeinated Tuesday night, as he came out of the box roaring, which worked for a while, but his constant interruptions when Pence was speaking began to come across as obnoxious. The last thing you want to do is to allow Mike Pence come off as a statesman, and Kaine somehow managed to do just that.
Not that Kaine didn’t score some points. Time after time, Kaine pressed Pence on Trump’s positions, both domestically and internationally, and Pence deftly managed to dance around them. Kaine’s thrusts that really hit were on Trump’s love of Vladimir Putin (both Pence and Trump have called Putin a stronger leader than President Obama) , Trump’s call for a “deportation force” to remove illegal immigrants (Pence called it “nonsense” but Trump actually said it), Trump’s declaration that women who have abortions should be punished (Pence is against punishment), Trump’s assertions that more nations should have nuclear weapons (Pence denied that Trump said it but videotape proves that he did), Pence denied that Trump called out for a ban on Muslim immigrants (duh!) and Trump’s position on Syria (Pence has called for the U.S. to take out Syria’s leader Bashar Hafez al-Assad, while Trump has urged us to stay out of it). Despite Pence’s passionate defense of the ticket, the Trump campaign reportedly was very unhappy with Pence’s good performance, as they felt that Pence overshadowed the top of the ticket. Trump should be grateful.
Pence, for his part, did what Trump was unable to do in his first Presidential debate, hitting Clinton on her e-mails, the Clinton Foundation and Benghazi, which still seems to resonate, for whatever reason, with some GOP voters.
Despite his distancing himself from Trump, Pence has done some horrible things on his own. Most notoriously, he signed the nation’s first anti-LGBT bill that would allow any business person to refuse to serve LGBT customers based on the idea of “religious freedom.” When corporations, sports figures and entertainers threatened to boycott Indiana because of the law, Pence seemed to be blindsided by the negative reaction to his action and amended the bill so that it’s not quite as anti-LGBT. But it’s still horrible.
Nonetheless, the Vice-Presidential debates typically offer little drama, the exception being Lloyd Bensen’s 1988 VP debate against Dan Quayle, where Quayle compared his young age to that of President John F. Kennedy and Bensen floored him with his “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” response.
There was no such drama on Tuesday night. Despite his aggressive demeanor, Kaine likely did no harm to Hillary Clinton, and Pence probably did his ticket some good, managing to attack Clinton’s vulnerabilities that Trump had previously managed to ignore.
The real drama will come on Sunday night when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump square off for a town hall debate where Trump will have to interact with questions from real voters (uh-oh). It sounds delicious. Be there or be square!
