No one expected Wednesday night’s debate between Vce President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) to resemble the Trump-driven bedlam America witnessed in Round 1 of the presidential debate series.
And it didn’t.
There were no sledgehammer tantrums, no shouting, a few interruptions (mostly by Pence), little overtalking. For the most part, the debate was civil — in dramatic contrast with last week’s Trump-Biden face-off.
But that overall civility was inconsistent.
Harris set the tone with her very first sentence: “The American people have witnessed the greatest failure of any presidential administration in our history,” she said, referring to the pandemic that has killed more than 211,500 Americans and shows no sign of abating.
Pence often ran over the set deadline for his answers to the moderator’s question, often at length, and sometimes he didn’t answer them at all, going back to previous matters to expand his views.
The moderator, Susan Page of USA Today, had her hands full trying to rein Pence in, often having to repeat her demand that he stop several times as he went on and on.
Pence said early on that on Day 1 of a Biden administration, taxes would go up on “every American.” Harris, smiling and shaking her head, said taxes would only rise for those earning more than $400,000 per year. Fact-checkers said Pence’s claim was false.
Harris then focused on Trump’s personal debt and the national security threat it could pose.
“We now know Donald Trump owes and is in debt for $400 million,” Harris said, emphasizing that it’s vital the American people know to whom he owes that fortune.
The matter of Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court prompted a discussion of the future of Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion.
“I couldn’t be more proud to serve as vice president to a president who stands without apology for the sanctity of human life,” Pence said. “I’m pro-life. I don’t apologize for it.”
This discussion turned in part on the questions of religious faith — Barrett is a devout Roman Catholic and has expressed pro-life views in the past.
“Joe Biden and I are both people of faith,” Harris said. “And it’s insulting to suggest that we would knock anyone for their faith. And in fact, Joe, if elected, will be only the second practicing Catholic as president of the United States.”
Asked about climate change, Harris listed a series of actions she and Biden would take to gain some control over that snowballing crisis and resulting wildfire and hurricane disasters.
Pence insisted that a second Trump administration will “follow the science” but refused to answer when asked if he sees climate change as an “existential threat.”
As for health care and the prospect of Trump succeeding in dumping the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), Harris said:
“Literally in the midst of a public health pandemic, where more than 210,000 people have died, Donald Trump is in court right now trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, and I’ve said it before and it bears repeating, this means that there will be no more protections for people with preexisting conditions.”
“When moderator Page asked Pence to explain how the Trump administration would protect people with preexisting conditions,” said the Washington Post, “Pence falsely claimed that Biden and Harris support abortion ‘up to the moment of birth’ and did not mention anything related to preexisting conditions.”
It was, in fact, the first debate between running-mates in memory that could be viewed as an actual step for one candidate or the other toward moving into the Oval Office within the next four years, due to natural causes.
Pence and Harris both knew going in that their debate was in fact a serious audition for the presidency.
That’s because Democrat Joe Biden is 77 years old, and Trump 74. Either of them would be the oldest person ever to win the White House, at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic is especially threatening to older people.
“It is difficult to overstate how much this debate [was] shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic,” reported the New York Times, “from President Trump’s hospitalization with the disease to the last-minute skirmish between the Biden and Trump camps” over whether Pence — who had recent contact with White House aides who later tested positive for the virus — “should stand behind a protective plexiglass screen.”
In the end, there were plexiglass shields between the candidates, although some experts said they were too small to be of much use.
