NEWS
ANALYSIS
Pence, Peerless Trump Defender, Confronts His
Limits
During an orderly debate, the vice president deflected
criticism of the Trump administration’s pandemic response, something Kamala
Harris said “clearly” hasn’t worked.
Matt
FlegenheimerAnnie Karni
By Matt
Flegenheimer and Annie Karni
Oct. 8,
2020
Updated
1:19 a.m. ET
Vice
President Mike Pence approached his task on Wednesday as he has approached his
four years as the executive straight man to an unruly leader: not merely
defending President Trump but effectively insisting, with poker-faced
conviction, that those who doubt his boss should not believe their eyes and
ears.
The trouble
this time was not Mr. Pence’s skill set on this front, which remains peerless.
It was the fact set underpinning this debate, which remains inconvenient to an
administration so overwhelmed by the virus that its own West Wing has become a
hot spot.
And so Mr.
Pence — stripped of most politically palatable explanations for the White House
pandemic response — set off on a curious charge when Senator Kamala Harris said
that the Trump team’s leadership “clearly” has not worked: He chose to hear it
as a direct affront to the American people.
“When you
say what the American people have done over these last eight months hasn’t worked,”
Mr. Pence said gravely, as controlled as his president is rambunctious onstage,
“that’s a great disservice to the sacrifices the American people have made.”
At last,
the strain seemed to be showing, at least a little. Perhaps that is what a full
term of wear-and-tear can do to even the most accomplished rhetorical gymnast.
Or perhaps
the reality is simply too bleak for any administration to explain away
entirely: The president has contracted the virus that has killed more than
210,000 Americans on his watch. His behavior, since leaving the hospital on
Monday, appears to be a continuation of the kind of scientifically dubious
happy talk that has left the Trump-Pence ticket at a significant polling
disadvantage four weeks before Election Day.
Even the
stagecraft on Wednesday included a conspicuous reminder of the administration’s
failings: Plexiglass barriers separated the candidates, owing to the virus’s
march through the ranks of the capital.
But Mr.
Pence also knows his template by now: a neighborly gaze, a shake of the head, a
rose-colored rebuttal delivered with the generic tranquillity of a greeting
card.
“There’s
not a day gone by that I haven’t thought of every American family that’s lost a
loved one,” he said, flashing the kind of empathy rarely associated with Mr.
Trump. “And I want all of you to know that you’ll always be in our hearts and
in our prayers.”
It felt at
times like the ultimate test of Mr. Pence’s longstanding exercise in Trump
translation for those who might find the president objectionable.
Where
others see chaos, the vice president unfurled paeans to Mr. Trump’s purported
steadiness. Where experts have faulted the administration for a reckless
indifference to medical guidance, Mr. Pence said they had saved many lives.
Where skeptics identify Mr. Trump as he appears to them — rash, myopic,
consumed with appearances, according to even his own advisers — Mr. Pence
dwelled on the president he chooses to see.
“From the
very first day,” he maintained, “President Donald Trump has put the health of
America first.”
For Ms.
Harris, the mandate was in some ways less complicated. While she had the semi-awkward
task of boosting a nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom she famously hammered at
a debate during the Democratic primary last year, Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden have
not overseen the present national crises. They do not have to answer for
shortcomings in the federal coronavirus response.
Facing Mr.
Pence, Ms. Harris was very much the candidate Democrats might remember from her
own presidential run: undeniable talent — and more than a few ably deployed
preplanned attacks — mixed with sporadic shakiness when there was no obvious
script to follow, including an evasive exchange about whether she supports
adding seats to the Supreme Court.
She did on
several occasions remind Mr. Pence that she was the one speaking, negotiating
his interruptions by noting that the rules were clear and she had the floor.
But by and
large, her argument — like the Democrats’ generally — was quite
straightforward: Look around. Have things gone well?
“The
American people have had to sacrifice far too much,” Ms. Harris said, “because
of the incompetence of this administration.”
Ceding
virtually no ground to criticisms of the administration’s pandemic performance,
Mr. Pence made an adamant case that the country was humming, especially
economically, before the virus felled Mr. Trump’s momentum — and would be again,
if only Americans allow them to stay at the controls.
Through it
all, Mr. Pence demonstrated that he was a master of running out the clock
without answering the question. When asked whether voters deserved to know the
truth about the president’s health, Mr. Pence bought time by thanking the
moderator (it was not clear for what) and thanking his opponent.
He lauded
the “exceptional” doctors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
and said he was grateful for bipartisan well-wishes that the president would
recover from the virus.
“The
American people have a right to know about the health and well being of their
president,” he said, claiming inaccurately that there had been “transparency”
since Mr. Trump’s diagnosis, and moving on.
When asked
directly about what states would do if the court overturned Roe v. Wade — an
issue that could alienate the suburban women voters Mr. Trump needs — Mr. Pence
talked about the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. He then attacked
Democrats for raising questions about Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Christian
faith, which prominent Democrats have studiously avoided doing since her
selection. The debate moved on. He later restated his bona fides as a
“pro-life” politician without explaining how he would want the state he once
governed to change its laws.
He also
politely plowed through his time limits, and in his measured voice made
meritless claims about what the administration has done. “The climate is
changing, we’ll follow the science,” he said. (When Mr. Trump visited
California last month, for a briefing on the wildfires ravaging the West, he
said the opposite. “I don’t think science knows, actually,” he said, when
challenged that there was more behind the fires than forest management.)
The
electoral value of Mr. Pence’s careful rebranding of the Trump years is far
from certain. Polls show most voters quite firm in their views of the race, and
vice-presidential debates are rarely decisive events, at least in less
disorienting times.
Karen Pence flouted the debate rules by not wearing a
mask.
Kamala Harris faced a double standard on the debate
stage.
Mike Pence changed the subject nearly every time he
was asked a tough question.
If nothing
else, Republicans hope, Mr. Pence highlighted the potential benefits of a more
disciplined approach to re-election, one that Mr. Trump has never pursued.
Campaign
aides had been hoping the debate would be an opportunity for a reset after one
of its most damaging weeks, a moment when the spotlight could shift away from a
sick president and allow his lieutenant’s smooth baritone to reassure anxious
seniors about the administration’s stewardship during the virus outbreak.
But those
who know Mr. Trump suspected that no matter how well Mr. Pence acquitted
himself on Wednesday, the president would invariably return the subject to
himself before long, whether or not this was politically wise.
Maybe this
is why Mr. Pence has mostly carried himself with a narrow set of goals in mind:
project loyalty, yes, but also stay functionally uninteresting — partly because
of his temperament and partly by design, lest the president ever feel
threatened.
The result,
particularly relative to the presidential debate last week, was a gathering
marked by far less disorder or manifest hostility. So unsurprising were the
proceedings that the most unpredictable turn may have been a black bug settling
into Mr. Pence’s sweep of white hair for an extended stay.
All night,
he took care to be unfailingly polite, thanking Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden for
expressing “genuine concern” for Mr. Trump’s health and congratulating her on
“the historic nature of your nomination.”
As in his
television interviews and stump speeches as vice president, Mr. Pence — widely
thought to have an eye on a presidential run himself — allowed almost no
daylight between himself and Mr. Trump.
Despite the
fact that the defining characteristic of his tenure has been loyalty, the
noises about Mr. Pence’s would-be replacements as running mate were not even
quieted by his acceptance of the nomination at the convention in August.
Still, it
is weeks like this that show why those casual conversations never blossomed
into serious considerations. Mr. Pence is the unswerving associate, what his
advisers describe as a “game day player.”
Ms.
Harris’s debate record has been less consistent, with former aides describing a
hyper-preparedness that has served her well in major Senate committee hearings
but a penchant for political stumbles at times when she is required to think on
her feet.
At one
point on Wednesday, pressed on her position about expanding the size of the
Supreme Court, Ms. Harris tried to steer the discussion to Lincoln-era fare.
“I just want
the record to reflect she never answered the question,” Mr. Pence said.
Like Mr.
Pence, Ms. Harris is also a figure with presumed presidential aspirations after
2020, elevated to this stage on Wednesday by a man who has called himself a
“bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders.
And for all
her prominence as an anti-Trump Democrat since joining the Senate in 2017, her
appearance on Wednesday registered as a new data point in her history-making
arc: She is the first Black woman to represent a major-party ticket in a
general election debate. That she chose not to linger too long on this fact is
at once a signal of the minefields that women of color encounter in national
politics — and of how much more there was to talk about, for better or worse.
Ms. Harris
did repeatedly pause to note Mr. Pence’s interjections, saying that as a former
prosecutor she would not “sit here and be lectured by the vice president on
what it means to enforce the laws of our country.”
As for Ms.
Harris’s broader aim — tying Mr. Pence to the words and deeds of the president
— her opponent at times did much of the work.
Toward the
end, Mr. Pence was asked what his role would be if Mr. Trump refused a peaceful
transfer of power. He did not answer but in his deflection revealed plenty
about his place in the partnership: Whatever stylistic differences might make
him more acceptable to moderate Republicans, there is never any space between
himself and the president.
“I think
we’re going to win this election,” Mr. Pence said. Then he accused the F.B.I.
of spying on their 2016 campaign.
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