TJ Walker previews the 2016 vice presidential debate (hours away) and argues VP debates rarely change election outcomes, though notable exceptions exist. He predicts a tougher task for Republican Mike Pence—who may be repeatedly asked to defend Donald Trump’s controversial statements—while noting Tim Kaine’s ideological alignment with Hillary Clinton and broad public familiarity. Walker highlights both men’s communication experience (Pence as longtime talk-radio host; Kaine as mayor/governor/senator and party chair) and frames the debate as a high-audience opportunity to observe their performance without expecting major election shifts absent a meltdown.
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Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.
We are only a couple of hours from the first and only vice presidential debate of the 2016 election. What are we to make of this? What can we expect? Well, typically, spoiler alert. Vice presidential debates don't typically change general election outcomes. You could make the case that Sarah Palin was so bad, not just in the debates, but in her overall media appearances, that McCain might have been penalized by voters who feared Sarah Palin occupying the Wall House. But there's no polling data to really prove that. And most polling data would suggest that there has been little if no impact of vice presidential selections in general on election outcomes, much less debate performances. The first televised vice presidential debate happened back in 1976. Bob Dole was the running mate for Gerald Ford and Walter Mondale was Jimmy Carter's running mate. Not a lot is typically remembered from vice presidential debates other than the most memorable moment in 1988 when Lloyd Benson gave his famous put down of Dan Quayle saying, you're no John F. Kennedy. A memorable, memorable put down moment. It seems so subtle and elevated compared to some of the put downs we've seen and heard in presidential debates in the last year. What's going to happen tonight? If I had to handicap this, I would say it's a much greater challenge for Mike Pence because the moderator and Tim Kaine, the Democratic nominee, will constantly be asking Mike Pence to defend some of the more egregious, outrageous comments of Donald Trump. Now here's the challenging part. So many of the positions Donald Trump has taken are anathema to positions Mike Pence has taken his whole life. Say what you will about Tim Kaine and Hillary Clinton, it's not that Hillary Clinton has never said anything ridiculous, but there's really very little ideological difference between a Tim Kaine and and a Hillary Clinton. It's going to be awfully hard for me to imagine the moderator of tonight's debate constantly trying to pin down Tim Kaine with things like your nominee said X. Most people consider that extreme. How can you defend that? Whereas it's extraordinarily easy to imagine Mike Pence doing that. So why are we paying attention? Well, for starters, even if the audience for this debate is 50, 60, 70% lower than the first presidential debate, that's still a huge audience. That's still going to be three, four, five times as many people as watch a typical Bill O'Reilly show. And that's the number one rated show on all of cable news. So it's still going to be a huge audience. It's still a chance to really see how a couple of top level political pros perform under pressure in the spotlight. It's also interesting because typically, certainly in the last 50, 60 years, vice presidents have had an amazingly high percentage shot at getting the presidential nomination. Richard Nixon, of course, being the vice presidential, he served as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, did get the nomination. In 68, we've seen George H.W. bush serve as vice president, get the nomination. Walter Mondale was vice president, got the nomination. And most vice presidents end up running. Dan Quayle, for example, didn't do very well. Sarah Palin had certainly flirted with running for president many times, didn't quite pull the trigger there. But anybody who gets nominated as a major party vice presidential nominee is instantly on the short list as someone who could run a serious campaign for president. Certainly Tim Kaine's supporters view him as presidential timber. And a lot of people in the Republican Party have thought for the last four, eight years that Mike Pence is someone who could run a credible campaign for president. Obviously, if Donald Trump wins the presidency and isn't impeached or quickly disgracing himself, then Mike Pence would be in all likelihood the default frontrunner for the Republican nomination. If Tim Kaine becomes the next vice president, he will be the likely frontrunner in four or eight years if things turn out and Hillary isn't thrown out of office or disgraced. So that's why it's so important. Both of these men, in my view, are pretty strong communicators. Mike Pence has a different background from so many politicians. He wasn't just a lawyer who worked in a state law office for many years. He was a talk radio host for many years. So he is comfortable communicating and speaking in front of a microphone. Tim Kaine is someone who has been not only on a city council, but a mayor, a governor, a senator and a national party chairman. So he's done count thousands and thousands of interviews, speeches, and is seen as a pretty good speaker. I gave both men relatively high marks for their speeches at their respective political conventions. The one axiom most vice presidents try to follow when they're running for office is don't mess up, don't screw up, don't become the focus of the campaign. You don't want to be the next Sarah Palin, where people are constantly saying, oh my gosh, this person would be the worst president ever. We can't vote, vote for the top of the ticket for fear this person would become president. Well, I think I can say quite confidently nobody is saying that about either one of these two men. Even though they each have their detractors, nobody really thinks that they could be worse than the person ahead of them. I think I'm on pretty strong solid ground across the ideological spectrum by saying that. So it's really more an issue of one storyline would be, for example, if the governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, is put in a position where he can't defend Trump and somehow seems as though he's repudiating Trump. That certainly would be a storyline that would follow out of this debate. Would it really sway many voters? I doubt it. There's so many controversies swirling around Trump at any given forget day, any given hour, whether it's his finances offenses, offensive comments about in this universe, you name it. It's hard for me to see, absent a complete meltdown by one of these vice presidential candidates, that it carrying into future news cycles. But that's the one exciting thing about debates, is you never really know. You have to go into every single debate with an open set of eyes to see what happens, because sometimes you get surprised. I still remember 1992 vice presidential debate. You had Admiral Stockdale, who was Ross Perot's running mate, starting off by saying, who am I? Why am I here? And if you knew anything about his background, he had an extraordinarily impressive background in the military, in academia, in business. But as a first introduction it fell flat and he was a subject to mockery. So you never really know. Tune back in here after the debate. I'll be giving full analysis and commentary. Would love to hear your opinions primarily on the basis of communication skills, not just you think somebody's an idiot or fool because you don't like their party or their politics. That's the purpose of our CH channel right here. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. Please come back after the debate.
