THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: PENCE AND HARRIS HAVE THEIR SAY

 

Vice presidential debates are seldom memorable, but the October 7 contest between Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Kamala Harris broke new ground. Aside from the first appearance by a woman of color on the vice presidential debate stage,

this debate featured a fly who by the end of the evening had 4,067 social media followers. The Fly landed in Vice President Pence’s hair and stayed over two minutes. We could comment on the symbolism. But we won’t. Don’t ever say 2020 hasn’t been a strange year.

Beyond the adventures of The Fly, most post-debate analysis focused on whether it

changed the trajectory of a race that’s looking like a potential blowout. The Biden-Harris ticket entered the debate leading by 9.5 points in the fivethirtyeight.com polling average. Polls released right before the debate showed Biden-Harris ahead by as much as 16 points.

We agree with the pundit consensus that

nothing in the debate fundamentally changed the race even though CNN’s instant poll showed Harris winning, 59-38.   Women thought Harris won, 69-31.

 

Each Had Their Moments

Both candidates entered the debate with specific objectives, some multi-layered and nuanced. Pence, a smooth speaker who

politely, even gently, parrots Republican talking points, defended President Trump’s disturbing coronavirus, climate change, and foreign policy failures. He tried presenting more of a conventional Republican agenda and less of Trump’s personality cult, arguably describing a presidency that doesn’t exist. He pushed the

case Harris will lead Biden down a leftist, socialist path that over- taxes and overregulates. Pence made his points and got whatever mileage he could out of raising that set of issues.

Harris, being part of a ticket that’s ahead, but

still somewhat unknown herself, had to get people comfortable with the idea she can handle the presidency since Biden would take office at age 78. Responding to the succession question, she reminded voters of her resume as a three-time

elected official. She had strong moments on restoring America’s role in the world and the virtue in the Biden-Harris candidacy of having significant Republican support. She also tried laying out the ticket’s program since Biden didn’t get to in the first presidential debate

because of Trump’s interruptions and bullying. She effectively put the Affordable Care Act on the ballot with the reminder, “They’re coming for you,” when she identified a list of impacts terminating the act would cause. The instant poll results and the commentary suggested she succeeded.

 

Missed Opportunities

If both candidates had their moments, both missed opportunities. Harris, for example, could have used the Breonna Taylor question

in promoting how a Biden Justice Department might use federal civil rights laws in such cases and remedy the failures of Bill Barr as attorney general.  She also could have been stronger in her condemnation of the White House events that apparently spread the corona virus.

Pence, for his part, simply ducked a number of questions, like whether he had conferred with Trump about a transfer of power in light of the president’s covid-19 illness. The country needs an answer to that question and a good one might have done the Trump campaign some political good.  Pence may have been catering to Trump with his refusal to adhere to the time limits, but had he followed them, he might have gained credibility for making the debate process more dignified and civil. Critically, Pence didn’t answer the core values question of whether Trump will peacefully transfer power if he loses.             

 

Gender and Race

Inevitably gender and race were likely to

become part of this debate. The historic nature of the Harris candidacy assured that. The gender component manifest itself most in Pence’s incessant habit of exceeding his time (which moderator Susan Page of USA Today tried

controlling, mostly unsuccessfully) and the fact he frequently interrupted Harris. He didn’t do it as rudely and as aggressively as Trump did on September 29, but he did it. It didn’t go unnoticed. Women commentators on the cable networks took him to task, as did our female life partners. Like Harris, they didn’t appreciate Pence’s “lectures” about her record or approach to certain issues.

Pence also probably didn’t earn the Republican ticket any minority group votes by denying the existence of systemic racism or by supporting the grand jury findings in the Taylor case that resulted in no indictments against the police officers who killed her. Given the racial reckoning going on in the country, few reasons exist for taking those positions except knee jerk support for police or cultivating the backing of white nationalists and similar minded individuals. Perhaps Pence feared distinguishing himself from Trump.    

 

Back to the Fly

The Fly generated a lot of post-debate frivolity,

including Biden’s use of a fly swatter in a fundraising pitch. Debates in presidential campaigns often disappoint and people need something to talk about aside from each candidate’s delivery and style. The Fly added that this time. Still, it

was serious business as the vice-presidential debate – and we usually only have one – has become an important part in the process of electing a president. With both presidential candidates in their 70s, getting a sense of the woman and man who might replace them mattered.

Voters who want Trump’s policies – if not his style –  can take comfort in Pence’s performance, for all its flaws. He has some of Trump’s capacity for rudeness, but he wasn’t outlandish, just disconcerting. He knows the drill on the Republican agenda.

Harris showed she and Biden are on the same page. We think they have the better of it on policy, character, and preparation. Harris showed herself capable of taking the baton from Biden and running with it should that become necessary, suggesting she achieved her most important objective.           

CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS, STATUTES, AND INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: SLAVERY, JIM CROW, AND ADOLF HITLER

A debate that sometimes flares into violence now rages in the United States over Confederate monuments and statues. The deaths of African American men and women in police custody like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have provided new urgency to an already invigorated movement for removing such monuments and statutes from city streets, government buildings, and college campuses. We stand squarely with those who would destroy or relegate such structures to museums or other places that can put them into proper historical context.

We acknowledge an arguable distinction between monuments honoring Confederate officials and military officers and symbols of the Confederacy on one hand and those recognizing founding fathers of the nation who enslaved people, but did not rebel against the United States.  Monuments honoring Thomas Jefferson and George Washington require a different conversation and we defer that to another day. We concern ourselves now with people who took up arms against the country.

We fear supporters of keeping Confederate monuments prefer forgetting inconvenient truths about what those monuments represent. Today we remind them.

It was About Slavery

The War Between the States, as supporters of the Lost Cause like calling it, was fought about one thing: The South’s desire to preserve slavery and expand it into the western territories. In the early 1800s, as Americans marched westward and new states sought admission into the Union, the South realized it had a problem. If those territories entered as free states, soon the South would find itself out gunned in Congress. The number of representatives and most importantly, senators, from free states would outnumber those from slave-holding states. The South would lose its hold on power in the national government. The South couldn’t have that, since it risked the end of slavery.

Too many Americans have forgotten (or never knew) two things about slavery -- how brutal it was and how important it was economically. When we wrote recently about the movement that would make Juneteenth a national holiday, we identified museums that tell the story of slavery’s horrors. We’ve noted before how

Professor Edward Baptist’s book The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism provides a thorough understanding of both slavery’s brutality and its economic dimensions. The book describes in chilling detail murders, rapes, and physical abuse that went along with slavery and explains the relationship between the peculiar institution and development of the United States as a world commercial power. It will disabuse any reader of the notion the Civil War (its proper name) was about anything else.

The Monuments and Jim Crow

Advocates of keeping Confederate monuments glossed over when most were

erected. It wasn’t immediately after the Civil War when supporters of the Lost Cause might have focused on memorializing their heroes. Only a few went up in those years. In fact, many monuments went up after reconstruction as part of an organized campaign against recently freed enslaved persons that promoted Jim Crow segregation and, later, resistance to the civil rights movement.

       

 

Richmond, Virginia, for example, installed a statue of  Confederate President Jefferson Davis on its famous Monument Avenue in

1907. The statue of Robert E. Lee removed in 2017 from a street in New Orleans went up in 1884. The Lee statute in Charlottesville, Virginia that sparked violence in 2017 was installed in 1924. South Carolina began flying the Confederate battle flag above its state capitol in 1962, as a protest against school desegregation. USA Today reported thirty-five Confederate monuments erected in North Carolina after 2000.

These historical facts suggest erecting monuments to Confederate leaders had more to do with intimidating blacks and the civil

rights community than with preserving “heritage” as monument supporters so piously claim. Students of history know context means everything. Context in this instance speaks volumes about the message the monuments were established to send.

Hitler?

Yes, Adolf Hitler. Frankly, we’ve been surprised many people appear hesitant about comparing

the  memorializing of confederates who fought against the United States with German and Japanese leaders during the Second World War. Well, we’re not. We’re not because we don’t see a distinction. No American city or university would erect a statue of Hitler. The United States military wouldn’t name a base after Erwin Rommel, the general who

commanded German forces resisting the D-Day invasion at Normandy. How about a monument honoring Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Yet, statues in cities and on college campuses and the names of military bases honor defeated, treasonous Confederate officers. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Braxton Bragg, and other Confederate battle commanders fought as hard against the United States as Rommel and Yamamoto. Davis sought destruction of the United States just as Hitler and Japanese Emperor Hirohito did. A distinction is artificial and intellectually dishonest.

If we have made harsh pronouncements on

this issue, so be it. Some principles require expression with moral clarity and certainty, unadulterated by diplomatic or cultural nicety. For us, this is such an issue.

We stand by our assessment. None the less, we remain interested in contrary views. We’ve stated ours, so let us hear from you about yours.