It is conventional wisdom that Vice Presidential debates matter very little in the end. In terms of direct outcome on the Presidential race that is mostly true. Poll numbers rarely move after a VP debate. And some of the biggest VP debate victories (Bentsen-Quayle 1988) did nothing to help the ticket in the end. However, VP debates can provide one very important function: damage control.
Most people agree that Obama “lost” the first Presidential debate in 2012, just as most agree Trump “lost” the first debate in 2016. But precisely how these candidates lost matters a great deal in setting up damage control for the VP debate.
In 2012, Obama simply failed to defend his Administration’s performance during the first debate. Romney came at him with charge after charge — much of it BS — but Obama seemed utterly incapable of defending himself or his Administration’s performance in his first term. Romney soared in the polls and it was left up to Joe Biden to begin to repair the damage. Biden succeeded on stopping the bleeding for two important reasons: he made the vigorous defense of the Obama Administration that Obama himself failed to make, and he showed how Romney-Ryan would deliver the same tired right wing policies that had led to the Great Recession in the first place. More than anything else, it set a backstop and template for Obama to make his comeback in the second and third debates.
In 2016, Trump failed to achieve the very low but very important expectation for him: to show that he has the temperament, judgment, knowledge and character to serve as President. Trump did the opposite, of course, and doubled down on the crazy the next week. As such, Pence’s main job was the same as Biden’s in 2012 — to repair the damage. Pence’s task was to show the way for Trump to rebuild his image in the wake of the damage in the first debate. Pence needed to show that Trump was not crazy, not racist, not ignorant, not divisive and so on.
Remarkably, Pence didn’t even try. He pretended Trump did not say what Trump had clearly said. And he defended policy positions as if Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or even John McCain were at the top of the ticket and not Donald Trump. Showing that he was a composed and smooth persona in opposition to Trump was meaningless. Voters are electing the top of the ticket. Because Pence failed to defend Trump or offer a way for Trump to move forward in the next debates, he missed the best opportunity for a “sane” Republican to defend an insane Republican running for President. Pence failed where Biden succeeded.
