October 5, 2016 | No Comments
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was “smooth” and “sort of likable” at Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta admitted Wednesday morning. But when it came to doing his job on the debate stage, Podesta said Pence failed with flying colors.
“He didn’t get the job done. The vice president’s job is to go in and try to defend the top of the ticket. Mike Pence looked more like he was looking at 2020 than 2016,” Podesta said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “He kind of walked away. He did backflips on Russia. He didn’t sound at all like what Donald Trump has been saying out on the campaign trail. He made a whole new policy up on Syria.”
Tim Kaine, by contrast, “did a great job,” according to Podesta, on pushing substance throughout the debate. While the Virginia senator at times came off as overly feisty and interrupting, Clinton’s campaign chairman praised the Democratic running mate’s for repeatedly putting Pence the position of having to defend some of Donald Trump’s most outrageous remark. That the Indiana governor managed to mostly dodge answering for his running mate did not diminish the strategy in Podesta’s eyes.
“[Kaine] kept putting Trump’s own words to Mike Pence and Mike Pence never defended Donald Trump,” Podesta said. “Time after time he just kept shaking his head. It was sort of surprising. You couldn’t tell whether he was shaking his head because he didn’t believe Donald Trump could say such things or he was trying to suggest he hadn’t. But of course we know he had.”
Asked who had won the debate, Podesta demurred and instead said that “Donald Trump lost and that was fairly clear.” He predicted that Pence’s stylistic success Tuesday night would not have a lasting impact on the overall presidential election, especially when compared to the Indiana governor’s unwillingness to defend his running mate.
“I think Tim came in with the strategic mission to lay out clearly his plans. I think he did a very good job with that. He was aggressive from the start. And to challenge Mike Pence to defend Donald Trump, and Mike Pence didn’t do it,” Podesta said. “And I think that what we saw was a guy who could, you know, sit back, lay back a little bit, seemed like a reasonably nice guy, but he didn’t defend the top of the ticket.”