WALZ UP? — The Weekly Opine

Neither one seems ready to assume the Oval Office. (Photo credit CBS News screenshot)

It’s expected from JD Vance, but Tim Walz?

We’ll get to the vice-presidential debate in a moment but first a few comments about Tim Walz.

If it was baseball, not politics, Tim Walz would be heading to the bench. He has now been caught in at least three fabrications that amount to swings and miss. And at Tuesday’s debate, Walz told a story that elicited a response from prolific liar JD Vance who said, “Tim, I didn’t know that.” Vance’s reaction sounded like a combo of innocent surprise and suspicious inquisitiveness that made me wonder if Vance thought (as I did) that maybe Walz was spinning another yarn.

Pants on fire

Let’s briefly revisit Walz’s avoidable, self-inflicted stumbles, referred to by the Harris campaign as instances where Walz “misspoke.” Walz, when trapped by stories not adding up, calls himself a “knucklehead.”

After receiving much deserved praise for his military service, we learned Walz did not fight in combat in Iraq, despite proclaiming he carried assault weapons of war into battle.
Walz told a heartstrings-pulling story on the campaign trail about he and his wife’s struggle to conceive utilizing in-vitro fertilization. When pressed, Walz and his wife, Gwen, fessed up saying they didn’t use IVF but employed a different fertility treatment.
This week we learned that, after years of Walz stating he was in Hong Kong when the deadly protests occurred at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989, the story isn’t true. Recently discovered reporting from that period proves Walz was not in China in June 1989. At the time, a media outlet in Nebraska wrote that Walz’s trip to China would happen in August 1989. (When questioned about this episode during the debate, Walz gave a rambling, incoherent answer worthy of the political debate Hall of Shame.)

Now, once again, Tim Walz walks back what can be described as empty boasting. (I’m coining a new phrase when someone distorts the truth and then walks it back; the perpetrator is “Walzing it back.”)

Hmmm…

Just this week, I mentioned to a politically astute friend that, although he seemed like the right choice at the time, the more I see of Walz the less he seems like presidential material. My friend agreed. That’s not intended as a slight per se, just a gut feeling. But insofar as the VP could end up as president, it is disconcerting that both parties are saddled with men who appear not ready to assume the Oval Office.

Walz’s folksiness and refreshing enthusiasm at times borders on goofiness. Walz has worn out the hand-over-heart and hands clasped as if praying gestures when he’s introduced at rallies. On the other side, JD Vance is beyond weird. Vance is sick-minded and every bit the staggering liar (but with more polish) than the mentally unstable felon Trump.

CBS debate moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan joined the list of 2024 moderators who fell short. (Photo credit CBS News screenshot)

Considering everyone with a speck of sense knows Trump is dangerously unfit, that leaves Kamala Harris as the only one of the four candidates who is presidential material. (In other words, the boys are 0 for 3.)

Speaking of boys, that’s the maturity level displayed by JD Vance. Don’t succumb to his smooth-talking, shifty delivery at the debate. The crazy, bizarre stuff that somehow finds its way from between Vance’s ears to his mouth sounds like the words of a 6th-grade boy, not a 40-year-old candidate for vice president. His dismissive, ignorant opinions about women are an outgrowth of the way an uneducated, hillbilly boy would talk about girls at the schoolyard.

OK, the debate

We knew three things going in. Walz, by his own admission to the Harris campaign during the vetting process, is not a good debater (true). On the other side, we knew Vance would tell straight-faced whoppers (he did). And we knew CBS moderators would not fact-check the candidates (they did not). This paved the way for Vance to tell bold-faced lies that might persuade less-engaged, casual voters who are unable to sort lies from the truth.

Moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan had the potential to be outstanding. They displayed a bit more “edge” than CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, and ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis. But O’Donnell and Brennan were hamstrung by CBS’s terrible decision not to fact-check, and by the moderator’s decision not to ask Vance tougher questions. For example, the moderators never asked Vance about being on a ticket with a 34x convicted felon. (Amazingly, Walz did not bring up Trump’s criminal indictments, either.)

By the end of the debate, O’Donnell and Brennan had fallen short of what was needed. While they pressed Walz about his Tiananmen Square false statement, they did not ask Vance about his gleefully admitted lies about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs. (Amazingly, Walz never called out Vance for his pet-eating Haitians lie.) And Vance’s ludicrous solution for school gun violence – to install stronger windows and better locks – was just begging for the moderators to follow-up with indignation. Walz was the voice of reason, pinpointing that the proliferation of guns and lax gun laws are the problem.

It’s a well-known fact Vance gets much of his information/ideas/opinions from sordid podcasts. For example, Vance is a fan of right-wing nut Curtis Yarvin who espouses dictatorship replacing democracy, through violent tactics if necessary. Vance talks of ending the republic by destroying our current form of government and eliminating other institutions, such as universities. Yet, O’Donnell and Brennan did not confront Vance about any of this.

Time is running out, with Election Day less than five weeks away. (Photo credit The Weekly Opine)

Considering the free pass moderators handed Vance regarding his most egregious lie (about Haitians), along with CBS’s decision not to fact-check (even though our democracy is in peril largely due to Trump’s lies), the best I can give the moderators is a grade of unsatisfactory. This moment in U.S. history is too crucial for experienced journalists to permit fascist wannabes to leverage primetime debate platforms, as a conduit for performing their act of dishonesty and deceit.

As stated earlier, some undecided, low-information voters will take Vance’s lies as gospel. And Walz’s efforts to set the record straight were too often tangled words, not forceful enough, and lacked precise clarity. Furthermore, Walz fell into Vance’s trap of cordiality that belies the vitriol practiced by the Trump campaign. If Walz had said one more time that he agrees with Vance, well, hell, why vote for Harris-Walz?

Fortunately, Walz closed with a zinger, asking Vance if he believed Joe Biden won in 2020 (no answer from Vance) and followed up asking Vance hypothetically if he would have certified 2020 election results (again no answer). Post-debate polling shows a slight edge for Vance regarding which candidate won the debate. I’d say it was more than a slight edge, in large part because no one fact-checked Vance’s sleight-of-hand fiction. (Trump saved Obamacare? Laughable!)

Knowing what’s at stake, shame on CBS, ABC and CNN moderators, all of whom underperformed during the most important American political campaign since 1860. The presidential and vice-presidential debates required journalistic excellence, but instead we witnessed unwarranted accommodation for the men who intend to destroy American democracy.

Tuesday night, the moderators normalized Vance by not fact-checking his smorgasbord of lies about the economy, climate change, U.S. energy production, healthcare and abortion. And Walz, a decent man, frequently slipped into nice guy Dem mode agreeing with Vance. Walz mostly took the high-road, even as the Trump-Vance ticket makes clear their intention is to reduce America into a dystopian hellscape, where our constitutionally protected rights are eliminated, replaced by Project 2025 (which the moderators and Walz barely mentioned).

When the house is on fire you do not grab a garden hose. You open the fire hydrant. Democracy is on the line, yet people who should aggressively fight to save democracy still operate with a surprising degree of ‘let’s get along’ accommodation for Trump and Co.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.