Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Pamela Paul about Tuesday’s debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz.
Patrick Healy: Heading into tonight’s vice-presidential debate, what are you most curious about? What do you want to hear or see from the candidates?
David Brooks: Policy! Here are some questions I’d love to see answered: Do you support Israel’s attack on Hezbollah? How can we best confront China? How can the government make parenting easier? Does industrial policy work?
Ross Douthat: I’ll see David’s wonkery and raise it. JD Vance should get a very specific question about why he and his running mate disagree with the consensus of economists about the likely effects of their plan for a big new tax on foreign goods. He should also get a broader question about how he thinks a Trump-Vance administration can pursue populist policies under conditions of increasing fiscal constraint without bringing inflation back — especially the expensive list of policy promises that Donald Trump himself has been making in the waning weeks of the campaign.
Healy: Anything you’d pose to Walz, Ross?
Douthat: A lot of foreign policy questions — because that’s the area where a Harris administration would have the most freedom of action and face the most substantial challenges. How long can the Ukraine war go on if Ukraine keeps losing territory? What is the U.S. plan to contain China across the next 10 years? Are we equipped to face a coordinated challenge from Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang — and if not, will a Harris administration support a big increase in defense spending?
Healy: You guys are proposing questions I’d like to hear at a second Trump-Harris debate. But we’ll get to that later. Pamela, Tressie, what do you want from tonight’s debate?
Pamela Paul: I’m with David and Ross on wanting more policy specifics, particularly on the economy and on foreign policy. Please let Walz expound on anything other than small-business tax incentives and child tax credits. But I also would like a better sense of who Vance and Walz really are when they are not operating in their respective bubbles. We go into this debate knowing that JD Vance is smart but mean and that Tim Walz is a really nice dad. Vance is the smartass bully to Walz’s affable coach.
Healy: What are the biggest “known unknowns” for you on each V.P. candidate?
Paul: For Vance it’s this: In his tortuous journey from liberals’ pet Republican to Trumpist stooge, does anything remain of the guy people were drawn to from “Hillbilly Elegy”? Does he have a core and if so, is it at all decent?
As for Walz, what qualities does he bring to the table other than being a guy Kamala Harris gets along with? I have no doubt he is well intentioned, but I don’t yet know whether he is well informed.
Tressie McMillan Cottom: I will be watching this debate with a group of college students who, by and large, seem intrigued by Tim Walz. They also seem as reactive to JD Vance as they are to his running mate. The students and I want to see the candidates answer for their respective presidential nominee’s weaknesses. That means Walz perhaps softening Harris’s very hawkish foreign policy stance. Vance should be translating Trump’s rants into something more palatable for voters who want to vote for Trump despite their personal distaste for his brand of politics. I don’t believe voters are looking for real policy proposals from vice-presidential candidates. Voters are looking for assurance. I am also looking for how these vice-presidential candidates look as future presidential candidates.
Healy: Rule No. 1 for vice-presidential debates is “first, do no harm” — don’t say anything that creates problems for the top of the ticket. JD Vance has the bigger burden here, because the moderators are likely to press him on his past criticisms of Donald Trump and his attacks on “childless cat ladies” and false claims about migrants eating neighbors’ pets. Millions of people will be watching. Do you think Vance will help or hurt the ticket by the end of the night?
Douthat: My guess is that Vance, who now has a lot of experience sparring with hostile moderators about his past comments, Trump and everything else besides, will do a creditable job on a question-by-question basis and probably win the debate on points. If I’m right, debate watchers who like him going in will have no reason to be disappointed in his performance.
But merely winning the debate is not enough. His challenge is more personal and intangible: Not just to seem like a normal guy rather than a right-leaning opinion journalist (notable weirdos, the lot of them), but to seem like a relatively easygoing, relatable and above all optimistic leader, not just a scourge of the liberal establishment.
Paul: As Ross notes, Vance has a lot to make up for. He has only hurt the ticket with people who aren’t hardcore Trumpists. So Vance needs to use this opportunity to win over or at least neutralize the perception of people who view him negatively, which according to a recent Times/Siena poll is now a higher percentage (48 percent) than his favorability ratings (42 percent) in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Vance has admitted to being willing to lie and make up stories to win. He needs to persuade undecideds and swing voters that he’s still the guy who supposedly tells hard truths and not just blatant untruths.
Cottom: I agree that Vance has not done a good job of moderating Trump’s excesses. I fully expect Vance to continue to promote his own political brand over Trump’s.
Brooks: I’m genuinely unsure of what kind of tone Vance should adopt. A couple of weeks ago I argued that Americans are tired of the politics of anger and negativity, and Harris was benefiting from this shift in the zeitgeist to something more hopeful. But I could be wrong! It could be that most working-class voters are still feeling alienated and ignored by the elites. In that case Vance’s message — I’m willing to rip the bark off those coastal types — is probably right. I notice that Trump is doing better among Hispanics than he did in 2020. Further signs that right-wing populism is more potent than the left-wing kind. It also could be that we no longer have a national zeitgeist, but instead we are living in two different zeitgeists. I spent a lot of the last two months in rural red towns and they are not doing well, so bitterness about American carnage may still have some potency!
Healy: Ross, you interviewed JD Vance for a long Q. and A. last spring, and you’ve known him for years. In Vance’s comments at rallies and in interviews, have Americans been seeing the “real” Vance, or is this a Trump-campaign-molded version of Vance? Would Vance be talking so much about Haitian migrants in Ohio if he was running with a candidate other than Trump?
Douthat: In general, not just with Vance, I think it’s a mistake to look at different facets of any public figure and try to discern which ones represent a “real” self and which ones are some kind of politician’s mask. Is the Vance who wades into a thread on social media to argue substantively about, say, family policy the real JD Vance? Yes, absolutely: He’s a smart guy with serious ideas who has a much more nuanced grasp of policy detail than either his running mate or his rivals on the other ticket. Is the Vance who campaigns as an angry tribune of people he thinks have been betrayed by our trade and immigration policies the real Vance? Yes, absolutely again. Of course there is calculation involved in all campaign rhetoric, but I don’t think he’s ended up as Trump’s running mate as a cynical performance.
Healy: Being someone’s No. 2 can shape your public presentation, though. Unless you’re Dick Cheney, who never seemed to buy into Bush’s compassionate conservatism.
Douthat: Yes, certainly being Trump’s running mate, and playing the role the campaign has given him, has pushed Vance away from wonkish policy engagement and toward a role as the campaign’s designated owner of the libs (as happened already in his race for Senate, too). And from his own political perspective, for his prospects as a national leader in the hypothetical world A.T. (After Trump), there’s a trap here, a typecasting that may not hurt Trump’s campaign but I suspect Vance would do well to escape.
Brooks: Like Ross, I’ve known Vance for a long time. In 2018, I gathered some friends at my house to help JD think through his life options. This route wasn’t the one we recommended! (And he didn’t think he’d have a career in politics, at least any time soon.) Nonetheless I don’t think Vance is being totally opportunistic. Yes, he has totally flip-flopped on Trump’s character. But his life mission is pretty much the same: to upend the policies that have favored knowledge workers and, in his view, betrayed other kinds of workers.
I think the emergence of the angrier kind of Vance that Ross alludes to occurred when the “Hillbilly Elegy” movie came out. Many critics not only savaged the movie (I thought it was melodramatic, but pretty decent). They also savaged Vance as a man, in snobby and immature ways. I spoke with Vance at the time and understood that anybody would be affected by this coastal condescending scorn. It was a classic red-pill moment. So if Vance returns the nastiness, he is not faking it.
Cottom: I speak to very different people than Ross and David do when it comes to Vance. I speak to people from Appalachia, the very people that Vance supposedly wants to save from coastal scorn. I was in West Virginia and Kentucky this past weekend. The working-class Appalachians I speak to see Vance as a poser and very much a member of the coastal elite that Vance considers himself in opposition to. These working class Appalachians were just as scornful of Vance’s portrayal of them. Many of them reject his political rhetoric and policy approaches. I do not believe Vance is running for those voters. He is running on those voters. The question will be how much more mileage he thinks he can get out of that shtick.
It is worth pointing out that a lot of those Appalachian voters are dealing with a massive national emergency this week. Many won’t have power or access to the debate news. And many are angry and scared about the perceived lack of national support for them during this crisis. Both candidates would do well to keep that in mind but Vance, in particular, should do so.
Healy: Tim Walz has come under attack by Vance and Trump over his experience in the Army National Guard and his strong support for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the rights of parents of transgender children. Republicans have portrayed Walz as a progressive extremist — and lopped in Harris with him. Do you see vulnerabilities for Walz onstage tonight?
Cottom: The Harris campaign is doing a good job of lowering expectations for Walz. They did the same for Harris. I watched Walz’s previous debate performances. I expect him to perform better than predicted. Voters respond strongly to his rhetorical style. His folksiness is a powerful contrast to Trump and Vance’s angry interpolation of working-class anxieties. If angry voters are looking for a way to vote their politics without sacrificing their rage, Walz’s palatable “Midwestern nice” approach to conflict could be effective. It’s anger without the bite.
Douthat: Walz has a lot of potential weaknesses. Like his running mate, he embraced a number of not-exactly-popular progressive causes in the heyday of the Great Awokening. He is, if not a fabulist, at least a serial exaggerator when it comes to his military record. And honestly I’m not sure the whole politician-as-Midwestern-coach shtick wears that well; the portrayal of Walz in this past weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” suggested a politician in danger of being typecast as a mildly ludicrous lightweight.
That said, Walz’s poll numbers have been just fine so far, and there’s a way in which seeming like a bit of a lightweight might actually inoculate him against some of the more ideologically freighted attacks — because even if he went along with radical policies, he doesn’t come across as a radical himself. So I think he could potentially eye-roll his way through a Vance attempt to strafe his record — sort of the way Joe Biden defeated Paul Ryan in the V.P. debate in 2012. I’m not sure a debate in the weeds of that record is actually where the G.O.P. ticket wants to be.
Paul: I don’t think Walz is a progressive extremist. The fact that he stood up for gay kids as a teacher shows he is someone with character and compassion. As for transgender rights, I expect Walz will continue to uphold the protections established by the Supreme Court, which is more than one can say for Trump-Vance. When it comes to gender dysphoric children, Walz’s thinking is probably akin to Biden’s — more ignorance than ideology. Walz’s view essentially mirrors that of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which frames gender distress in minors as a rights issue and a protected identity issue rather than one of youth mental health. We need to hope and trust that a Harris-Walz administration will be open-minded and follow the science to work toward a better, more judicious approach. Harris has already shown that flexibility — when the facts change, she changes her position. That’s as it should be. Meanwhile, Vance would take the Republican Party’s approach to the issue, which is one of fear and hate rather than compassion and care.
I am more interested in Walz’s positions on education, where he has real experience and expertise. What does he think the federal government should do to improve education and on what issues, if any, does he part ways with the teachers unions? What we’ve gotten from Trump-Vance is abolishing the Department of Education, a move that would only hurt the lower-income Americans that Vance says he is trying to represent.
Cottom: The Democratic Party has been very effective with linking Trump to Project 2025 and its scary plans like abolishing the Department of Education. As a former teacher, Walz has a lot of legitimacy on this issue. I not only want to see him tackle the issue of education, but I also want him to embrace his teacher persona. Vance often looks like an angry child when he goes on the attack. An elder male figure with a coach-teacher’s gravitas could diminish Vance and make Trump’s educational policies look like naïve.
Healy: David, how do you think Vance will try to take on Walz? Does Vance risk overdoing it?
Brooks: I’d say of the four candidates, only Vance has a developed worldview. Trump is all about himself. Harris and Walz embody the combined wisdom of the Democratic Party. I can’t think of a single area where their views contradict Democratic orthodoxy. (Trump and Vance represent a revolution in what used to be Republican orthodoxy.)
As for debate performances, I genuinely don’t think it matters electorally. V.P.s scarcely matter even in the most volatile of campaigns. This year voters are locked in. The election is being shaped by basic demographic and economic realities, not the day-to-day doings of the candidates. Harris did a total beat-down on Trump in the debate and it helped her in the national polling a bit, but not by much. I’m struck by how few people I meet want to talk about the campaign.
Cottom: I agree that this debate will not matter electorally. No one chooses a president based on a vice-president debate. The only real risk is a narrative shift this close to the election, for either ticket.
Healy: In interviews and our Times Opinion focus groups, some voters have said they had a pretty positive impression of Vance when Trump picked him in July — mostly from his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” and his Republican convention speech — but their opinions changed for the worse in the last couple of months. What if anything could Vance do to change that tonight? Or is he better off focusing on achieving something else at the debate (and if so, what?).
Paul: Vance’s real strengths are his intelligence and his deep knowledge of the issues, both from firsthand experience and from study. His best bet tonight would be to focus on issues where his party has shown strength: immigration and the economy. He needs to offer both big ideas and specific policy positions in a way that Trump is incapable of articulating.
Healy: Can he do anything to help himself in the likability department?
Paul: He needs to demonstrate that he is a serious person who knows how to behave himself. In 2016, Mike Pence offered voters some assurance that he was the grown-up in the room. So far in this campaign, Vance has been the annoying kid brother — or as Tressie put it, an angry child.
Cottom: Vance’s problem is that he’s most authentic when he’s nasty. He comes across as smarmy when he tries for sensible. He never comes off as an intellectual to me. He does manage to come off as a credentialed elitist when he leans into his Ivy League wonkism. That’s tricky for him. The more he demonstrates policy expertise, the more he highlights his very elite educational background. That runs counter to his white working-class bona fides. In fact, I continue to think of this contest as one between elite universities and nonelite universities. Harris-Walz are an institutional departure from the Ivy’s grip on presidential politics. Given how Americans feel about higher education at the moment, the more Vance looks like a Yale lawyer, the better it is for Walz.
Brooks: Here’s what I’d love to hear Vance say: “In the past I have made derogatory comments about people who are childless. Upon reflection I think those were kind of dumb. I do think the American family is in crisis. I do support measures that will try to raise the fertility rate. I do think we live in a culture that puts too little emphasis on marriage and parenting, and that many people find themselves in their late 30s and 40s regretting some of the choices they made. But I don’t think it’s helpful for Republicans to pretend that there is only one correct family form.”
This sort of statement (which will never happen) would humble and humanize him. I also think it would help him encourage more pro-family policy ideas for a party often accused of wanting to return America to the 1950s.
Douthat: I agree that Vance should just say that the “childless cat ladies” crack was dumb. From a substantive perspective, the challenge is that the debate about the collapsing birthrate and the crisis of the family — really a global crisis, not just an American one — is incredibly important but also inevitably comes across as weird to a lot of people, for reasons I’ve tried to write about before, because it’s an issue that’s connected to all kinds of intimate questions and one we aren’t accustomed to debating.
Healy: Is a debate an effective forum to dig into this, Ross? I suspect we both think it isn’t.
Douthat: You suspect correctly. Having had the idea introduced via his polarizing podcast quotes, I’m skeptical that there’s a perfect way for Vance to brilliantly expound on it now. As I said earlier, I think his challenge in the debate is more general and personal: to make himself appear a little less grim and a little more Reaganesque, cheerful and upbeat even when he’s taking shots at liberals, like someone who thinks America can be great again, and soon, even if it isn’t at the moment.
Cottom: I agree with Ross that the childless cat lady crack was dumb. It unfortunately was also exactly the kind of red meat that many Trump voters like. Vance just wasn’t as good at the messaging as Trump often is. Democrats love it when Vance doubles down on his many obsessions with birthrates. The gender polarity in this election matters. Vance sounds creepy and weird when he talks about women, whether he is obsessing over their birthrates or even talking about his wife’s ethnic background. The problem is, this seems to be what Vance really cares about. I don’t think he can put a positive spin on the politics where he feels strongest. I also don’t think he is rhetorically gifted enough to pretend.
Healy: Harris is in a dead heat in all seven swing states against Trump, despite his low favorability ratings and divisive rhetoric and record. Harris wants another debate against Trump but so far he’s a no on that. Tressie, does the Harris-Walz ticket have more riding on the V.P. debate than the Republicans?
Cottom: As someone who lives in North Carolina, I am paying a lot of attention to the changing fortunes in this state. Although within the margin of error, Harris-Walz’s slight lead in some N.C. polls has a lot of local election watchers cautiously excited. The D.N.C. is following this up with real investment in state races. From my local perspective, all Walz needs to do is not ruin that. If he keeps the spotlight on Harris, plays to the centrist desire for a return to reasonable politics and keeps Vance tied to Trump’s rhetorical style, this state continues to be in play.
Paul: The Democrats have more to gain and more to lose. Because Trump-Vance are still more of a known quality, and voters already either love that or hate what they offer.
Walz can help the ticket by expanding on some specifics on issues where Harris has not yet clearly articulated a policy or a vision: education, health care, climate, poverty, federal regulation, drugs, gun control, foreign policy. I know that the Democratic Party is trying to avoid alienating any possible segment of its broad coalition. But we need to hear more from the ticket beyond Harris’s broken-record talk about small businesses, middle-class Americans and abortion rights, as safe and winning as those ideas may be. At a certain point, evasion starts to sound squirrelly and potentially weak. Voters want a straight shooter. Walz could help by offering some more specifics, especially on the economy and immigration.
Brooks: We could be days away from an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon and a Russian breakthrough in Ukraine. The world is getting more dangerous by the minute and we have four candidates who are not exactly foreign policy experts. It would be nice if either Vance or Walz showed some semblance of foreign policy chops. I’d say they both have an equally low chance of doing that.
Cottom: Love her position or hate it, Harris has consistently been her most coherent on foreign policy. Walz should not try to draw any contrasts on this point. As a white male, he could usurp her authority here and, above all, his job is to not fall into that trap.
Healy: Final question — do you think there will be another Harris-Trump debate before Election Day? And who does it help or hurt more if there is not another debate between them?
Brooks: I don’t think there’s going to be another debate. Trump may not admit his fears, but he is motivated by them. Going through that first debate did not seem fun for him. I don’t know who that hurts because I don’t know who is behind in this campaign. The remaining undecided voters don’t fall into any coherent bloc, as far as I can tell, and so are radically unpredictable. The key voters are the ones who are tempted to stay home, and it’s hard to know what will motivate them to get out of the house to vote.
Douthat: I think Trump’s team sees a clear-enough path to victory and doesn’t see enough upside in risking another debate-stage loss. They may be deluded about that path; as David says, the polls offer paths enough to fit any prediction. But my sense is that the Trump campaign would expect to win if the election were held today, and that expectation will keep them from accepting a second bout with Harris.
Paul: We have to remember that Trump is producing a TV show as much as he is running a campaign, so anything could happen. He loves a surprise plot twist! That said, if he plays it smart, he will avoid another debate because that could only help Harris. First of all, it would deprive her of another high-profile opportunity for her to introduce herself and make her case, especially if she continues to avoid national media interviews. Second, she has proved herself to be a far better debater. And third, the more people see of Trump, the more they are reminded of what they dislike about him. He is very good at making a case against himself when he’s not in his red-media, acolyte-rally comfort zone.
Cottom: If Donald Trump, one of the most narcissistic public figures in modern history, is able to let a younger, better-educated running mate get the last word in this election, I will eat my hat. Having said that, Trump has lost a step. He is afraid of losing any more. He could wimp out. I just wouldn’t bet on it.
The post ‘There’s a Trap Here’: Four Columnists Brace for the Vance-Walz Debate appeared first on New York Times.
