October 4, 2016 | No Comments
Mike Pence has an unlikely role model ahead of his vice presidential debate Tuesday night: Vice President Joe Biden.
Back in 2012, Biden was called on to stop a slide after President Barack Obama’s widely panned first debate performance against Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Biden delivered, putting forth a forceful case for the ticket and, in a pair of iconic moments, dismissing Romney running mate Paul Ryan’s rhetoric as, in turn, “malarkey” and “a bunch of stuff.”
Such a performance is a tall-order, given Trump’s unrivaled ability to drive the conversation and own the spotlight — and Trump critics insist that, Biden-like or otherwise, Pence can’t rewrite the script no matter how sterling he is in his Tuesday night encounter with Tim Kaine.
A Pence aide, however, is hoping Pence can rewrite the ticket’s debate playbook. If Pence is able to effectively parry attacks on Trump’s record and shift the conversation to Hillary Clinton, the aide said it could demonstrate to Trump how to do much the same in his remaining two debates.
For now, however, Pence’s first task is to right a ship that has been wobbly since Trump stumbled in the first debate and spent much of the next week in a fight with a beauty queen and facing new questions about his own financial history.
But after Obama looked peeved and slow-to-respond to Romney’s 2012 debate attacks in Denver, Biden demonstrated that, at least sometimes, the undercard debate can shift campaign perceptions.
The first moment came early in the debate, setting the tone after Ryan hit the administration’s foreign policy and warned of “devastating” cuts to defense spending. “With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey,” Biden shot back. “Because not a single thing he said is accurate.”
The line, paired with Biden’s continual charges that Ryan was pushing fuzzy math, took hold to the point where the “malarkey” line was central to that weekend’s Saturday Night Live spoof of the debate, which showed Jason Sudeikis’s Joe Biden dominating the contest.
But Trump critics, even Republican ones, are skeptical Pence can pull off a similar performance.
“This campaign is different because President Obama had a bad debate — but no one questioned whether or not he was up for the job or had the right temperament for the job,” said Dan Senor, a top Romney advisor in 2012 who helped lead Paul Ryan’s debate preparation. “I don’t think there is anything [Pence] can do to make up for Trump’s bad performance.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a friend of both Biden’s and Kaine’s, praised what Biden was able to do in 2012.
Biden, Coons said, was “immediate, authentic, real, genuine and assertive. … He didn’t take any of Ryan’s malarkey and he directly called him out several times.” It was enough to provide a rebound after Obama’s performance.
He’s not predicting a rescue redux tonight.
“This is tougher for Gov. Pence because there are real questions about Donald Trump’s capacity to serve as president,” Coons said. He pointed just to this past week, saying Trump’s attacks via Twitter on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado “genuinely calls into the question whether this is someone who is competent to be president.”
Pence has brought to the ticket a message discipline and vigor in attacking Hillary Clinton that will likely be on full display Tuesday night. Pence is a seasoned debater and, unlike Trump, his campaign says he spent significant time preparing for his clash with Tim Kaine. He conducted mock debates with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (though his campaign will not say how many), and studied briefing books prepared for the occasion.
Pence’s strategy has not changed since before last Monday, an aide said. And that strategy is to deliver a withering indictment of what he sees as the failures of the Obama administration, the scandals surrounding Clinton and the policies pushed by the Democratic ticket.
“Mike will be able to prosecute the case,” said Marc Short, Pence’s communications director. “The impact is that viewers understand what’s at stake in this election.”
But making his case against Clinton could be difficult if he is called upon to explain some of Trump’s most recent controversies. And as hard as he tries to make the debate about Clinton, Kaine will be working equally hard to make it a referendum on Trump.
As another former top Romney aide pointed out, the 2016 situation does not hold many similarities to 2012 beyond one side scoring a decisive first debate victory. While Obama was universally considered to have struggled in the first debate, he was not seen as a potentially risky choice to voters the way Trump is.
Biden simply had to “get in the arena and activate the base — almost like a pep rally, like don’t give up on this,” the Romney aide said. “Mike Pence can’t solve the risk factor problem of Donald Trump, even if he was brilliant. He can’t fix that in a good debate performance.”
“I just don’t see how Mike Pence can do for Donald Trump what Biden did for Barack Obama,” the aide added.
Even the media-framing of this vice presidential debate is different. While headlines in 2012 previewed the coming “high stakes” affair, there is no such run-up to this year’s contest. Instead the conversation is centering around just how different — and perhaps sleepy — this debate will be compared to last week’s, which drew nearly 90 million viewers.
Whether or not Biden’s 2012 performance had any tangible effect on the polls, it served to fire up the base and quiet concerns in Democratic corners. It was also appreciated by the president.
“You did a great job,” Obama reportedly told Biden by phone after the debate. “And you picked me up.”