A fly on the wall: Looking back at Wednesday night’s VP debate
A photo of Wednesday night's vice presidential debate. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
The most interesting living thing on the stage for Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate?
It might have been a fly.
During Wednesday night’s debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris, a fly landed on Pence’s head and hung out for about two minutes. By night’s end, it was trending on Twitter and had become a part of Joe Biden’s campaign. The New York Times even wrote about it.
OK, so the fly really wasn’t the most important thing that happened during a 90-minute debate that discussed plenty of meaningful topics. But the fact that we were talking about it at all was a sign that this really was a more normal political debate — certainly much more normal than the free-for-all fiasco we saw in last week’s Donald Trump-Joe Biden debate.
As NBC’s Savannah Guthrie said, “We had a debate, not a debacle.”
Civil was the word of the night.
As soon as it was over, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said, “There you have it, two candidates largely refraining from the fireworks, certainly a contrast to President Trump’s performance last week in the first presidential debate. Tonight, it was much more civil.”
PBS’s Judy Woodruff said the same, calling it “much more civil.”
NBC’s Lester Holt said, “Fair to say a lot of people (were) holding their breath after last week wondering what the tone would be in this debate. Largely civil.”
Civil, yes. A tad predictable, too. But not boring. There was substance. There was meaning. Both candidates landed their share of blows, especially when attacking their opponents, but less so when defending their own running mate’s record.
What really stood out, however, was how both candidates dodged the questions from moderator Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today. Oh, the candidates talked a lot. And said a lot of interesting things. Just not a lot about what Page asked. It was as if her questions were about apples and the answers were about oranges. Harris, most notably, would not answer a question about packing the Supreme Court and Pence would not answer, well, a lot of questions. CNN’s David Axelrod called Pence a “serial evader.”
John Dickerson of CBS News said, “As they teach you in debate school, you answer the question you want to, not the one that’s asked.”
And Pence did plenty of that, often circling back to the last question while avoiding the question asked by Page. As The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart said on PBS, “He has mastered the breathy earnestness of saying nothing.”
Blitzer noted, “Both candidates clearly did their best to dodge important serious tough questions from Susan Page, questions that they didn’t want to answer. She asked very good questions.”
And that brings us to Susan Page …
Page’s so-so night
Vice presidential debate moderator Susan Page. (Justin Sullivan/Pool via AP)
Blitzer is right. Page did ask a lot of great questions — about everything from the coronavirus to climate change to racial tensions to the economy. Too bad the candidates, especially Pence, didn’t actually answer a lot of them. But don’t just blame the candidates. Blame the moderator, too. Instead of going back and telling the candidates, “Great. Now would you like to answer the questions I just asked you?” Page simply moved on.
As Angie Drobnic Holan — my Poynter colleague and editor-in-chief of PolitiFact — tweeted, “Moderators force candidates to answer questions by refusing to move on to the next question. This tactic is not an unknown secret in the world of journalism.”
That’s where Page dropped the ball. As a veteran journalist, Page should have done better.
ABC’s Martha Raddatz said, “I think one of the things is you really do have to listen to what they are saying, and then follow up. And we seem to move pretty quickly on to the next question. There were very few answers to questions that Susan Page asked and they were well-crafted questions. But you really didn't get a lot of answers.”
Page also, far too often, let Pence in particular go well beyond his allotted time to speak. Instead of forcefully shutting Pence down, she politely just kept repeating “thank you, Mr. Vice President” over and over again while Pence ignored her and kept talking. Dickerson called it a “slow jazz kind of interruption.”
CNN's Van Jones called Pence the “mansplainer-in-chief.” Pence might have kept talking over Page because he knew she wasn’t going to effectively stop him. It was during these moments when I wish moderators were given an airhorn to simply blast away or drown out whoever is ignoring the rules.
On Fox Business, anchor Neil Cavuto said, “I lost count how many times (Page) had to interrupt to say ‘thank you,’ but it seems she did interrupt the vice president a lot more than she did Kamala Harris. It could have been that Kamala Harris was keeping better time.”
That appeared to be the case. Either way, it was something Page could never get a handle on.
CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote, “Frankly, it was inexcusable that Page did not come better prepared to enforce the agreed upon rules — especially given how last week’s debate went off the rails.”
But at least this week we had entertainment in the form of The Fly.
“I do want to say it is the first debate I have seen with a bug crawling around on one of the candidates’ head for two to three minutes,” Fox News’ Chris Wallace said, “and I don’t think we can let this evening go without mentioning that.”
In the end, at least the debate was, well, normal. And we needed normal after the presidential debate.
As Washington Post opinion columnist Alyssa Rosenberg wrote, “By comparison, the vice-presidential debate was the political equivalent of a dose of Ambien. Sure, the candidates interrupted each other and talked over moderator Susan Page. Yes, there was passive-aggressive head-shaking and the candidates taking swipes at their opponent’s past votes and positions. But even the aspects of politics that generally feel off-putting had an oddly soothing quality.”
Three quick last thoughts about Thursday night’s debate and coverage
- If you flipped back and forth between Fox News and MSNBC, you would have found two very different reactions as to how Wednesday’s debate went. Then again, is anyone surprised by that?
- I get that CNN likes having Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, on its coverage to bring a GOP perspective to its panel. But, because of all the contentious back and forth between him and the rest of the panel, it’s neither good nor informative TV. In fact, it’s uncomfortable TV.
- Did Wednesday’s debate change many votes? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t important. It was 90 minutes of two candidates talking to millions upon millions of Amerians about the future of our country. Let’s not dismiss these debates as something that doesn't matter.
Oh, one more thing
For more coverage of Wednesday’s debate, be sure to check out PolitiFact and FactChat, led by the International Fact-Checking Network.
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