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Like so much else about American politics in the Trump era, the role of the vice president on the campaign trail has changed, and Tim Walz and J. D. Vance are adapting in very different ways.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Two Models of Attack
Tim Walz introduced himself to the American public with a wide grin this week. On a rally stage in Philadelphia, he complimented Vice President Kamala Harris and the “joy” she brings to her work; praised his wife, Gwen, a longtime teacher; and talked lovingly about his kids. Then he went on the attack. “Violent crime was up under Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the crimes he committed,” Walz quipped. He accused J. D. Vance of trashing his own community in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, before throwing in a crude joke about the senator not wanting to get “off the couch” to debate him (a reference to a false claim that circulated on social media recently).
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has long projected the energy of a friendly Middle American dad. He was a high-school football coach; he wears a camo hat; he riffed with his teenage daughter at a state fair about whether turkey is vegetarian and posed with piglets. When Walz insulted Trump and Vance on Tuesday, that “midwestern nice” persona served him: Sandwiched between moments of good cheer, his blows sounded snappy but not cruel—like a normal guy telling you plainly what he thinks.
Walz is just getting started on the campaign trail, but his approach so far is in sharp contrast to that of his opponent. In his public appearances, J. D. Vance has appeared almost solely in “battle mode,” so much so that he seems at times incapable of basic campaigning. Take his response yesterday to a softball question from a reporter (who prefaced the question noting that Vance is often criticized for being too serious and angry): “What makes you happy?” Instead of delivering one of many plausible responses—“my family,” “sports,” “movies,” even “Donald Trump’s vision for America” if he wanted to keep things campaign-focused—Vance snapped at the reporter, called the question bogus, and ranted about Harris. His attempts at appearing relatable have landed awkwardly: Answering another reporter’s question about why someone in Wisconsin should want to have a beer with him, his response quickly devolved into a critique of how the media “slanders” Trump, a guy who he says “likes normal people.” The whole thing came off as unnatural and, again, somewhat hostile to the questioner.
Vance may appear so embattled because he is; he was met with a deluge of bad press after Trump announced him as the Republican VP pick, and he’s not seeing strong support from Trump’s allies or from Trump himself. A running mate who fights too hard can risk seeming unbefitting of the office—recall Sarah Palin’s over-the-top quips that drew attention away from John McCain’s campaign—and Vance may appear unserious to some voters if he keeps this up, Charles Holden, a historian at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland, told me. It doesn’t help that he’s now facing off against what Holden called Walz’s “happy warrior” strategy.
Since at least the 1970s, the American vice-presidential candidate has been expected by strategists and party leaders to serve as an “attack dog” on the trail. The term was initially used critically, to describe an overly aggressive candidate, Holden explained. But by the ’80s, parties began to feel that having an attack dog on retainer was an asset—the running mate could go out and scrap with opponents, while the presidential candidate stayed above the fray. This dynamic was not brand-new: The historians I spoke with pointed to Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate, Richard Nixon, as an early case—he was known as the “hatchet man”—as well as Nixon’s own 1968 running mate, Spiro Agnew. By the ’90s, the “attack dog” label was so entrenched that some vice-presidential candidates, including Jack Kemp and Joe Lieberman, explicitly pushed against it. (Their tickets both lost; by 2008, both VP picks, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, were seen as ready to fight, Holden noted.)
In the Trump era, this concept, like so much other conventional political wisdom, seems dated. Trump himself, of course, has shown no desire to stay above the fray; getting down in the mud with opponents is no longer the specific purview of the vice president. During the 2016 and 2020 elections, Mike Pence served as the “respectable” foil to Trump’s own attack-dog approach. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, went head-to-head with Trump at certain points during that race, her “basket of deplorables” comment being the most notable example.
The political universe that Trump helped create presents both an opportunity and a risk for the Democratic ticket: Harris and Walz likely “have a certain amount of leeway” to “engage in discourse that maybe in the pre-Trump world” they would not have, Joel Goldstein, a historian of the vice presidency and professor emeritus at Saint Louis University School of Law, told me. Some level of disagreement and self-defense is fair game in an election, he argued (for that reason, he’s skeptical of overusing the “attack dog” trope). Still, going too far carries its own dangers—particularly for Harris, who may face more scrutiny for throwing harsh jabs as a Black woman than Walz would as a 60-year-old white man.
In the first few weeks of this campaign, Harris has focused on policy attacks more than ad hominem insults. When Walz made his couch joke, she looked on with what seemed like a mixture of a wince and a laugh. But as Aaron Blake noted in The Washington Post today, her campaign’s social-media accounts amplified the couch line, so Harris is not distancing herself all that much. And her campaign sent out a press release today, responding to the claims Trump made in his press conference, that began: “Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host a p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ public meltdown.”
Vance’s and Walz’s approaches may morph depending on the extent to which Trump and Harris do their own dueling. But so far, they’re presenting two diverging models of the modern vice-presidential candidate. For now, the VP campaign looks like a contest between the happy warrior and the resentful fighter. Voters will decide which line of attack they prefer.
Related:
Today’s News
- Trump agreed to debate Vice President Harris on September 10 on ABC News.
- New body-cam footage from the assassination attempt on Trump reveals that a police officer climbed onto the roof and saw the gunman moments before the shooting happened, according to CNN.
- Two young suspects arrested for allegedly planning an attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria, had prepared bombs and obtained machetes, according to police.
Dispatches
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Evening Read
Boeing Has Created the Flight Delay to End All Flight Delays
By Marina Koren
Imagine that you’re traveling for work this summer, somewhere far from home. The flight over is a little turbulent, but you’re excited to be away for a week or so. Then your return journey gets delayed. The airline puts you up in a nice hotel but can’t decide on a new departure date. Your employer booked the tickets, so you can’t do much about the situation. You start running out of clean clothes, and everyone back home starts wondering when you’re coming back.
After two months, your bosses share new travel information. They think they can send you home soon, and on the same airline. Or they might have to book another carrier, and if that’s the case, then hang in there: That flight is scheduled for next year. You’ll land eight months—months!—after you left.
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Check out. This image of the British sport climber Molly Thompson-Smith, who is hanging from one hand while competing in the women’s sport-climbing lead semifinal in the Olympics.
Read. “Making a Monument Valley,” a poem by Kinsale Drake:
“You rock with the rose grass, the sweetgrass, the cedar. In the summer, our city smells almost like / dusk on the rez …”
P.S.
Speaking of being on the attack, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi gave a revealing interview to the New Yorker editor David Remnick, published this morning. Remnick writes: “After an hour of conversation, Pelosi seemed to come up with a credo that was in line with [Lyndon] Johnson. ‘You take a punch, but you have to be willing to throw a punch. For the children.’” Remnick’s next line: “Throw a punch—for the children?”
— Lora
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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