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Vance and Walz: phoney bonhomie (Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty)
“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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Subscribe“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 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.
Excellent comment!
Trump is nothing like Reagan. Reagan was an honest an courteous man, who could make a joke about himself. One of my favourites was when he was asked whether he had a problem with being overshadowed by Gorbachev (who at the time was viewed as something of a “rock star” in the West). He replied “No problem at all. I was in a movie with Errol Flynn once”. Can you imagine a toxic narcissist like Trump saying something like that?
Yes, I could imagine Donald Trump saying something like that. His wit meets or succeeds Ronald Reagan’s.
You seem to know only Donald Trump the politician. Don’t forget that the man had one of the more popular television shows The Apprentice for 14 seasons, making well over half a billion dollars from it. And he was good friends with people like Oprah Winfrey, Larry King and Martha Stewart.
I wouldn’t know, but people who have known him personally say he’s warm and kind. Not always, of course, but most of the time. Who else stays so close to all three of his wives and their children? That minor miracle says a lot.
“Many people are saying…”
Many, many more who know him at a personal level have said otherwise.
Yeah, including members of his family.
I’ll have to take your word for the “people who actually know Trump really like him” stuff, because zero of that comes across in his public pronouncements. I would however be interested to hear one example of when Trump was self deprecating.
He was a big-government guy, though, and had little stomach for unpopular necessities like deportation. Probably wise. The country was not yet desperate enough for a Trump.
If it is desperate enough for Trump, it must be truly desperate.
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.
Yes to JP II.
Gorbachev was completely naive.
He tried to reformed communism.
What is surprising is decision of hard KGB man (butcher of Budapest in 1956) Jurij Andropov to sponsor Gorbachev rise to Soviet Politburo.
Nevertheless his relative openness “glastnost” and willingness to negotiate on nukes paved the way to Soviet collapse. History will remember him favorably, though perhaps not within Russia. Putin? Not so much.
Maybe.
However, earlier presidents like Truman and Eisenhower made sure Europe was rebuilt and expansion of communism was checked.
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.
Pointing out Caradog’s opportunity to improve seems to have hit a nerve.
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.
I remember when Reagan first ran in 1980. I didn’t know much about him then, given that I was living in the UK at the time, and there wasn’t much opportunity for me to follow State-level US politics, so I know nothing about his stint as Governor of California. However, I remember thinking “Thatcher likes him, so he must be ok”.
He seemed that way to many of us here in the States too. He is far from universally celebrated now, though his reputation has risen. He was losing his middlebrow faculties at the end of his presidency, rather like Biden is today.
But decency and a real sense of duty to one’s country do matter in a leader, and people such as Boris Johnson and Donald Trump don’t have that much of that, despite elite education and some smarts in the IQ sense.
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.
The unintentionally hilarious ignorance of calling Trump a fraudster when America has a literal dementia patient propped up in the Ovsl office, and the chief fraudsters who pushed his fraud running in his place reveals the lack of critical, even rational, thinking democrats rely on.
If you look at the jury verdicts on the various counts, I don’t see how you can call what Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of a massive fraud. Seems minimal to me. But then I also think the cases against Donald Trump have been trumped up.
“Trumped up”! Ha ha ha! Boom boom!
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.
One of the most despicable people you’ve come across? That’s a strong statement. I don’t know what your sources of information about Elizabeth Holmes are, but I am curious why you feel that way.
As I said, I followed the Theranos story for years, and I worked as an M&A lawyer in Silicon Valley for decades. That the US attorney’s office in San Francisco picked Elizabeth Holmes to charge with fraud was a calculated move that I just can’t agree with. And many others here feel the same way.
John Carreyrou made a handsome profit off his book Bad Blood but it’s a bad book, distorting the facts and making normal activity out to be criminal. Had he not written his book, I am confident she would never have been charged.
Perhaps she should have hired you.
Sound comment.
Elizabeth Holmes? The convicted fraudster? Did you really mean to hold her up as an example?
Yes, I do mean to hold Elizabeth Holmes up as an example of a person who can get things done. She was convicted the same way Donald Trump was convicted, and is just as guilty as he is. That is to say, she’s not guilty at all
Maybe you could hold Bernie Madoff up as an example of a person who can “get things done” (assuming what you want done is the theft of a lot of money).
I’ve heard these comparisons of Elizabeth Holmes to Bernie Madoff, and I can’t figure out why people make them. You’re a lawyer, I know. Do you know the facts of the Elizabeth Holmes case? If you do, I’d be interested to hear what you think makes her a Bernie Madoff.
Theranos was a “unicorn”, which is a private company valued at over $1 billion. All the investor money it received from its private placements was used properly, and Theranos used top Silicon Valley law firms all along the way.
The government claimed that Elizabeth Holmes had misrepresented the strength of the company’s technology, a “fake it ’til you make it” strategy. The jury bought the government’s argument on 4 counts but did not on the other 7 counts. It’s hard to understand for me to understand how the jury could have split the verdict like that if they properly applied the law to the facts.
The Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou made a bundle of money on his book Bad Blood about Theranos. It’s a sensationalized view of what happened, starring John Carreyrou as an intrepid reporter aided by his sidekick Tyler Shultz. If you want an unbiased statement of the facts, you’ll have to look elsewhere. (A place to start is my review of Bad Blood posted on Amazon.)
The US attorney’s office in San Francisco was upfront about why they pursued a criminal case against Elizabeth Holmes even after the SEC had concluded its civil action against her. They wanted to set her up as an example of what they felt was a too free-wheeling Silicon Valley culture. For reasons too involved to explain more here, I think their actions were despicable.
She was a fraud, pure and simple. She defrauded the investors as well as her customers, and had no viable product. One of researchers committed who was involved in developing the technology committed suicide because the technology was not coming along and he felt guilty for helping perpetuate a fraud. I don’t know why your idealizing and defending a sociopath. I don’t know if you are just trolling us or you actually believe the nonsense your saying
I am a lawyer, but I’m a lawyer in Australia not the US. Also, I am a tax lawyer, not a criminal lawyer. I do however note that you have jury trials in the US (as we do in Australia), and the jury seemed happy enough that she was guilty. To be honest, I have followed the facts of the Madoff matter far more closely (one seldom sees a fraud of that magnitude). As to Theranos being worth $1 billion, well FTX was worth a lot too (until it wasn’t).
Oh, okay, I thought you might have done some private placement or securities fraud work. When I comment on this case here I have what Chip Heath calls “the curse of knowledge”. That is, when I have knowledge about something, it is impossible for me to imagine what it’s like to LACK that knowledge.
My career has been doing corporate finance deals in Silicon Valley, and I’ve spent many hours researching the implosion of Theranos. I tacitly assume when making arguments here that others have the knowledge I have. But of course you don’t. How could you?
So I’ll stop trying to defend Elizabeth Holmes here. There’s no real point to it. We can’t discuss the facts and the details, because you don’t know them and you’ll be hesitant to accept my statement of them. So we’re essentially just arguing about stereotypes (like your disliking Elon Musk because he is a white South African).
I’ll save my argument for my book on innovation in carmaking, where I have the chance to lay out the facts and my analysis of them in detail. I use Theranos as an example of the kind of company we need more of if we want our cars to get better faster.
But let me just say as a final word: I think the case of Elizabeth Holmes is not like the fraud cases of Sam Bankman-Fried or Bernie Madoff at all. The latter two used billions of dollars for unlawful purposes. Elizabeth Holmes did not. That’s a big difference.
Elizabeth Holmes is more like Donald Trump in the civil fraud case in New York where attorney general Tish James won a half a billion dollar judgment against Donald Trump for perfectly normal behavior. That was a decision made by a deluded judge named Arthur Engoron. Even the appeals court in New York that just heard the case was very skeptical of his decision.
Too bad Elizabeth Holmes didn’t get the same from the appeals court here. What she did is widely done in Silicon Valley, and for good reason. Taking risks and sometimes failing is how innovation happens. You can’t have one without the other. We punish her at our peril.
(One last thing. You might be surprised to learn what the jury did in the Elizabeth Holmes case.)
Two points: 1) I don’t “dislike Elon Musk because he is a white South African”. I dislike him because he is a creepy weirdo of galactic proportions, and one of the most arrogant and personally objectionable people currently drawing breath. My comment insofar as his being a white South African was merely to observe that white South Africans do rather tend to “arrogant and objectionable” (although most of them mercifully don’t scale the heights that Musk does). 2) As to what the Holmes jury did, I have never practiced criminal law, but I do know that juries do reach their decisions in odd ways sometimes.
As a white South African, you sound a bit bigoted and arrogant yourself. Also you haven’t got a smidgeon of the intellect and sheer balls and humour that Musk has. Is he different? Yes. Genius mavericks on the spectrum tend to be different.
Come on, it was not just about a book.
There were many people questioning viability of her blood testing technology.
Did that technology work? NO
Did she use false claims about that technology to raise investment for her business? YES
Therefore it was fraud on investors.
Just because others avoided jail for similar fraud does not make her innocent.
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.
Arguably. Doubtless there are people who would defend his record as Governor of Minnesota (e.g. some of the people who voted him into the office), though one is unlikely to find them here.
However, mainly I was challenging CD’s unqualified statement that Harris and Walz had never run (among other things) a state, which was incorrect.
Tim Walz didn’t run Minnesota as a chief executive, in my view. He’s an ideologue, not someone who gets things done. Look at his work in the private sector. A teacher and a master sergeant. Not a builder.
Nor a serial bankrupt.
I objected to your unqualified statement that the Democratic contenders hadn’t run a state, which was incorrect.
I meant the word “big” when I said “big business or state” to qualify both business and state. I had in mind states like New York, California, Texas and Florida, not Minnesota or (to take Sarah Palin’s example) Alaska.
Though what I really had in mind was, as I said, a position where a person really acts as a chief executive, building and leading a team to solve big problems. And I don’t mean to suggest that Tim Walz, Kamala Harris and JD Vance are disqualified from running for the positions they seek. Just that I would hate to see an inexperienced person in the White House. Like a Barack Obama.
Some of Donald Trump’s companies did file chapter 11 bankruptcies, that’s true. That’s not unusual in the real estate business. But when you look at the job Donald Trump has done in both business and as president, you see the mark of a leader.
Some politicians are all talk, and no execution. We need more officeholders who are doers, not talkers.
Have you ever wondered how someone as phony, and to my mind, spiteful and smarmy, could have climbed the political ladder without the covert help of his China friends offering him a magic carpet ride to DC?
No, I’ve never wondered that, but then, I don’t fall for conspiracy theories about covert Chinese friends.
The Donald is never spiteful, of course.
Ah, ok. How are you on conspiracy theories about “stolen elections”?
Well that’s the pint: he has turned .Iniesta into a racist hellhole where innocent people are jailed on murder charges. The AG is a danger to due process and an openly corrupt griter represents terrorist interests in Congress. And the Governor’s Chinese agency is as obvious as it is apprlarently helpful to him.
One 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.
Yes maybe the author has not realised till now Vance is always polite.
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.
People prefer blunt badasses over woke technocrats.
Jim, the “dozen Trumps” are happening because people who believe in democracy want to keep their democracy. Those opposed to the Trump phenomenon are the danger to democracy. Trump, warts and all, is the cure.
Yes. I may be seen as old and boring on these pages but it is all about democracy. I upset somebody yesterday and my comment was withdrawn. It is OK to sit in an armchair with your IPad and spout on about clever concepts of governance, about details of speeches, about theories…but we ought to be living in a democracy where one vote is worth the same as another, whatever the intelligence of the voter. This is what these ‘populists’ are all about. They appeal to ordinary people by calling a spade a spade.
This is what Trump means…an end to the clever, high IQ speakers like Two-Tier and the smarmy Conservative ministers who voted themselves out of office. An end to the Democrats’ machine which keeps the same old people in power, people who speak well and don’t actually do anything.
In the STEM World, Intelligence and Education are no substitute for Knowledge and Experience, in the relevant subjects.
A useful sign that it is the case is when anyone complains that there is to much information, and too little time to absorb it.
Really? I haven’t heard Harris saying “the next election is the last time you’ll need to vote”!
Shocker. Someone with TDS clips the original quote to entirely change the meaning of said quote. Grow up and report the entire quote.
It happens every time that the power and money becomes too much concentrated in too few people. Populism is simply the people telling the Elites that they will have to share or fight about it.
Historically it led to The Bolshevik Revolution, The French Revolution, The Magna Carta, Labor Unions, The Grange, etc.This time it is the Global Corporations and bankers hoarding the wealth and produce, so this time it’s global.
The Elites are making a big mistake by dismissing this as something they can dodge by getting rid of Trump and his analogs.
Simply put, the rest of the world will not abide the top 1% owning it all while they themselves slowly sink into starvation and homelessness.. They never have and never will. The Elites will share or die trying to hang onto their pirate booty.
Fair post, however, something about the word share doesn’t seem apt. I would say self-restraint is more of what’s needed in a free society. Unfortunately, ignorance, greed, arrogance and lust for power is blinding.
Yeah, that certainly explains the Trump phenomenon. After all, he rose from abject poverty to lead his people, and he has always railed against “the few” who own everything.
Isn’t it obvious? The political/managerial/expert caste lost touch with the people that it thought was only nominally in charge.
There are any number of populist politicians across the globe, but there is only one Trump.
This is exactly what the establishment says in Germany, Austria, France etc. The populist they oppose is singular and unique as well. It’s almost a parody by now.
Nobody is as “singular and unique” as Trump.
Yet they keep voting for them.
Not lately.
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.
narcissistic mirroring? A bit of a reach don’t you think?
Snore
Lee is such a predictable bore
Whenever I see his name I go straight to the comments now. Never once have I run across a single idea of value or interest in them when ai did read them.
I clearly watched a different debate to you.
What is wrong about finding common ground on some issues?
Nothing really, but the debate was more consequential than that. And the moderators…? Well, despicable, actually.
Take off the tinfoil hat. Vance was succinct, knowledgeable, and prepared, while Walz was simply tossing out bromides and falsehoods. Even the deep blue media talking heads were totally taken aback by Walz’s awful performance.
He was certainly succinct in refusing to answer the question about whether the 2020 election was stolen.
And he was wise not to answer a loaded question like that. Any good debater or litigator knows that.
A “loaded question”? I guess it was, given that the choices were “Tell the truth” or “Continue to lie for Trump”.
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.
Like a Seinfeld skit…This was an article about nothing…written by a nothing author
Lucky all the commenters are such intellectual heavyweights, eh?
Empathy is not toxic, and in fact it is what is fundamentally missing in American politics of the social media era.
Tom,
Thank you. I believe that you are on to something.
What is toxic is the social psychosis that results in people who can’t stand civility.
The unintentionally hilarious ignorance of calling Trump a fraudster is telling. America has a literal dementia patient propped up in the Oval office. The chief fraudstress who pushed the fraud of his comptence running in his place reveals the lack of critical, even rational, thinking democrats rely on.
Cool Hand Luke versus Elmer Fudd (on LSD).
I would have said “Mr Nice Guy versus The Eyeliner Kid”.
Vance did so well that we can now be pretty sure the Secret Service will now do everything they can to ensure that Trump remains at the top of the ticket.
Dear Donald, please don’t do another debate. Vance was perfect. Just watch out for all those devils and get on with the work.
These are not debates, they are talking points and the goal is not to really divulge anything, like the Iran nuke question because politicians in America are total wusses. They are bought and handled by big bucks and trapped by their own moral coward personalities. Pretty sad and tragic for the country but it is the American people who vote for these clowns, so we are getting exactly what we deserve.
“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.”
Although this essay isn’t about wokeness, for me, the foregoing summary of what woke is becoming was the most insightful part of the essay.
I didn’t watch the VP debate, but I’m reminded of the old adage that VP debates are supposed to be anodyne affairs where the main goal is for the VP candidates not to shoot themselves, and their principals, in the foot. Sounds like both candidates did pretty well in that regard.
So I’m reading this article, and I think a lot of this is partisan bs; I watched the debate my self. The only good reason to read about it is to get some balance to my own bias; that used to work, but not now. Almost everything is spin at best, at CNN & MSNBC it’s dulision and bold face lies.
It sure would be nice to find some place where the writers were just knowledgeable, objective, and honest.
Most of the comments are better than this article.
Excellent piece, but you’ve got empathy and sympathy wrong. Empathy is the stronger quality and involve actually being able to experience another’s experience either through having experienced it firsthand or vicariously. Sympathy is an acknowledgment of another’s emotional state. The former should not be reduced to merely being able to trick someone, although it is true that the best, most truthful of actors must have it. It is not mere fakery.
Siegel might be right to criticize “debates”, whether for presidential or vice-presidential candidates, but not for the reasons he offers. Serious and on point debates generally don’t include–in fact exclude–name calling, outright lies and distortions, and cloying sentimentality. I would cite the Munk Debates as among the best examples of formal public exchanges aimed at revealing what political and social disputes and controversies are all about, thereby allowing for an interested but perhaps uninformed audience to appreciate the problems scrutinized in a worthwhile debate. The dopey moderators who are almost always those on only one side of the debate, are simply corrupt and ideologically locked into the Democrats agendas so much that they can’t tolerate and or are clearly opposed to simply moderating any exchanges between political foes.
Anyone who wishes to be fair-minded would acknowledge the consistent bias in their handling of candidates they don’t support. No followup or push back questions for Harris, and three or four for Trump? Thus, expecting anything other than a brawl initiated by empty headed but true believer moderators, hired by the same clowns who told us the border has been closed, is dangerous foolishness.
Instead we get as Siegel intimates performative exchanges designed to mislead and confuse any audience. If you want useful debates, we should reconstruct the entire format to look more like the Munk Debates, with moderators who moderate–not join the corruption and perversion of the of their political bosses.
You’re spot on. Allowing news media to moderate the debates is ridiculous. This VP debate was one of the best that I can remember, but only because Vance was strong enough to stand up to the “moderators”. Why the Republicans have put up with these so-called debates so long is beyond me.
A modified Monk would be so much better, with an off-screen moderator (voice only), and maybe 3 slightly different formats (one being town-hall), and an isolated, non-voting, audience . . . the point is that it’s so easy to devise something better. The debates are primarily for the benefit of the American people – not the media stars, networks or political parties. If we’re not going to do them right, we shouldn’t do them.
If you mean Munk, I agree!
“Not in recent memory has the country been offered a choice between, in Harris, a vapid mediocrity, and in Trump, an unbalanced malignity.” Anyone else notice Andrew Sullivan being channeled here — his framing of malignity vs mediocrity (though not his plea that we vote for mediocrity because malignity is so much worse). But both Sullivan and Siegel have a point: two candidates like these trying to fill the shoes of the likes of FDR?
Lee clearly doesn’t understand either sympathy or empathy. What a joke to base an entire article on this embarrassing misunderstanding.
“If you feel sympathy toward someone, you both understand them and feel concern for them. Being empathetic is merely knowing how to impersonate someone”
No… flip that
DICTIONARY: USAGE
People often confuse the words empathy and sympathy. Empathy means ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another’ (as in ‘both authors have the skill to make you feel empathy with their heroines’), whereas sympathy means ‘feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune’ (as in ‘they had great sympathy for the flood victims’)
What a lot of shit this article is. It’s made me decide I am fed up with Unherd and will leave. Total nonsense which is impossible to understand much less explain to someone else. So, what’s the bloody point of such drivel? You are the narcissists looking in the mirror. Why should I waste my time following that? Bye Bye.
I don’t really blame you. I’m so close myself.
Bye. I’ll hold the door open for you.
I can imagine Trump leading his nation and the West should war erupt. At least he has more than demonstrated his courage and defiance in the face of death.
Harris would be a total disaster as a war leader. The West will be in terminal decline if she becomes President. May the people of the USA do the right thing and save our world. It is the last chance.
I agree completely on the last two sentences. I am 180 degrees out of phase on the rest.
Donald Trump is courageous, but greatly lacking in wisdom and good judgment. He fights bravely but never wisely. Imagine if he had all that previously mentioned, he would have been a far better president and would have not been far short of achieving his potential he had. That’s because pride is his vice, and it’s a vice he can’t or won’t move past from.
A lot of over-thinking in this essay.
> a fireworks display of reasonableness and respect — into a lethal social weapon.
What a useless editorial. Could it just possibly be that both gentlemen believe that reasonableness and respect are how one should behave?