The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog.

Most Vice-Presidential debates are a two-day story, quickly forgotten. I hope that this one follows suit. Viewers who appreciated the largely civil tone of the debaters appear to rate it  largely a draw, with a slight edge to  J.D. Vance.

The Vance who showed up to the debate, burdened by  dramatically underwater favorability ratings, sought  to reintroduce himself  as a kinder, gentler human being, wrapping himself in an aura of empathy and caring.  His goal was to lessen public fears about another Donald Trump presidency, perhaps assuring some voters that, unlike the adults  from the first Trump cabinet who have now  deserted him, Vance could be a moderating reassuring presence in a second Trump administration.

Locked in Vance’s closet was the cunning mini-Trump, the crude, misogynistic, loathsome, divisive MAGA-darling Vance in view at least since running for the Senate. The lies were still there, too often not effectively challenged by everybody’s Minnesota mild cousin, plain speaking, and favorite, albeit occasionally halting, teacher and coach.  He was too quick to agree with Vance, too slow to object boldly to Vance’s lies, misstatements and hypocrisy.

With the moderators having promised not to fact-check, and chastened by Vance for making even a modest correction, it was left to Walz, who had chosen the wrong time and place to live out the aphorism that there is more that unites us than divides us.  Far from attacking each other personally, they both played nice, frequently agreeing with each other and separating their praiseworthy opponents from those atop their tickets. In contrast  to Kamala Harris’s carefully studied on-camera responses while Trump was speaking, Waltz sometimes looked like a befuddled Mr. Bobblehead.

Thankfully, viewers were given opportunities to see real policy differences on issues like climate change (Walz contrasting its real impact on extreme weather events with Vance’s skepticism  about  the “weird science” blaming carbon emissions). Walz had his best moments discussing abortion rights (a woman’s”right to control your body should not be determined by geography versus Vance’s stout defense of this as a states’ rights issue) and the stellar moment when Walz highlighted Vance’s continued unwillingness to acknowledge that Trump had lawfully lost the 2020 election.

Walz also made strong arguments for the basics of Harris’s economic plan, housing, health care, gun safety, though I wish he’d done more to defend crisply the Biden-Harris record.

The list of lost opportunities is long. Walz failed to call out Vance’s lies and highlight a series of outrageous votes and stated positions dramatically different from the kindler, gentler (synthetic) Vance 2.0 debating last night.

Walz never pointed out that Vance wrote the laudatory introduction to the forthcoming Heritage Foundation book touting Project 2025. Despite Vance’s distancing himself from that right-wing manifesto on reproductive choice, Walz should have noted that Vance had supported both a national ban and Ohio’s six -week abortion ban without exception.

Walz also let skirt JD’s lies on Trump’s economic performance and the outrageous assertion that Trump saved the affordable care act. He didn’t flag  global leaders’ contempt for Trump (except for authoritarian dictators who played him). Though the moderators failed to mention Ukraine, Walz should have raised the issue, reinforcing Trump’s history of craven responses to Putin.

Walz confessed to Harris when she picked him that he was not a good debater, and he ably demonstrated that last night. Although he got better as the debate unfolded, he was nervous at the start and  garbled some answers (“I’ve become friends with school shooters” when he meant victims’ families, and he transposed the names of Israel and Iran.) He failed to mention fentanyl interdiction as a part of the omnibus Immigration bill that Trump killed and Vance opposed, and he mishandled Vance’s fabrication of the  Springfield, Ohio Haitian immigrants story. Walz did nothing to try to get under Vance’s skin and expose his real colors.

Walz still hasn’t figured out how to reshape forthrightly his own misstatements about Tiananmen Square, the way Harris is awkward about explaining her shifts in positions. Admitting to being an imperfect human being who sometimes misspeaks is honorable, but I wonder whether his claiming to be  “ a knucklehead at times”  is endearingly relatable or too self-deprecatory. Perhaps his performance is the price to be paid for avoiding the practice sessions of press interviews. Doing many network interviews clearly helped Vance prepare.

My  takeaways are  that J.D. somewhat effectively sane-washed himself and presented a better version of Trump, at odds with the harsh reality. Walz, committed to his nice-guy  image, passed up too many opportunities to defend  Harris and the Biden record, call out Vance’s revisionist history of the Trump presidency and confront the warm-fuzzy version of JD’s chameleon character with the truth about Vance that has long been on ugly display elsewhere.

He should have done more to remind viewers what they didn’t like and still don’t like about Trump. There’s a small group of traditionalIy uninformed, unengaged people  whom Trump is hoping to persuade.  They usually don’t vote, but they could play a decisive role in next month’s razor-close election. I hope they didn’t watch last night.