If Minnesota’s governor is on the Democratic ticket for his retail politics, why is he flubbing basic questions about prior misstatements?
About half an hour into last night’s vice-presidential debate, the CBS anchor Margaret Brennan turned to Tim Walz and asked a question that the Minnesota governor had to have known would come. “You said you were in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989,” she said, noting that new reporting suggests Walz didn’t go to Asia until months later. “Can you explain that discrepancy?”
“Look,” Walz began, “I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, a town of 400, a town that you rode your bike with your buddies ’til the street lights come on.” He went on to explain how, as a teacher, he’d taken young people on educational visits to China. “I have poured my heart into my community. I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times.”
Kamala Harris chose Walz, most observers have agreed, for his Everyman aesthetic and fluency in retail politics. And so far, the affable former high-school football coach and hype man for Menards has mostly received glowing reviews. He is much more adept than his Republican counterpart, J. D. Vance, at engaging with voters as a regular guy.
Which is why he should have had a better answer last night. And Walz’s failure to provide a coherent, succinct correction for an entirely predictable inquiry about one of his flubs suggests ill-preparedness for a spotlight that is only going to get brighter—and harsher—in the weeks to come.
Vance delivered a slick debate performance, though it would be a mistake to call it a “win” when he engaged in so much sinister revisionist history. In what would turn out to be the most striking moment of the night, Vance refused to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
