Do Vice Presidential debates matter?

Amid the most serious financial crisis in almost 70 years, millions of US citizens tonight will take the measure of their future leader -- or rather, their potential seconds -- in the only televised vice-presidential debate of this election cycle. 

Showdowns between vice-presidential candidates tend to be brutal affairs -- featuring mild personal insults and partisan ‘red meat’ --which have little electoral impact.  However, the media and public fascination generated by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, may ensure that the television audience meets, or even exceeds, the 51 million who watched the first presidential debate on September 26.  This holds out the prospect that the 2008 ‘veep’ debate could have more significance than the usual electoral sideshow.

The Sarah and Joe show

Palin and her Democratic opponent, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, share certain superficial traits.  Both are approachable, folksy pols of modest family backgrounds.  They also share committed religious beliefs (Biden is Catholic, Palin is an evangelical Protestant), although their views on social policy diverge sharply. 

Palin and Biden balance these electoral assets with some prominent liabilities. They have a propensity for verbal gaffes:

• He tends to speak too much and too quickly, awkwardly eliding concepts, overlooking the obvious (at a recent rally he urged a man in a wheelchair to “stand up”) and incorrectly attributing political positions to the man at the top of the Democratic ticket, Senator Barack Obama.

• She has had only weeks of exposure to national politics, which gives her only a vague familiarity with issues that lack an Alaska connection.  Unsurprisingly, her three television interviews (with ABC, Fox, and CBS) have featured embarrassing awkward pauses, the clumsy repetition of her ‘talking points’, and claims of ‘expertise’ and/or ‘experience’ that lack credibility.  (She has repeatedly asserted that Alaska’s relative proximity to Russia has given her special insight into US-Russian relations.)

Biden’s verbal malapropisms tend to be the product of excessive confidence (extremely long anecdotes that obscure his original point, ‘creative’ new ideas that come off as half-cocked), while Palin has the opposite problem (when she cannot answer a question, she tends to awkwardly repeat her talking points).

The expectations game

Biden has served 36 years in the senate, chaired the powerful Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees, and has widely-recognised expertise in foreign policy.  Palin has spent less than two years as governor; her previous public service role was as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska -- a town of just over 9,000 people.  Counter-intuitively, this puts Biden at a major disadvantage due to the ‘expectations game’, whereby the US-media effectively handicaps the debates by discounting the performance of the favourite. 

For example, in the 1988 vice-presidential debate, then-Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen landed one of the most famous verbal haymakers in history against Republican Senator Dan Quayle.  (Asked by the moderator about his alleged lack of experience, Quayle replied that he had at least as much national seasoning as John F. Kennedy before he assumed the presidency.  Whereupon Bentsen observed that “I knew Jack Kennedy.  And you, senator, are no Jack Kennedy”.)  Nevertheless, Quayle was deemed to have met expectations during the debate, and he went on the win the election with the elder President George Bush.

Biden’s other problem is Palin’s gender: she is only the second female major-party vice presidential nominee.  The Delaware senator is famously cordial, gallant and old-fashioned in his dealings with women -- but this can sometimes come across as sexist or patronising.  If he creates that impression, the post-debate media pummelling he suffers will be intense. 

Therefore, Biden’s task is formidably difficult: if he rambles on, gets lost in wonkish detail, or patronises Palin, it will be a disaster for the Democrats.  On the other hand, he can be a canny, ferocious performer, and probably deserves to be seen as the clear favourite.

Does it matter?

However, it is a US political truism that in contemporary presidential elections, the vice-presidential candidate does not play a direct role in determining the outcome (unlike in the pre-1972 era, when party machines were stronger and the vice-presidential nominee was charged with ‘delivering’ their home state.)  Rather, the man or woman on the bottom of the ticket frames or augments the appeal of the presidential standard bearer -- or covers an obvious weakness:

• Palin is a young social conservative; her role has been to firm up support among a Republican base suspicious of McCain’s rightwing credentials. 

• Biden is an older foreign policy expert, and fills a conspicuous hole in Obama’s resume. 

Thus while Quayle was seen as a curious pick in 1988, he did not preclude a Bush victory -- given that Bush was seen as well qualified by the voters, and did not need a boost from his running mate. 

Barring a spectacularly inept performance by Palin, which might reflect poorly on McCain’s judgement, the veep debate today will have little effect on the election outcome.  It is still a mere sideshow.