Welcome to the Kansas reflector Podcast. I'm Tim Carpenter, the US Vice Presidential debate Tuesday between Republican senator JD Vance and Democratic Governor Tim Walz will likely display divergent political styles. Vance, the Ohio senator and author, easily slid into the attack dog role, commonly connected with vice presidential running mates. He'll pitch nationalism that is at the core of former President Donald Trump's reelection effort. Waltz, the Minnesota veteran and former congressman, will carry vice president Kamala Harris's message that Trump and other Maga Republicans are, well, just weird. That's a that's a term that waltz applied, and it stuck joining us to preview what could be a consequential exchange, especially if Trump and Harris don't debate again, is Robert Rowland, University of Kansas professor, former debate coach and an author of a 2021 book on Trump's rhetoric. Welcome.
It's great to be here.
Thank you for taking time to do this first. And this is a tough one. We're sitting in the middle of the University of Kansas campus make the argument that college students should tune into the vice presidential debate with waltz and Vance on CBS.
There are a couple of reasons why they should tune in. One of them may well be a future President of the United States. They ought to know the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates. And as many people say, well, there are not always people to vote for, there are always potentially people to vote against, they, secondly, ought to tune in, because it's an exposure to the policy positions of the campaigns. They ought to think through what is going to be good for their generation and future generations. KU students probably have at least 60 more years of life expectancy, the steps that are going to be taken and in the next four years are going to have an enormous influence on that life expectancy. So they ought to care a lot, and the way to care as a citizen is to listen to what both sides say, and then to make an informed choice for yourself.
There's a general belief that vice presidential debates, I think this has been carried over time, are a necessity, but kind of a sideshow that don't sway outcomes. But personally, I've always carried about who the number two is on a ticket, because it says something about the person at the top. And if the if the VP is a lap dog, an echo chamber for the President, that's something I would want to be know and be concerned about, or if the VP brings expertise and knowledge to the table lacking of the presidential nominee, am I mistaken about this, or am I just a political fool?
No, you're exactly right that it does allow one to draw inferences about leadership at the top, and on occasion, the vice presidential debate can be consequential in and of itself. I'm thinking of the Biden Palin debate in 2008 where she had become a phenomenon, but when she actually had to defend herself and defend policy, she did not wear as well. I remember at one point in that debate where she's asked a question and she says something like, well, I want to go back and talk more about education. And many, many people drew the inference that she didn't know what to say about the question in front of her. And there were many criticisms of now President Biden when he was running as a senator, but saying he didn't know about the policies was not one of them.
So let's like do you have you rate waltz and Vance in terms of their communication abilities, their capacity to resonate in person at rallies, but also from afar on television. So what do you think?
I think Vance has been kind of narrow casting and activating the most fervent Maga Republicans. He's not been chosen as an outreach candidate. Often candidates are chosen to broaden the appeal of the president. In 2016 Mike Pence was that the nominee because he was an appeal to evangelicals who had questions about Donald Trump's morality. But Pence was reassurance to him that Trump would be focused on their priorities. Vance, on the other hand, is he's even more Maga in some ways than Donald Trump is, but lacking his charisma, so it seems to be doubling down on the core message. Walt is broadening the message. It's obviously an appeal to rural voters, that appeal to the working class waltz made a point, makes a point of saying that he and his friends did. None of his friends went to Yale a jab at Vance right, a former high school football coach. You know, he's a he's a guy who says that he's he doesn't know a lot about giving vice presidential speeches, but he knows a lot about giving pep talks, and so he is broadening the ability. I think they're also giving different versions of manhood. In walls. His case, the good dad who goes off with his kids and loves them and is proud of them. In Vance's case, a kind of a stir. And judgmental, bother kind of figure and and I think the divide in their ability to appeal to women in particular is a crucial issue in the debate.
Are either these folks at the level of, say, Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan?
Well, no, that's a pretty high level to reach.
I think they're unusually good.
Reagan and Obama are not Walter Vance. I think Vance, so far has underperformed expectations. He's been really good at irritating people, you know, like the single cat ladies comment and other follow up comments like that. His comments about about Springfield, Ohio, and the Haitian population there, where he seemed to say that it was important to bring up the story, even if it was the story was untrue. And, you know, to people who care about the ideas and the argument, that didn't seem like a very sensible statement. So so far, I think Vance has underperformed rather than over performed. And I guess I'd say I think the opposite about walls. He has kind of ordinary eloquence. Now, not the eloquence of a John Kennedy, not the elegance eloquence of an Abraham Lincoln, but when he talks about work and working the remaining days of the election, and he says, We can you, we can sleep when we're dead, that is the kind of thing your dad might have said to you to convince you that you needed to study for whatever your exam was, or that your your football coach, Your gymnastics more farm chores, all right, or, or my, my debate coach might have said,
well, they're all maniacs. College debate No,
my, my, my college debate coach was incredibly insightful. A giving person. Good still is
so polling shows the race between Harris and Trump to be too close to call. Do you think that elevates the vice presidential debate in terms of potential impact? I
I do. I do think it elevates it. I think less that one candidate shines and more that one candidate has has a disaster and something like the example with Palin. There's an example going back to when Bob Dole was the vice presidential nominee, and he referred to Democrat wars. He was talking about World War Two, Korea and Korea, and he labeled them Democrat wars. Now this is a different time by the standards. I think you really believe that. No, no, no, no, he thought he was somebody he was an honor.
Somebody made him do that, or he just
misspoke. I mean, Bob Dole is an honorable man and a veteran and somebody who sacrificed for this country, been grievously wounded himself, one of the great senators of the 20th century. But this was a misstep, and it did hurt at the point in the election. Now, by the standards of today, that's not gaff at all. Yeah. I mean, Donald fact
checking is furious in these debates, and it's hard for the fact checkers to keep up.
Well, that's right, but I think in a way, fact checking is less important now because we don't have shared facts the way we had shared facts before the
facts things makes my head hurt. So Harris said she debate Trump again on october 23 I believe. But Trump says it's just too late to tangle on the debate stage. People have already started voting. What do you think about that as a as a debate avoidance and a debate offer? What? How do what are we supposed to draw from that? Trump would say that I'm Trump says he's winning and only a loser wants to debate again. But that may not be right.
If, from my research on Donald Trump, if he thought he would gain anything from a debate, he would debate the day before the election.
So possibly he's privately knows that he didn't knock the first debate out of the park. I
think that would be an understatement. But let me also add that historically, there have been debates very late in the cycle. As I recall, the single debate between Carter and Reagan in 1980 was very late in the cyclone at the end of October, and that debate is an example presidential debate, not a vice president, but a presidential debate that made a real difference, because Reagan was so good in it, he reassured people that he had a knowledge of the issues. He surprised people me, included at the time I I had bought into the stereotype that he was just a movie actor, and it became very clear in that debate that he was a lot better political figure than he was a movie actor. So
I'm looking around your office. I see a bush one autographed photograph. I see a Ronald Reagan hat, a Ronald Reagan plastic statue and a. Another Ronald Reagan looking very gritty. So, a bobblehead. All right, so, so why do you have this Ronald Reagan stuff on your desk and
notice? But it's FDR sitting in front of in front of President Reagan. Well, I've studied Ronald Reagan my whole academic life. Now, as a as a citizen, I didn't agree with much of his domestic policies. But as a rhetorician, Reagan, you know, if you think the last 100 years among political figures, there are three towering political figures who had incredible eloquence, Franklin Delano, Roosevelt, Reagan and Barack Obama. I put Dr King simply in a transcendent role. Different category, we get one saint every 150 years. We had Lincoln, and my generation had Dr King.
So while we're taking this side trip to what's on your desk, your book about the rhetoric of Donald Trump, nationalist populism and American democracy, can you synthesize what you want readers to get out of out of that book
when Donald Trump violated every rule for what we thought, how we thought politicians should behave. You know, there have been lists of gaffes that would have destroyed anybody else. I remember thinking when he insulted John McCain very early, it's still 2015 I thought his campaign was over and and it wasn't. So the the trick, the riddle with Donald Trump is explaining why his campaign, why his rhetoric, resonated so strongly. And it's not as if he laid out a sophisticated policy agenda then or now. I mean, if you think about it, in this campaign, his agenda is big, tariffs, kick, kick, undocumented, impulse out and some kind of softening of American foreign policy. So we don't support NATO, we don't support Ukraine. We some kind of isolation. Isolation. Tend toward isolation. It's not a set of developed policies, although people working with him, and like the many alumni who worked on Project 2025, they have developed policies. But that's not Trump's appeal. Rather, Trump appeals on three things, a sense that American identity is changing too fast. There are too many people out there who don't look like me for whatever the me is, a sense that elites don't respect ordinary people. Ordinary people the Trump's base of support in the white it's really not working class. Isn't quite right. It's the non college educated white minority population and who understandably feel left behind by the economics. But Trump's appeal is not that he has policies that are going to help them, primarily it's that he's going to treat them right and not talk down to them. So we have a nationalist appeal about dangerous others, undocumented immigrants, religious minorities, transgender people, religious and other minority groups that are threatening America. We have the populist appeal, and then Trump, Trump presents himself as originally he was the outsider, and since he became president, he's really presented himself as a strong man protector. He said that explicitly to American women a couple days ago, he would be their protector, and they wouldn't even need to think about abortion.
Yeah, they wouldn't have to have independent thoughts anymore.
There have been a number got you covered. A number of commentators who have pointed that out. The the humor columnist for the Washington Post, Alexandra Petrie, wrote about that, and that's one of his grave difficulties, that he has a Trump has a real weakness with college educated women.
Okay, are there points that that, getting back to the vice presidential debate, are there points that you would expect Vance has to make, maybe appeal to women or not come across as an Ivy League elitist or yak about inflation and immigration? You know? Is there something you some big point that he's got to
make. Well, I think he needs to first try to humanize himself and come across as someone who cares about all about the American people broadly, because he has not come across that way Trump. His personal biography screams anti elitism, but the way he talks and his educational background scream, scream, elitism and walls has punctured that pretty effectively, but I think he he wants to shift that to just broad public appealing feelings about the economy, especially it's not so much inflation as the price jump that occurred because of supply. Chain disruption caused by covid and then public on, you know, discontent with the state of undocumented immigration in the United States. And I really don't think this is basically about public policy. I mean, you know, undocumented immigration is now quite low because of executive branch actions. Trump himself blocked action on a bipartisan, but quite conservative immigration policy. This is about a sense that things were better when Trump was President. That's That's it okay, and he wants to focus on that agenda now. Walls, yeah,
do the do the opposite walls is
going to present the same message as Harris, but he's trying to broaden it to a to an audience he has, because of his background, he could potentially appeal to more men in rural areas. The football coach background is appealing to a lot of people, and he presents himself. They, in a way, both Vance and walls present a vision of the paternal of what a father might look like, but Vance comes across as a very judgmental, Thou shalt not father, and walls comes across as the kind of loving, goofy dad, and it'll be a battle of those personas.
Okay, so what are these gentlemen need to avoid during the debate?
Well, I think that Vance needs to avoid coming across, you know, big negative where he seems to be insulting people, insulting groups, says something that's demeaning to women. I think walls needs to avoid getting in too much into the weeds of the issues. Now there are arguments about walls being too liberal, and there are allegations. Now, some of the allegations that have been made against walls have been fact checked and are not. Are are not actually factual. I expect walls to say, you know, essentially, they want to regulate what happens in schools. We want to make, I made sure. And in in Minnesota, everybody who went to school could focus on school because they had enough to eat. I expect walls to say things like that. Yeah.
Okay, very good. So how should Vance deal with his previous statements about Trump being more or less unfit to serve as president? You said some very off color things about former President Trump, I
think Vance and other politicians in that situation need to say, you know, hey, I had bad information. I know a lot more now. I think politicians, when they actually are willing to admit that they've grown because they have new information, I at least find that disarming. You know you you know someone smart, when they can change their mind based on new data, and you could turn that around when people always think the same thing regardless of the data, that's a problem. I think that's what I think that's what he should now, politicians don't like admitting they were wrong, so
that, because they view it as weakness. You know, the question will be, did did Vance change his tune simply because he's on a vice presidential ticket? Or did he change because his ideas revolved so waltz? I guess the attacks are, would be something along the line of, you know, a radical liberal, I guess, is he and if what is he supposed to say in response to that? I mean, radical is something you should respond to.
I think he's going to just defend his agenda as helping lifting up people in Minnesota's. I think he's going to say it not radical to make sure school kids have enough to eat. I think he's going to defend it that was should
waltz delve into Trump's legal challenges, his felony convictions, all that civil judgments. I
think that's, I think that's already baked into the election. I think the attack, the weird attack, and the other attack I've seen is focusing on, on arguing that former President Trump, you know, pretends to care about ordinary people, but he spent his whole life taking advantage of ordinary people. I expect that task to come out, that Trump was a failure, that you know, that Trump left them a hell of a mess, that they had to clean, that the Vice President Harris and President Biden a hell of a hell of a mess. I think the the other strategy, the one you met is really one that appeals only to people who are already going to vote. Yeah, yeah, I
get that. So on that sort of on that point, who in the audience watching this debate, are these candidates trying to reach? Are the slim undecided? Kids. Are they trying to renew the ties to their base, or they just going to focus on are they going to talk directly these seven or eight swing states?
Well, I think undecideds in the seven or eight swing states. I think that you know the most, the bases are fully activated at this point, especially by Trump and walls is not the right person to activate any remaining Democrats who are not activated, I think especially black men and Hispanic men and that, but President Obama is probably the person who's the best shot of activating facts,
just as another side issue. Do you think people like Barack Obama, at the tail end of this campaign are going to be out there on the stump. Oh yeah. 20 470
yes. Barack Obama is probably the most important person to be out there for the Democrats. I think, I mean, you have a once in more than a generation talent, you know? I mean, and, and he's going to be pushing hard. He's his ability. I've seen statistics that Biden got about 90% of the black vote, and Harris is in the middle 70s right now, getting that extra, and that's, I think that's mostly black men getting that extra 10, 12% could make an enormous difference. Think about swing states that's less important in the blue wall, because they're just not as many African Americans, but boy in Georgia and North Carolina, that or the similarly Hispanic vote in Arizona and Nevada, though Barack Obama is the right message, especially for the black vote. Now, Barack Obama transcends race. You know his message back those are the core of his message was we need to lift everybody up, because we're all Americans, but in Danity is such that he is a particular appealing candidate for that subject.
Interesting. All right, the moderators for this VP debate, CBS Evening News Anchor Norah O'Donnell and Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan, are these choices to women? Is that significant, or is it just people with the network that are a logical pick?
Well, I think they are. It's both. It's that they are well known, mainstream, thoughtful journalists, but their gender identity poses a potential issue for Vance in particular because he is perceived, and Trump is perceived to have said things that are very patronizing. And, you know, Trump has done the a very complicated dance, and has has mans on abortion rights, on reproductive rights. And President Trump has been all over the place, all over the place, and and he, I think he knows it, because he says an obvious untruth that everyone wanted the issue of abortion rights roe to go back to the states, something that is true of essentially no one, because the you know, the left wanted to guarantee reproductive rights and abortion rights across the country, and especially his core evangelical supporters, wanted to restrict it everywhere and shut it down, and would still do that if they possibly could.
So what degree do you think it's important for moderators to control the stage? I'm thinking about the debate in which Trump was wandering around and hovering over Democrat Hillary Clinton, you know, and I have a subsequent question about the crazy State Fair debates in Kansas. I don't know if you've ever been to any of those, but so control the stage. Well,
I think it's very important. I've written about I happens to have done research on the debates in 2016 and 2020 and the decision, for example, to shut off the mic that continued this year, it was in the second debate in 2020 that led to a much better exchange, just fewer interruptions. Each side could make their point. And the debate, especially the first debate in 2020 is one of the worst presidential debates I've ever seen because of the constant interruption?
Yeah, it's not. You're not going to get policy nuances out of a thing like that. And I bring up the state fair debate. They have gubernatorial and US Senate debates down there outdoors, the different factions, candidate factions come and they wear shirts, they have cowbells. They're singing, they're yelling. THE MODERATOR yells the question, and then the candidates try to answer. Amid the shouts, the storm of shouting from the crowd, it is chaotic. It's sort of fun, but don't go. Go there expecting to learn a lot.
Well, that's exactly right. And one of the key things about debates, going back to what I said about the Carter Reagan debate is, if you're really paying attention to what people say, sometimes you discover surprising things. I mean, you know, I was a very young academic who didn't know much about Reagan when I listened to that and I had bought into, you know, kind of the conventional wisdom that he. You know, it was a movie actor. He was good at present, but he was good in the debate. He was really good in the debate. And you learned something from that. There's
a consensus that Harris won the presidential debate in Philly. Do you think that's a factor in the VP debate strategy by Vance? You think he's got more pressure to win? Well, I
think it definitely is more pressure because, you know, Harrison walls have come back up, and it looked like some of the some of the reporting I've seen might be that Harris didn't get much of a bounce, but maybe a point, maybe a point and a half, because of the debate, there's some question about whether that has, that bounces, has gone back or it's different. You know, it's hard to tell from polls with different methodologies. I'm skeptical of all polling. I agree with that, especially given how low the answer rates are and different methodologies. But it is absolutely clear from the consensus all the polls that it's a much closer race than it was, and it looks like Harris is ahead by a couple points nationally. The question is, is that a big enough leach not ahead by as much as Biden was? But there's some evidence. Maybe the polls are a little more accurate this year. It's very, very close. I do think it means this debate is important, but the big importance of it educational. I'm academic. I always think educating the voters is important, but I think the potential for a gaffe is important, and so far, the rules that gaffs don't apply anymore. That seems to only apply to Donald Trump and not to not to others.
Well, that's an unfair system of analysis. It
is, but it's where we are. I'm thinking of how Vance has been hurt by the single cat ladies comment in a way that much stronger comments by I just have to ask,
don't they vet these kind of statements like cat ladies? Don't they like test this stuff and find out that this offensive to all women who own and love their cats?
I think that first that that statement had been made earlier, I think before Vance was a vice presidential nominee. But I think candidates tend to speak so much to only their own supporters that they don't think before they're on the national stage of how that's going to be portrayed to a broader audience, in a way they they preach only to the saved, and then they are surprised when non core supporters don't agree. Yeah,
it's like the sleepy reporters in the back and somebody says something about cat lovers, and they snap to attention and pound out a story, right? Well,
I mean, if you think about it, if you were thinking about audience reaction, if the Trump bands attacking Taylor Swift she would be the last single person in America that they would attack, because there are so many 10 millions and millions and millions of Swifties. I find them, but many of them in my class
in October, she went on a spontaneous national tour and said you can get in for free if you have proof of voter registration.
If she did a tour where you could get in for free, there people would be trampled to death because there'd be so many people trying to get in.
Yeah, that's why she doesn't work for me. Yeah. Okay, so, all right, I'm going to ask you. This is maybe a little tricky. It's like, say, tell me a funny joke, but can you take us back to one of your favorite vice presidential debate moments and sort of paint a picture for us? So something that resonated with you stuck with you in your mind, as you've gone about your career in academia at KU.
Well, I'm not sure I'd say I took lessons from my to my career at KU but I'm thinking about in political communication. I think that moment in in 2008 it's hard to remember now that after the Democratic Convention, Obama and Biden had seemed to be substantially ahead, and then the Republican Convention went great, mostly because of Sarah Palin, her vice presidential speech. People talked about it knocking their socks off. And there was one moment in which they were McCain and Palin were ahead beyond the margin of error in the polls one day, I think it was a couple days, and then the collapse, economic collapse happens, which focuses the people on the issues, and in a way that focused people on the vice presidential debate, and that moment when she couldn't answer the question and decided to go back to a previous topic, which she knew about because she had been governor of Alaska, that Did concentrate the mind, because it was in the, you know, the thoughts of many people, what if something happened to Obama? What if something happened to the next president? What if have something happened to McCain, who survived cancer and was much older than Obama? You know, it seemed something could have happened to either of them at that moment. I think. Okay, then Senator Biden look like a much safer alternative the American people. I think at a certain point, you know, the thing about campaigns is they're about fluff and fluff and fluff, until they're not. And in 2008 it was the economic collapse that really focused the mind.
Well, I we're gonna have to leave it there. I want to thank our Kansas reflector, guest Professor Robert Rowland of the University of Kansas, and author of the rhetoric of Donald Trump National nationalist populism and American democracy. Thank you. And to everyone else. Thanks for listening.
