“Everybody’s got a plan,” Mike Tyson once said, “until they get punched in the face.” The American media’s plan for last night’s vice-presidential debate between Senator J.D. Vance and Governor Tim Walz was that the two running mates would, all at once, throw punch after punch at each other while, between blows, vying to come across as America’s favourite heartland dad. Instead, the media itself got it right in the smacker. The soporific exchange was more like this: everybody’s got a punch ready until they get weighed down with a script.
Call it the Y2k debate, after the supposed “Y2k” computer bug that people feared would cause computers to crash when the clock struck midnight on the last night of 1999, causing widespread chaos and destruction. In the event, it was just another New Year. It was supposed to showcase pugilism and fireworks as the two embodiments of the countries’ enmities and divisions finally met face to face and lunged at each other for the glory of the respective tops of their tickets. But the match was so anticlimactic that Walz lightly scratching his nose — an old Method-acting technique — took on the proportions of a political event.
And, indeed, the seemingly spontaneous bit of being human was a refreshing break from Walz sticking so closely to what he had been told to say that he didn’t seem to have had time to work through and fully comprehend what he was saying. Repeating his oft-told account of meeting with the parents of children who had been killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting, Walz said, “I sat in that office with those Sandy Hook parents. I’ve become friends with school shooters. I’ve seen it.” He didn’t come across as a huggable Midwestern dad so much as someone, like Kamala Harris herself, who had been caught in one of the most improbable rip tides in American history and swept out into water far over his head. Again and again, as Vance talked, Walz stared at him in a kind of panic over how he was going to respond. And when he did respond, he seemed astonished at the fact that he was actually speaking himself.
For all Vance’s porcelain poise, in contrast to Walz’s near hysteria, Vance stumbled in the opposite direction, toward a sort of Ivy-League passive-aggressive self-consciousness about his manners. He suddenly turned ingratiating toward his opponent, whom he had been maligning on the campaign trail for months. Walz: “I’ve enjoyed tonight’s debate, and I think there was a lot of commonality here.” Vance: “Me too, man.”
The sudden lurch from campaign-hustings vitriol to two playground adversaries making nice in the principal’s office should not have been a surprise. What used to be called “woke”, and now is a treacly national style, is really nothing more than a super-Darwinian society adapting to ever more virulent forms of competition and one-upmanship by turning the display of virtue — in this case, a fireworks display of reasonableness and respect — into a lethal social weapon.
Or to couch it in psychological terms, it is the political form of narcissistic mirroring. That occurs when someone who is unable to relate to another person on an intuitive, emotional level simply reflects back to the other person the latter’s own identity. Since such mirroring is the result of calculation rather than connection, it usually masks intense hostility, even hatred. This is why, in America for the past couple of decades, “empathy” has become sort of a celebrity emotion, as opposed to sympathy. If you feel sympathy toward someone, you both understand them and feel concern for them. Being empathetic is merely knowing how to impersonate someone. Last night, Walz and Vance oozed toxic empathy.
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SubscribeOne can tell when a democrat knows their loser candidate lost when they pretend the debate never happened. If Vance had bragged about being pals with child murderers this ridiculous bit of denialism would not have been written.
The Trump phenomenon is the reaction of half of the US Electorate to how awful US politicians have become – almost anyone who is not like them is better. Harris is an exemplification of the fear, arrogance and ignorance which typifies much of the Western Elite and which very many “ ordinary people” now see through.
Just to be clear, there are a dozen Trumps across the globe. Austria just elected one. We should be asking ourselves why such a phenomenon is happening at the same time in democracies across that globe.
Having seen YouTube videos of J D Vance interviews with clearly Democrat female journalists I have no doubt that had J D Vance debated Harris he would have highlighted her unfitness for office in a way Trump didn’t. Nothing wrong with civilise debate that highlights the difference in policies both real and pretend.
“The tragedy in the pathetic comedy of last night was this anti-debate’s revelation of the vacuum at the heart of American power, and of the country’s growing helplessness to protect itself as history rushes to fill it.”
Pretty dramatic description of what was to my ear a pedestrian and anodyne debate specifically and an unremarkable election in general. Having been a master debater myself in high school decades ago, I don’t think debates are a good way to judge a political candidate’s fitness for office. They are too artificial, too staged, too unrepresentative of what a government official does in office.
Better I think to look at resumes. Do that this election and Kamala Harris and Tim Walz look terrible. Neither one of them has any real leadership experience like you would get running a big business or state, or the country. Nor does JD Vance. I wouldn’t want to see any of those three in the Oval Office.
Donald Trump has the executive experience — the ability to get things done — that looks a lot like what people like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Elizabeth Holmes have. It’s a rare talent that debates will never show, but it’s not hard to judge if you look for the right signs. And Donald Trump, for all his faults, has it.
That said, I don’t think it will much matter who wins this election. Both parties seem intent on practicing industrial policy, and enlarging the role of government in the economy. Both spend too much without any concern for the future.
I am not an expert on American politics. When I look back at past Presidents I am most confused by Ronald Reagan. To me, he was worse than useless, to Americans he was one of the best. Reputedly, he was well supported by the party machine. So if the Dems win the coming election, it doesn’t matter about the P and VP because the party machine will come to the rescue. Not so with Mr T.
Ronald Reagan? He may not have been perfect, but he did win the Cold War!
RR made America great again. He endured the now obvious democrat party game plan: lie, undermine, collude with tyrants, falsely accused of racism, and still made Americans of all backgrounds better off.
Hey, don’t get me wrong! I am a big fan of the guy! I wish there was someone like him around now!
There is. The democrats and bureaucrats mutinied against him and tried to murder him twice.
That comparison is some combination of wishful and unhinged.
Reagan was a man of actual living faith and core decency. Despite a middling intellect, he brought the majority of the nation together most of the time. He had blind spots and was quite reactionary as governor of (a volatile 1960s and early 70s) California. But he grew and become a more unifying when elevated to the presidency. He was a bit too bellicose but didn’t shirk America’s global responsibilities wholesale and tried to behave honorably on the World Stage. He believed in America, as a reality and and aspiration
Trump sells bibles he has never cracked and doesn’t understand, and has a mostly-bought but still for-sale soul. Trump has an above average native intelligence but doesn’t read much, and is likely to credit anything that flatters his massive, insecure self-regard. Trump is deliberately divisive and has a spotlight hunger that outdoes just about every other politician or celebrity. His total self-focus translates to an inward political gaze, where he surveys the nation and its people, with disgust and hyper-manipulative intent. He believes in a never-was America, situated in about 1965-1985, and hates the America he sees, as well as her egalitarian aspirations.
Both count as celebrity politicians with a popular appeal. But other than the party affiliation and they fact you like them both, there is little additional overlap.
For a European like myself Reagan was unquestionably the best US president of the post war era simply because, without him, the Cold War would not have ended when it did.
I think that claim holds up pretty well, now 35 years after his term. His counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev also played an indispensable part in that.
Don’t forget Thatcher and Pope John Paul II.
Thank you, Caradog, for sharing the ignorance of the 1980s. It is brave to openly admit one’s ignorance. It is stupid to do nothing about it.
I think it’s difficult for Europeans to understand the appeal of Reagan unless they’ve spent a good amount of time in the US. Their instincts about some things are just so different from ours – we’re brought up to see the world differently. Reagan seemed too simplistic and unsophisticated to us in the 1980s, particularly when we were younger. It was far too easy back then to just write off everything he said because he seemed like an uneducated fool. Which he couldn’t have been given he won all the states except Minnesota in 1984.
It took me 19 years of living here in the US to understand the worth of Reagan.
My impression of him came from Spitting Image which I stupidly believed.
Elizabeth Holmes? Isn’t she in jail for being a fraudster?
Yes, but unjustly so. I live 20 minutes from the courthouse where her trial was held. I followed the trial closely, and had followed the story of Theranos since even before John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal started his Bad Blood muckraking crusade.
Elizabeth Holmes has a rare talent (especially for a woman) for building a company and ought to be applying that talent in the real world instead of sitting in prison. If the kind of thing she was jailed for is a crime then half of my clients over the years should be in prison.
Maybe they should be then – Holmes just lied and lied and lied to commit massive fraud – a bit like yer man Trump!
What fraud has Trump perpetrated? He has been president already, you know, which means there is a record one can examine. Contrast that to Harris and her boss. In other words, do more that parrot what you’ve been told to think.
Unbelievable that anyone could still believe convicted fraudster and con artist Elizabeth Holmes. One of the most despicable people I’ve ever come across.
Let me know when her appeal fails.
And your clients might want to keep their heads down.
Sound comment – no need for the “master debater” stuff.
Elizabeth Holmes? The convicted fraudster? Did you really mean to hold her up as an example?
Walz has run the state of Minnesota for more than five years (following twelve years in Congress). You’re a masterdebater, alright.
Run it very badly. He allowed the rioters to go unchecked for 3 days while his wife sniffed the smoke wafting in the windows. He signed a ‘snitch’ law where people were encouraged to turn in others for breaking the Covid protocols like 6-ft distancing.
He is an authoriatarianic moron.
Lee is such a predictable bore
narcissistic mirroring? A bit of a reach don’t you think?
I clearly watched a different debate to you.
What is wrong about finding common ground on some issues?
Snore
Not in recent memory has the country been offered a choice between, in Harris, a vapid mediocrity, and in Trump, an unbalanced malignity.
If only there were records of the two in action, where one might be able to compare performance. Oh, wait; there are. The unbalanced guy was president once before, a period noted for a robust economy, no new wars being started, a rash of peace deals in the Middle East, cajoling NATO countries to pay their part of the tab, and so forth.
By contrast, calling Harris a ‘mediocrity’ is higher praise than she deserves. This woman is the border czar. This woman went to Europe to talk of ushering Ukraine into NATO on the eve of the start of hostilities. This woman is busy trying to reinvent herself and failing in one softball venue after another. Still, for this author to have noticed the malicious truth is a step forward, but he’ll likely vote for her anyway.
Trump may be singular among American politicians but he is replicated across the globe by others who have noticed and said out loud that the status quo and old order of career politicians does not work. Yes, he’s loud and abrasive and sometimes vulgar, and so what. The left used the same insults against the likes of Romney, McCain, both Bushes, Bob Dole, and Reagan. Trump just refused to sit quietly and take it.