By Kenneth Tiven in Washington DC
The vice presidential debate was 90 minutes of watching Republican Mike Pence imitate and support US President Donald Trump, using their largely fact-free version of reality concerning the last four years against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Harris held her own, spoke directly to American families, sharply criticised Trump’s pandemic response as catastrophic. She often had to smile the way female politicians must when they are being patronised and interrupted by middle-aged white men in power.
When Pence pushed Harris on the issue of changing the number of justices on the Supreme Court, she replied that Republicans had packed the federal Appeals Courts with more than 50 new judges, most of whom were ideological lawyers rated unfit for the bench by the bar associations. Those are also lifetime appointments.
If Donald Trump often behaves like a bull in a china shop, Pence is like a pickpocket with the unctuous demeanour of a small town American funeral director.
Both candidates were aiming to move undecided voters, if any actually exist. Despite a president with Covid-19 and 24 White House staff testing positive for the virus, Pence kept reassuring Trump loyalists that all was OK. Current election polling suggests Trump is double digits behind Biden.
He bullied Harris and Susan Page, the moderator, almost always going 30 seconds past his allotted time to speak. At one point, an exasperated Harris said, “I will not be lectured by the vice president.” The debate is likely to be remembered less for political content than as a skirmish in the gender wars.
It was ironic to hear Pence tell Harris that you are entitled to your opinions but not to your own facts. It is a phrase more appropriately applied to the administration’s belief that if you misstate something enough times it stops being a lie for most people.
Pence said the Obama Administration left the strategic national stockpile empty to explain the lack of masks at the start of the pandemic. It was full of most of what was needed and in the first three years of their term, the Trump team never refilled what was in short supply.
Again, we had a political debate with fact checkers working overtime.
When the issue of President Trump’s nominal $750 payment of federal income taxes came up, Pence got to reprise his answer from 2016 that Trump’s company paid “millions in payroll and property taxes.” Not a word on his personal income taxes.
Harris told the audience watching that Trump measures the strength of the economy on how rich people are doing. Trump admits he loves stock market growth, although with Covid and the economic uncertainty, it has bounced around as if on a trampoline. She said the Biden administration would reverse the Trump tax cuts that largely benefited rich people, insuring that no one making less than $400,000 annually would see an increase.
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If Biden wins big, which the polling suggests he might, to gain control of both the House and Senate sides of Congress, then better support for healthcare, education and social programs are a likely reality.
Pence promised again, as Trump has since taking office, that they would have a better health care plan than Obamacare with protection for preexisting conditions. It is in court now trying to kill Obamacare again. It has never revealed a plan. Meanwhile, Obamacare with 20,000,000 people enrolled is more popular than ever according to surveys. “There’s a weird obsession Trump has with getting rid of whatever Obama and Biden achieved,” Harris says, which on a psycho-political level seems accurate.
Pence took credit for what he called an “outstanding” stewardship of America’s environment, which drew a brief puzzled look from Harris. “The climate is changing. We’ll follow the science,” he added, which is simply not the case as industry lobbyists have had free rein over several federal agencies charged with these issues. The misinformation continued when he said, “The United States has reduced CO2 more than the countries that are still in the Paris Climate Accord. But we’ve done it through innovation, and we’ve done it through natural gas and fracking.” In reality, many countries party to the Paris agreement have reduced carbon emissions far more than the United States. Biden says if he is elected the US will rejoin the Accord.
It went back and forth like this for 90 minutes with Pence doing his best to claw 30 seconds beyond his limit each time he got to speak, leaving the moderator to keep saying, Mr Pence, Mr Pence. Mr Pence. Your time is UP!
Pence’s answer to the question of will you leave office in accord with the rules if you lose, was short: we will win.
The minimal crowd allowed into the auditorium in Salt Lake City, Utah stayed silent throughout. The most unexpected moment came when a fly landed on Pence’s snow-white hair and sat there for a solid two minutes. In keeping with his reputation for being a bit wooden in demeanour, he made no effort to swat it away.