By Bob Maistros via Issues & Insights | October 02, 2024
Every candidate drools for the proverbial “defining moment” that leaves such an indelible impression that the rest of a debate or oration is rendered an afterthought.
Sometimes, however, a line, a quip, or even an aura goes beyond simply defining to truly shining – rising to the level of political lore and perhaps turning an entire campaign.
Ronald Reagan, of course, was the world champion in the category:
“I paid for this microphone, Mr. Breen!”
“There you go again.”
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
“I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
But also: JFK’s youth and vigor. George H.W. Bush’s “kinder, gentler America.” Lloyd Bentsen: “You’re no Jack Kennedy.” Bill Clinton and the “Man from Hope.”
If one James David Vance was not elevated to that dimension in Tuesday night’s debate against Democratic VP hopeful Tim Walz, he came darn close – by flipping the script in five respects:
Vance flipped the script on his own narrative. Weird? Aloof? Controversial? Extremist? A Yale-educated elitist who lost touch with his hardscrabble roots? Hardly. The GOP wannaveep came across as calm, cordial, respectful, reasonable, thoughtful and most of all, compassionate.
The Ohioan humanized himself with references to his impoverished family’s challenges, searches for common ground with his opponent, and humble acknowledgments that his party had work to do in earning Americans’ trust.
Vance flipped the script on the moderators. CBS moderator Margaret Brennan pulled a Candy Crowley-David Muir by breaking the agreed-upon rule about not fact-checking – asserting that immigrant-besieged Springfield, Ohio, “does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status.”
The Buckeye State’s junior senator stopped her in her tracks, pointing out the violation and insisting on laying out the facts about the Biden-Harris administration’s phone app loophole – one big enough to fly a 737 through – that allows thousands of migrants to “apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open-border wand.”
That is, until CBS cut off his mic mid-sentence to cover up for the network’s impropriety – a faux pas that will surely redound to his benefit across social media.
Vance flipped the script on debate convention: The trick of today’s debate trade is to ignore queries and launch into rehearsed talking points. The young solon’s refreshing tack: repeatedly underscore his eagerness to actually answer questions. With an equally refreshing willingness to explore the complexities around – and express his opponent’s (alleged) good-faith interest in resolving – issues involving gun violence, health care, and abortion.
Along with an in-your-face double-handed slam dunk to a challenge of his linkage of higher housing prices to uncontrolled immigration: his promise to circulate a Federal Reserve study making exactly that connection.
In a word: BAM!
Vance flipped the script on the so-called “experts”: The chronicler-politician was equally locked-and-loaded when confronted with “expert” Wharton School opinion on his ticket’s economic program – with his opposite number smugly seconding the notion, blissfully unaware he was “walz-ing” into a trap.
In the debate’s high point – and turning point – Vance lowered the hammer. Maintaining that economists with PhDs but no common sense had weakened America’s industrial base and shipped jobs overseas, he declared:
“Donald Trump had the wisdom and the courage to say to the bipartisan consensus, ‘we’re not doing it anymore.’ We’re bringing American manufacturing back. We’re unleashing American energy. We’re going to make more of our own stuff.”
Closing the riff with another appeal to “common-sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.”
Ladies and gentlemen, trust this four-decade veteran of high-level political and corporate messaging when he informs you: this is next-level material.
Vance flipped the script on his opponent: Poor Tim Walz, who lamely and disjointedly responded to this dynamic disquisition by strangely defending fair trade for farmers, ridiculously attempting to blame Trump for trade deficits with China, taking a puzzling side trip into collective bargaining, and falsely crediting Harris with an increase in manufacturing jobs.
At which point Vance laid bare the former social studies teacher’s hapless expostulation and hopeless position: having to “play whack-a-mole” in ignoring Donald Trump’s accomplishments while “defend(ing) Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries and housing unaffordable for American citizens.”
The self-described “hillbilly” identified with families’ struggles by describing how his grandmother went into medical debt to put food on the table. The thoroughly whupped Walz’s resigned response: “I hope we have a conversation on health care then.”
Vance thrust the blade in further by appropriating the Minnesotan’s famed “Midwestern nice” approach: inviting Walz to “explain … to me” how a state statute creates no obligation to care for a baby who survives a late-term abortion, and later politely querying, “What was I wrong about, governor?”
When the Democrat pitifully countered that the assertion was fact-checked at a previous debate (incorrectly) and attempted to lean on his crowd-pleasing “mind your own business” line, Vance again slammed the trap shut: “I asked a specific question, governor. You gave me a slogan as a response.”
One could quibble that Vance missed an enormous opportunity – and allowed Walz to regain his footing with a demagogic rant on Jan. 6 – by failing to seize on the latter’s inane assertion that Trump was “laying the groundwork” for “imprisoning his opponents” as a stupendous example of Democratic projection in the face of their own unprecedented lawfare.
That is, until his virtuoso close summarizing the entire campaign’s core issues in a nutshell: how it’s more difficult for Americans to “turn on their heat,” “afford a nice meal,” “buy a house,” “live in safe neighborhoods” and “not have your communities flooded with fentanyl.”
How despite 1,400 days in office to fix things, Kamala Harris’ policies “have made these problems worse.” In contrast to “a president who has already done this once before – and did it well.”
On Tuesday night, to channel Lena Lamont in the classic “Singing in the Rain,” JD Vance soared beyond mere “defining” to emerge as a shimmering, glowing star in the political firmament.
It says so. Right here.
Bob Maistros, a regular contributor to Issues & Insights, is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com
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