The Tartan

By Elliot Liermann and Owen Noble

Editorials featured in the Forum section are solely the opinions of their individual authors.

Owen’s issue-by-issue recap:

This past Tuesday, Oct. 1, Senator JD Vance and Governor Tim Walz, the running mates of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates respectively,  faced off in a 90 minute debate hosted by CBS Evening News. This 90 minute event, hosted by news anchor Nora O’Donnel, and chief foreign affairs correspondent of CBS News, Margaret Brennan, will most likely be the last debate of this presidential election cycle. 

Of the many things last week’s debate was, interesting was not one of them. That’s why I (Owen), the sacrificial lamb of the Tartan, have been tasked with bringing you up to speed with what happened, condensing all 90-ish minutes of sheer boredom into an article you can skim on the way to your next class. My writing may be barely coherent, and it may be completely without merit, but then so was the debate. If you don’t care about the individual details, consider at least reading Elliot’s fabulous analysis of the debate as a whole on A4. 

The Middle East

Instead of asking about the Israel and Hamas Hezbollah conflict directly, the moderator instead decided to dance around the topic by discussing Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its impact on neighboring states, namely Israel. In general, both candidates seemed pro-Israel when it came to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Walz’s arguments focused primarily on Trump, including him backing out of a deal that limited Iran’s nuclear potential, as well as Trump being “fickle” when it came to international relations and communication. Vance fired back, defending Trump’s past record, arguing that, “for people to fear the United States, you needed peace through strength” and how no major international conflicts started during the Trump presidency. This portion of the debate was largely uninteresting as both Walz and Vance argued for essentially the same thing: an almost uncanny allegiance to Israel. Vance appeared here as trying to come off as charming and reasonable, attempting to contrast himself with Trump’s idiosyncrasies. Walz at first seemed a bit nervous on the debate stage, although as the debate progressed that would change to a generally more comfortable stance.

Hurricanes and Climate Change

Vance answered first for this section of the debate and began by speaking about the lives lost in Hurricane Helene. He then acknowledged carbon-emission based climate change, “just for the sake of argument,” trying to placate far-right extremists while appealing to centrists — a theme of the debate. He blamed climate change primarily on overseas industry and manufacturing, arguing that America is, “the cleanest economy in the entire world.” As a result, Vance promotes a move towards American manufacturing as opposed to a cheaper, overseas structure that would benefit other countries. In contrast, Walz pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act, a piece of legislation that focuses on promoting clean energy development, and is continually promoted as a method of carbon emission control.

Immigration

Vance began this section of the debate by describing Kamala Harris as a “border czar,” a popular right-wing buzzword, blaming her and immigrants for the spread of drug addiction and rising housing prices. In response, Walz pointed to a bi-partisan border bill created by the Biden/Harris administration that was shot down; he claims this is because Trump wanted a group to demonize. He also brought up that Kamala continued to work on a border wall. This section ended with a discussion of Springfield, Ohio, the town where former President Donald Trump recently claimed immigrants were, “eating the dogs.” Walz pointed to this as a prime example of demonization of immigration, while Vance ended up lambasting immigrants, legal and illegal, eventually having his mic cut off as he went over his time. 

A quick aside here — as someone from a border state, I feel it is important to mention that immigrants are often, in fact, lovely people and are no more or less deserving of rights than anyone else. I believe Vance’s rhetoric here to be incredibly harmful.

Economics

Walz’s economic policy was largely focused on cutting middle-class taxes, providing a child tax credit for families, and limiting tax loopholes to enforce stricter tax laws on the rich. Vance started out by arguing that Kamala already has power, and therefore is to blame for high prices. Walz fired back, blaming Trump and his mishandling of COVID before going on to cite economic experts that predicted that Trump was already running the economy into the ground. Vance essentially called the economists liars without backing that claim up, and the whole “discussion” collapsed into chaos. Fun times.

Qualifications

Here, each candidate was asked about a dubious part of their past: for Walz that was unclear comments he made about his time in China, for Vance that was his past negative statements about Trump. For what was a relatively simple question, Walz gave a needlessly drawn out answer instead of just saying, “I messed up the dates, it happens.” Vance, before being selected as Trump’s running mate, had allegedly called Trump “America’s Hitler,” in a private text message to his former roommate. He spun this as having bought in too much to the media before he saw the proverbial light and changed his mind.

Abortion

Walz started out strong here, bringing up anecdotes of the women hurt by a lack of medically necessitated abortion care. He continued by alluding to the divisive Project 2025, an extensive document that allegedly lays out the future plan of the Republican party if Trump attains power, including a 1984-esque national pregnancy registry. Vance denied this before proceeding to use a myriad of outlandish straw-man arguments including allusions to infanticide and nuns being forced to perform abortions. To cap off his argument, Vance argued that women need to “trust Republicans.” 

Guns

Per the party line, Vance blamed mental health for school shootings, partially arguing that school shootings were just a “fact of life” that should be prepared for and accepted. Walz in turn started off strong, mentioning that his son witnessed a shooting at a community center. He drove home that proposed gun laws would not infringe on second amendment rights, mentioning that he himself is a gun owner who too was hesitant of gun laws. He then stated that his beliefs changed after speaking to parents of Sandy Hook victims.

Housing

Walz’s plan to solve the housing shortage is to offer tax incentives for building new houses. Vance, in contrast, blamed immigrants for housing shortages — without providing much in the way of evidence — before arguing that new houses should be built on federal lands. As Huffington Post writer Chris D’Angelo points out, this could have potentially devastating implications on the environment, not to mention the fact that these federal lands are often very far away from established urban areas. 

Healthcare

Vance presented himself as pro-healthcare, defending Trump’s “concepts of a plan” without mentioning much in the way of details. As a rebuttal, Vance brought up how Trump attempted to repeal Obamacare during his presidency and was only stopped by Congress. Walz was certainly fired up about this issue — it’s something he focused a lot on in previous campaigning — and by this point he seemed to have gotten his bearings. Vance seemed a bit more strung-out, in stark contrast to a put-together appearance early in the debate.

Childcare

Walz advocated for giving parents a child tax credit to provide support. Vance in turn argued that if one really wanted to help parents, they should “fix the economy” instead. Again, Vance is attempting to bring weaker topics back to traditional Republican talking points like the economy and immigration.

Democracy

This section was arguably the only interesting part of the debate and if you have the free time I recommend watching it. The moderators brought up Jan. 6 riots on the capital and its danger to democracy, passing the question initially to Vance. Here, Vance downplayed Jan. 6 aggressively, arguing that Trump peacefully transferred power, and stating that Facebook censorship, of all things, was a far more important issue. This is what political science experts may describe as an, “Elon-Musk-esque argument.” Walz responded by relaying the importance of respecting the political process and being a good loser, before asking Vance verbatim, “did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?” Vance responded, “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” a response Walz correctly labeled a, “damning non-answer.”

An Undecided Voter’s Perspective

Following the debate, I spoke to my undecided roommate Andrew for his perspective. After watching a compilation produced by MSNBC, he noted that both candidates were, “great at avoiding each other’s questions.” Beyond standard political dodging, Andrew took issue with the lack of fact-checking in the debate. He argued that this made it difficult for an everyday person to determine the validity of each argument, especially when Vance and Walz debated the minutiae of abortion and immigration law. At the end of the day, neither candidate’s arguments swayed Andrew, and as of writing he is still undecided.

Elliot’s analysis of the debate:

For those who wanted to see clashes, varying policy conversations, and clarity on the differences between the presidential running mates, this debate fell short of ideal. And for those who watched purely for entertainment, especially with expectations resulting from how interesting the most recent presidential debate was, this debate could not be more of a let-down. The debaters, Vance and Walz, seemed to agree more often than disagree, especially when compared to what is expected within these political events. Though there is not a strict consensus regarding the value of appealing to centrism within two-party political structures, there is an agreement with how boring it makes debates. 

Walz, despite his almost undeniable charm and warmth found within earlier campaign speeches that left most supporters nostalgic for a middle school teacher of theirs, performed worse than most analysts predicted. Though he conducts himself well when doing speeches for the campaign trail, when Walz is placed in a debate-like format which benefits from quick-wittedness and offensive rhetoric, he tends to fall short. The vice presidential debate was no exception. Governor Walz was a shocking pick to most when he was selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, with many political analysts surprised at how progressive of a candidate he was. Since this selection however, the Harris campaign has seemed to promote a more centrist lean than Walz initially represented, seemingly placing the Governor on the proverbial backburner throughout the campaign. With Walz’s performance on Tuesday demonstrating limited debating skills and the Democratic Party pushing a more centrist platform as the election starts to grow closer, many democratic supporters are critiquing Walz as the candidate for vice president. If the Democratic Party was going to run on a more centrist platform, it might have benefited the party to select a vice presidential candidate that was both moderate and a powerful candidate, such as Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro.

If your perspective of J. D. Vance was similar to mine before the debate, most notably defined by his previous news interviews where he defended some genuinely heinous views, you likely ended the evening shocked at how normal Vance was able to make himself appear. Vance was surprisingly able to portray the Republican party as the most reasonable and centrist they’ve been since Trump’s initial campaign and resulting election in 2016. Despite his tendency to produce vague solutions and his defense of harmful rhetoric that previously defined his character, Vance was able to produce a semi-coherent and logical representation of the Republican platform. Though he came off as a better debater than his opponent Walz, that’s a low bar to reach. Despite this shockingly okay performance, Vance was unable to completely distance himself from the extremism found within the modern Republican party. This was most present in his inability to directly address the results of the previous election, in which his running mate former President Donald Trump claimed that election interference and fraud cost him the 2020 election. Instead, he focused on the harms of censorship, entirely trying to curb the discussion away from the controversial topic which currently splits the Republican voting block. 

Overall, a shockingly boring debate that consisted of zero quips of immigrants eating beloved pets, race-switching, or marxist parental figures. Instead, this debate highlighted the less extreme aspects of the Republican party and more conservative approach from the Democratic party, leading to a simultaneously surprising and depressing amount of agreement. Though this agreement might appear like a positive aspect of the modern polarized political scope, when approached during an upcoming election in which both parties present themselves as the inverse of their opponent and their opponent as being a threat to democracy, similarities are not something to be celebrated.