Mike Pence had trouble articulating a vision because the party has abandoned it.
When the coherent half of the Republican ticket participated in the vice presidential debate this week, it was an opportunity for viewers to learn what the future holds. Yes, Vice President Mike Pence may be a talking-point machine, but to a debate audience that’s a more useful device than a random-lie generator. You can learn things from talking points. There’s only one problem: Republicans have no points to talk about. If elections are about the future, the GOP plans are the blank piece of paper to which President Donald Trump affixed his signature in his Covid photo-op at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The Republican Party attracted a lot of attention, most of it bad, when it declined to produce a platform at its convention in August. In lieu of an explanation of its positions, it issued a short proclamation whining about the news media conspiring with Joe Biden and being mean. Less noticed is that the Trump campaign website offers no better guidance. The future doesn’t exist there, either. How will the U.S. exit the pandemic/economic crisis that has enveloped the nation? Who knows? Perhaps the jobs that have been felled will return as magically as the virus disappeared back in the spring. The Trump website, like the campaign, lives in the past. The president who predicted 6% growth in gross domestic product includes a bullet point to note that during the glorious first quarter of 2019, GDP growth reached 3.
