By Stephen Macaulay
As of August/early September JD Vance had a favorability rating of 36% among Americans and Tim Walz edged him out by 5%, at 41%, according to Gallup.
This means that Walz was tied with Mike Pence in 2020 and Vance was tied with Mike Pence in 2016.
Mike Pence is likely not voting for either of the two men.
But what Gallup also found was that 19% of U.S. adults don’t know who Walz is and 17% don’t know who Vance is.
Which puts the two men squabbling on TV with each other in perspective.
What’s more, the citizens of Houston, Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Atlanta, and San Diego all had something else to view last night that was a solid concern of more than a slice of their populations: Major League Baseball playoff games.
The last time the Tigers were in the playoffs, for example, Obama was president.
While John Nance Garner is the name of an individual that only Ken Jennings might get (“Who was the 32nd vice president?”), his comparison of the office to a bucket of warm spit is equaled by Will Rogers’ lesser-known “The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, ‘How is the president?’”
Vance and Walz could have wrestled in a bucket of warm spit for nine minutes rather than the 90 spent talking and the effect might have been better.
It is commonly said that the purpose of a vice-presidential candidate is to serve as an attack dog for whoever is running for the top job. It is a shame that Don Rickles died in 2017 because he would have been superlative in that role.
But last night the two men were not attack dogs so much as somewhat-civil surrogates for their partners in politics.
Walz looked uncomfortable at the start, as though he wished he was wearing a Cabella’s cap and fishing at Lake Winnibigoshish.
Vance was his usual basilisk-like self.
The outlets that did fact-checking of what the candidates said pretty much indicated that Vance held forth with a litany of lies, although there was the tendency to be more euphemistic about what Vance said (“Misleading”? Really?). All I can say is that Vance must spend a whole lot of time in the confession booth.
While Walz wasn’t exactly a choir boy in some of his answers, The Washington Post’s fact checker seemed to go out of his way to throw shade at Walz, as though they were afraid the multiple “This is false” declarations appended to Vance’s lies would be a bit much for the readers.
Walz claimed:
“Donald Trump had four years. He had four years to do this. And he promised you, America, how easy it would be. ‘I’ll build you a big, beautiful wall, and Mexico will pay for it.’ Less than 2% of that wall got built, and Mexico didn’t pay a dime.”
And the Post assessed:
“The percentage is exaggerated. About 458 miles of a border barrier was built during Trump’s presidency, but most of it (373 miles) was replacement for existing primary or secondary barriers that were dilapidated or outdated, according to a January 22, 2021, report by Customs and Border Protection. About 52 miles was new primary wall, and 33 miles was new secondary wall. Trump had promised to build 1,000 miles of barrier, so even taking the lower numbers gets Trump 8.5 percent.”
Well, that’s one way of slicing the numbers. Another way is this:
The length of the border between the U.S. and Mexico is 1,954 miles. When Trump talked about his Wall, he didn’t mean fixed up portions or secondary structures. It was going to be a sight to behold, one that would strike fear into the hearts of anyone who dared gaze at it with a notion of trying to surmount it. (Fear, incidentally, is what the Trump-Vance team is big on when it comes to other countries.)
So Trump built 52 miles of wall. Which is 2.66% of 1,954.
Still, the overall assessment is that it was a tie.
In other words, fairly irrelevant.
Although there are those who claim there are those who are undecided or independent who’d be swayed one way or another — get serious:
- People vote for the person running for president, not the vice president.
- There was a lot of good baseball on last night.
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings. A never-Trump conservative, his commentaries most often appear in our right column.