Mike Pence Wiped the Floor with Tim Kaine - But Does it Matter? (John Podhoretz)

[Jazzhead]

http://nypost.com/2016/10/04/mike-pence-wiped-the-floor-with-tim-kaine-but-does-it-matter/

 

[ Tim Kaine just did something remarkable: He made Dan Quayle look good by comparison. . . .

Tim Kaine was no Lloyd Bentsen. This time the Republican guy from Indiana—Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s running mate—crushed the Democrat. Pence never delivered a knockout blow, he just jabbed and parred and ducked and weaved. Kaine kept trying to deliver roundhouses, but almost every time he swung and missed and fell on his posterior as he did it.

He seemed determined to bait Mike Pence, but his constant interruptions and preachy assertions that Pence couldn’t possibly defend his running mate succeeded only in making him look annoying and insubstantial.

Pence’s ju-jitsu was masterful. After Kaine said Trump was running an “insult-driven campaign,” Pence asserted Kaine’s accusation was itself a mark of an “insult-driven campaign” run by Hillary Clinton—and continued to use the line against Kaine throughout the campaign.

From the first minute, Pence found an almost perfect tone—calm, reasonable, fluent, and understated. He responded more in sorrow than in anger when Kaine kept doing whatever he could to interrupt and throw him off his talking points. Like Kaine, he came well-prepared but unlike Kaine, he wore his preparation lightly.

If all you had to go on was this debate, there’s no way you could make sense of Hillary Clinton choosing [Kaine] of all people to be her running mate. That’s how bad he was.

All of this is about performance, though. When it came to substance, Pence was remarkably disingenuous and dishonest, and in a manner that did not do him credit.

Kaine pointed out that both Pence and Trump had said Vladimir Putin was a stronger leader than Barack Obama and Pence heatedly denied it—when in fact both have said exactly that.

Most striking was Pence’s harsh critique of Putin and Russia. His powerful condemnation went entirely against Donald Trump’s extraordinarily conciliatory and friendly rhetoric. It seemed clear that Pence went into the debate determined to defend the Donald Trump he would prefer to the Donald Trump that actually exists.