Your choice of who won the American vice-presidential debate in Utah last night tells more about you than the antagonists. Supporters of either were not disappointed. We knew that vice-president Mike Pence is not a dynamic speaker. He knows his party’s line and right or wrong, he will defend it.
We came to see how Pence would make out against an experienced prosecutor. Those of us who watched Kamala Harris in the run-up to this election knew that this lady can handle herself. No errors for her such as calling her opponent a clown.
Yet she was alternately frustrated and amused by Pence’s deafness to a frustrated moderator. She also wanted to get her licks in. She wanted equal time but it was not there for her. Maybe it will be in the newspaper reports tomorrow about where she stands on packing the supreme court.
Oddly enough, it will be Americans who least understand the concept of packing. Most politically knowledgeable Canadians understand that the prime minister can appoint as many additional senators as are needed to give his (or her) party the majority needed to clear a legislative log jam in the Senate of Canada. In theory, the same solution can be applied to the supreme courts of the two countries.
There was no question for the hour and a half that the debate took, that Kamala Harris is by far the better debater. At the same time, Pence gets marks for being deaf to the pleas of the moderator. He also got marks for getting more hard hits (though maybe inaccurate) on his opponent.
The only problem with picking a winner, is that this debate was not about the job of vice president. What Americans and others were assessing was the kind of president each would be if anything happened to the geriatric winner of the presidency.
Both vice-presidential candidates stuck with the partner who brought them to the ball. Nobody won or lost.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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