Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota clashed on Tuesday in a vice-presidential debate in which Mr. Vance’s well-honed, television-friendly style came up against an aw-shucks approach from Mr. Walz that was at times nervous and halting.
But Mr. Walz found his footing late, when the debate turned to the question of former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election. When he directly asked Mr. Vance if Mr. Trump lost in 2020, the Republican replied that he was “focused on the future” — with Mr. Walz calling it a “damning non-answer.” It was perhaps the sharpest exchange of the night.
The undercard encounter was focused on policy, with the two men juggling detailed questions on foreign affairs, climate change and immigration during the first half-hour.
Mr. Vance and Mr. Walz kept disagreements civil and almost entirely avoided personal attacks as they fielded questions about news stories of the day, including Iran’s attack on Israel, and Mr. Walz’s false claim that he had been in Hong Kong during China’s deadly crackdown on the Tiananmen protests in 1989.
“I’m a knucklehead at times,” Mr. Walz said in a meandering response that provided little clarity about his misleading comments.
Mr. Vance had his work cut out for him, too, during the 107-minute debate broadcast from New York. He made a number of misleading or factually incorrect claims, falsely saying that “illegal aliens” were a significant factor in driving up home prices and distorting Mr. Trump’s tax cut as primarily benefiting the middle class when upper-income Americans saw the largest boon.
Time and again, he tried to rewrite Mr. Trump’s four years in office — which ended with a deadly pandemic and economic recession — in ways that bordered on brazen.
He described Mr. Trump’s anti-abortion position as a desire “to make it easier for moms to have babies.” He tried to downplay Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2020, riot at the Capitol, saying that the former president “peacefully gave over power.”
And on Mr. Trump’s repeated failures to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which he had promised to do during his 2016 campaign, Mr. Vance praised the former president for leaving health-care options in place for Americans.
Both Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance also avoided giving a straight answer when asked whether they would support Israel if it launched a pre-emptive military strike against Iran.
While neither candidate seemed to land the kind of viral knockout blow that can make a debate memorable, they both generally accomplished the golden measure of a vice-presidential debate: Do no harm to your running mate.
Mr. Vance stared straight at the camera and delivered the message that Mr. Trump so often failed to hit in his presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last month: Democrats have been in charge for four years, and things have not gotten better.
“Honestly, Tim, I think you’ve got a tough job here because you’ve got to play Whac-a-Mole,” said Mr. Vance, who makes frequent television appearances and often spars with reporters in question-and-answer session after his rallies. “You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver lower inflation, which of course he did, and then you’ve simultaneously got to defend Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries and housing unaffordable for American citizens.”
For his part, Mr. Walz did his best to imitate the approach that Ms. Harris used in her debate with Mr. Trump, taking most questions and turning them into attacks on Mr. Trump’s character and performance in the White House. But he sometimes stumbled over his words and seemed rusty on the debate stage, after the Harris campaign chose to largely keep him away from reporters on the campaign trail.
When he was not talking, the two-term Minnesota governor could often be seen staring at Mr. Vance or looking down as he scribbled notes. His eyes were sometimes wide, his mouth twisted in an almost pained grimace, although he grew more comfortable as the night went on — and the television audience most likely shrank.
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