Back to the future, veep style

The only thing that could have made the vice-presidential debate more of an exercise in time travel would have been to have Marty McFly moderate it.

The slightly more than 90 minutes that the two candidates for the second highest office in America—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, and the junior U.S. senator from Ohio, Republican J.D. Vance—shared the stage were like an echo from an earlier era.

The two men refrained from insulting each other. They expressed gratitude and sympathy for each other’s service and positions. They disagreed on important policy questions, but did so respectfully, even courteously.

In other words, this debate was nothing like the national debates we’ve seen over the past eight years.

That made it refreshing.

Neither man did damage to his running mate or his party. They both seemed to understand what they were supposed to do—avoid game-altering mistakes and advance their respective presidential candidate’s message—and they both did it.

Of the two, Vance was by far the more polished performer. He seemed, even when he was on the defensive, to be comfortable on the stage—and he often argued former President Donald Trump’s case far more effectively than Trump himself has this election year.

Walz was nowhere near as smooth.

His opening answer, in fact, almost had a deer-caught-in-the-headlights feel. It was a jittery almost incoherent mess.

But the Minnesota governor settled down after and demonstrated that he could be an effective counterpuncher. He did what the Democrats’ presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, likely wanted him to do—focusing all night long on Donald Trump’s lapses of leadership and conscience.

Both candidates had their stumbles.

In addition to his slow start, Walz flailed while attempting to answer a question about the Chinese uprising at Tiananmen Square. He previously said that he had been in Hong Kong and China when the tumult occurred, but newspaper reports have demonstrated that was not the case.

On the debate stage, though, he babbled about everything but China, Tiananmen Square or where he was 35 years ago when the fierce protests took place.

Only when the moderators followed up did Walz own up that he “misspoke” about his experience.

(For the life of me, I don’t know why it’s so hard for politicians to say, “I screwed up,” apologize for the error and then move on. It’s difficult for either a reporter or an opponent to press the point after that.)

Vance’s moments of weakness were more substantive.

He tried to sidestep the issue of abortion and reproductive health care by saying that the answer was to provide families and children with more support.

Walz saw his opening and took it. He pointed out that nothing has prevented Republicans from adopting such supports for children and families—and that allowing women to make their own reproductive decisions wouldn’t stop Republicans from enacting such programs, either.

Vance wriggled in response, but the damage was less than it had been when Trump debated Harris. Then, the former president delivered an account of his ever-shifting position on abortion that would have pleased a chameleon.

Vance’s greatest moment of exposure came near the end, when he was questioned about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and whether he would accept the voters’ verdict if he and Trump were defeated at the polls next month.

He tried to make Harris somehow the issue, asserting without regard for fact or logic that she censored Republicans. He also argued that Democrats had objected to the 2016 election results, thus equating demanding recounts and using the courts to explore election irregularities with summoning a mob to Washington, D.C. and urging it to storm the capitol and try to hang the vice president of the United States.

(For the record, no one would have had a problem with Donald Trump’s actions four years ago if he’d just taken his case to court.)

Going into the debate, Vance probably had the most to prove. He got off to the worst start for a vice-presidential candidate in history, but he did much to redeem himself in his time on stage. He came across as knowledgeable, reasonable and even likable.

Walz had more to lose—and, with his starting jitters, it appeared he might do just that. But he survived both that moment and the night.

And America?

Well, it got a pleasing reminder of what politics once was.