What to watch for as Vance, Walz take the stage for Tuesday’s VP debate

WASHINGTON – Vice-presidential debates historically haven’t proved decisive in the race for the White House. But in a 2024 campaign that has been far from typical, all eyes will be on Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota when they meet Tuesday night in what may be the last chance for each party’s ticket to make its case to voters before Election Day.

The debate, hosted by CBS News in a New York City studio with no live audience, will also serve to introduce the public to two men who are relatively new to the national stage. And because former President Donald Trump has rebuffed a challenge from Vice President Kamala Harris to a second debate in the three weeks since the presidential nominees met for the first time, Tuesday’s VP showdown carries added importance.

Vance, a Republican senator since 2023, rose to prominence in 2016, when his newly published memoir made him a sort of cultural ambassador representing the white working-class voters who helped Trump win the presidency. Eight years after calling Trump “cultural heroin” that makes his supporters “feel better for a bit” but “cannot fix what ails them,” the 40-year-old Vance has completed a dramatic turnabout and become the heir apparent to the “Make America Great Again” brand of right-wing populism.

Walz is a Democrat who represented a rural, relatively conservative House district in southern Minnesota between 2007 and 2019, earning an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association for opposing gun regulations in his early years in Congress. By the time Minnesotans elected him governor in 2018, that rating had turned into an “F” in response to a policy shift that has seen the Nebraska native adopt solidly left-wing positions, and he has seldom vetoed bills passed by the state’s Democratic legislature.

Here’s what to watch for when the two men meet on stage at 6 p.m. Pacific on Tuesday.

Will their preparation pay off?

Harris outperformed Trump during the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to flash polls immediately after the event , but little changed in national polls in the following days.

In contrast, both Walz and Vance have been preparing in practice debates with their opponents, coincidentally, played by two men from South Bend, Indiana. According to the campaigns, Rep. Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, has stood in for Walz while Democrat Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. transportation secretary and former mayor of South Bend, has channeled Vance.

It remains to be seen whether that preparation will portend a more policy-heavy clash between the potential veeps than when their respective running mates met in Philadelphia, where Harris repeatedly baited Trump into talking about issues like the size of his rally crowds instead of the Biden-Harris administration’s record.

Look for Vance to keep the focus on the policies Harris and Walz have supported in their respective roles in the White House and governor’s mansion. Expect Walz, despite famously serving as the defensive coordinator for a high school football team before entering Congress, to go on the attack over Vance’s controversial statements on women’s reproductive choices and other positions from which Trump has sought to distance himself.

Military service

Vance spent four years in the Marine Corps, writing articles and taking photos as a military journalist, and deployed for six months to Iraq in a noncombat role in 2005. Walz served in the Army National Guard for 24 years, retiring in 2005 as a master sergeant.

In his final term in Congress, Walz was the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, and this year marks the first time since 1996 that both vice -presidential nominees have served in the military.

But rather than debating which policies would best serve the nation’s veterans, the topic is likely to come up in personal attacks. That’s because Vance has accused Walz of misrepresenting his military service, focusing on the Democrat saying in 2018 that he carried weapons “in war” when he never deployed to a war zone and an official bio that refers to the highest rank he obtained, command sergeant major. Walz has said he misspoke, and the National Guard has explained that his rank reverted to master sergeant upon retirement because he didn’t complete additional coursework required to keep the higher rank for the purposes of collecting benefits.

When it comes to policy that would affect veterans, neither campaign has explicitly said what they would change, but the records of the Trump and Biden administrations offer solid clues. Trump’s signature veterans bill, the MISSION Act of 2017, dramatically expanded access to private-sector health care at higher cost to taxpayers. That so-called Community Care has contributed to a $12 billion budget shortfall at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Biden administration has sought to bolster in-house VA care.

Two different models of manhood

The Democratic and Republican tickets present voters with a clear choice between dramatically different policy platforms, but the vice presidential candidates also represent two different models for what it means to be an American man.

When Harris chose Walz as her running mate, the pick represented a clear effort to present a different image of masculinity at a time when men are increasingly voting for the GOP. The avid hunter and former high school assistant football coach, who volunteered as the adviser for a gay-straight alliance in the 1990s, peppered his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August with gridiron metaphors and has been embraced by his party as an all-American dad.

Vance, meanwhile, is also a father and hasn’t been shy about his opinion that Americans need to have more children. He embraces an ideology of the nuclear family as the building block needed for a restoration of U.S. society akin to the 1950s, offering an explicit appeal to disaffected young men who feel that they have fallen behind while women have earned college degrees at increasingly disproportionate rates in recent decades.

While the two men are sure to spar over policy and ideology on Tuesday, the debate is also likely to showcase less tangible differences.