From his awkward, nervous response to his first question about Israel and the Middle East to his later admission to being “a knucklehead,” Tim Walz stumbled while JD Vance shined during the Vice Presidential debate.
The largely good-natured forum, hosted by CBS News, featured the two candidates agreeing with each other repeatedly and expressing warm personal sentiments — avoiding the blistering personal attacks that were part of both presidential debates earlier this year.
Walz, 60, who has honed a folksy demeanor on the campaign trail, was noticeably nervous and misspoke repeatedly as he wrung his hands, took frantic notes, and his eyes darted around the CBS studio. JD Vance, on the other hand, commanded the stage, giving a steady and lawyerly presentation that had him widely seen as the victor in what may very well be the final debate of the campaign season.
Walz fumfered through his first answer about Israel and, even an hour into the debate, still failed to find his footing, declaring, “I’ve become friends with school shooters” — when he seemed to mean victims — during an answer about gun control.
Vance responded amicably and expressed his regret that the Governor’s son had witnessed a shooting at a Minnesota community center.
The Democrat stumbled again, in what will be the most replayed moment of the debate when he was asked about fresh reporting that he lied about having been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in the spring of 1989.
“Look, I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community,” Walz said in a rambling initial response. “I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times, but it’s always been about that those same people elected me to Congress for 12 years.”
Co-moderator Margaret Brennan then pressed, “Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy? “
Walz, visibly shocked and dismayed by the blunt follow-up, grudgingly claimed that “I got there that summer and misspoke on this.”
Neither Vance nor the moderators raised Walz’s alleged embellishment of his military exploits or use of fertility treatments to help his wife conceive children, despite Republicans focusing on both in recent weeks.
Walz, at one point, praised Donald Trump’s running mate for giving viewers “the conversation they want to hear” about the future of the country, in an apparent reference to the civility of the debate.
Vance, who spoke about his mother’s struggle with opioid addiction while urging greater US-Mexico border security and about his grandmother sometimes turning the heat off in the winter to save money, stood the most to gain from showing amiability.
In one of his best-received answers, Vance recalled that someone “very dear to me” had an abortion in the past and confessed to him, “She felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”
Vance had the most to gain by appearing civil and sympathetic during the debate. The Republican entered the debate with a more negative appraisal by the public — with a 10.3% deficit in his own favorability ratings, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, versus Walz’s plus-2.5% favorability rating.
It appeared to pay off handsomely, with venerable pollster Frank Luntz finding that in a 14-person focus group of undecided voters across seven battleground states, 12 concluded that Vance won the debate.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who admits he had reservations about Trump’s pick for Vance for VP, said that Vance was “a tour de force” during the debate.
“It was a terrific debate by J.D. Vance,” Santorum said post-debate. “I don’t think there is any other way to describe it. He was calm. He was likable. He was concise.”
Vance also handled the CBS moderators well when they began fact-checking him, which went against the debate rules, Santorum added.
“That was a moment that, again, showed that command and presence and understanding,” Santorum said.