Pence-Harris debate: job done for Democrat challenger aiming to avoid spooking voters

It was always going to be be difficult for vice-President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris to make an impression when they debated, especially after the whirling chaos that was the first presidential debate, but nonetheless the tone last night when the pair met was solemn verging on somnolent. 

What we saw was two well drilled candidates determined to stick to their lines and hammer home their messages, only occasionally going off script or exchanging blows. The main point of excitement was when a fly that landed on Pence’s head stood there immobile for two minutes, a tiny black dot amid a sea of bright white hair gelled into a plastic helmet. 

So what were their lines? Exactly the same as those of the men whose campaigns they are hitched to – though in Pence’s case packaged in a more coherent form. 

For Harris this meant three priorities healthcare, jobs, and Trump’s unfitness for office – three themes that poll well with voters. The first topic of the debate – the coronavirus pandemic – proved fertile ground with her hitting all three themes. She said: “The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.” 

Pence, meanwhile, had less of a positive case to put forward. Part of his problem was the innate difficulty of claiming the Trump administration was successful as the pandemic ravages America, and pummels Trump’s previous signature boast of a strong economy. The result was a great deal of slippery footwork where Pence dodged questions he disliked and focused on attacking Harris and Biden accusing them of wanting to “abolish fossil fuels”, being weak in the face of US enemies, and planning to pack the US Supreme Court. 

True, some slipperiness is to be expected in these debates – indeed an inability to deploy it  would perhaps be a disqualifying lack of political deftness. Harris showed it as well at times avoiding discussing court packing, what might happen should she be forced to take over from Biden, as Pence had dodged the issue vis a vis Trump, and leaving her view on the Green New Deal nebulous despite once having sponsored it.  

Nevertheless, Pence avoiding the question as to whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power – echoing Trump’s refusal to do so – was depressing. In a debate where both participants were determined to let little daylight show between their views and those of the candidates they are backing, Pence perhaps gets props for his willingness to stoically march behind every Trumpian excess. 

Indeed, on the few the occasions where independent personality, or thought, did shine through it tended to be from Harris. Throughout the debate, scorn, disbelief, or amusement were wordlessly communicated by her facial expressions when Pence spoke. At other times, Pence’s tendency to interrupt or  – though nothing compared to Trump – was met with a steely “Mr vice-President I am speaking”. Hardly Reagan’s “I’m paying for this microphone” but it got the job done.  

She was also notably irked when attacked on her record as a public prosecutor. Faced with Pence mounting an oddly left-wing critique of some of her more tough on crime positions she demanded time to respond, and did so vigorously.

So what did this all add up to? 

Vice-presidential debates mean very little in and of themselves. If presidential debates rarely move the needle – though Donald Trump’s manic performance in the last one may have made it an exception – vice-presidential ones don’t even seem to register.  

Nor can it be said that showcasing the candidates priorities and personalities matters much as the vice-presidency itself is often a “nothingburger” of a public role. Mike Pence’s  anonymity, despite theoretically running Trump’s coronavirus response, is emblematic of this. 

This time around is something of an exception. Both presidential candidates stand to become America’s oldest ever president and concerns about their health, especially Trump who is currently ill with coronavirus, are unavoidable.  

In the past, presidential deaths have had seismic effects catapulting to power vice-Presidents who took paths radically different to those their predecessors would have taken. Andrew Johnson failed to follow through on the Reconstruction of the South Abraham Lincoln likely would have lead and Theodore Roosevelt proved far more radical than the assassinated William McKinley would have ever been. 

As such, any sign – a glimpse – of how these candidates differed from the men whose campaigns they are now hitched to would have been interesting. Sadly, there was too little of that.

But for Harris this will be regarded as job done. Her role on a campaign with an increasingly commanding lead was to avoid controversy or setting off fireworks that might spook swing voters. She succeeded in that.