FARMVILLE, Va. — Even allowing for spin, Republican and Democratic insiders gathered here at Longwood University drew vastly different takeaways from the vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine.
Republicans said: Can you believe what a jerk Kaine was? He wouldn’t let Pence say three words before interrupting him. Surely the audience hated that.
Democrats said: Who cares whether anyone likes Tim Kaine? His job was to plant Donald Trump’s greatest hits in the public brain: Miss Universe. Tax returns. Mexican rapists. PTSD. And that’s what he did.
A few hundred miles away in Ohio, members of a focus group convened by the GOP strategist Frank Luntz did not like what they saw of Kaine. “Mike Pence is winning because Tim Kaine cannot debate like an adult without interruptions,” Luntz tweeted early in the debate. By the end, the 26-member group voted 22-to-4 that Pence won.
At times during the night, the Pence team watched with satisfaction as Kaine reacted exactly the way they predicted — and exactly the way Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had played Kaine during practice sessions. But at other times, Team Pence was as startled as anyone else by Kaine’s aggressiveness.
“I was surprised,” said Nick Ayers, a top Pence adviser, after the debate. “[Kaine] is someone that we took very seriously based on his previous debate performances. I watched all of them a number of times, and he has always been an effective debater. The thing that struck me in the first three or four minutes of the debate — and I say this objectively — is, he immediately lost his cool. He immediately seemed off his game and felt the need to begin interrupting and trying to take over the debate.”
“I’m surprised that he wasn’t more prepared for the format,” said Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, “that he didn’t understand when you answer a question — I learned it in kindergarten — that when you answer a question you give the other person time to answer also. It really did not make for very good TV.”
Kaine’s interrupting got so bad that Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin tweeted that the transcript of the debate read as follows:
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That wasn’t much of an exaggeration.
After the debate, several top Clinton staffers were asked over and over whether Kaine was a little over the top, a little overcaffeinated, a little too in-your-face. Of course they didn’t agree.
“Tim Kaine did what we needed him to do,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri said. “Tim Kaine did a great job in very aggressively, forcefully making the case to advocate for Hillary Clinton.”
“It is the job of the number-two to aggressively make the case on behalf of your running mate and aggressively prosecute the case against the other candidate,” said Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon.
“He stood up for the ticket,” said campaign manager Robby Mook. “He stood up for their platform. He defended Secretary Clinton’s record against relentless attacks from Mike Pence.”
Sure, they had to say that. But what also came out after the debate was that Democrats believed exposing Trump’s controversial remarks to a wide audience was so important that it was worth turning some people off. So yes, maybe Kaine was over-amped. But he still got the word out, with tens of millions watching.
Two liberal reporters, the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, both said as much in tweets during the debate.
“Kaine strategy: Get Trump’s old comments aired to a broader audience,” Stein tweeted. “Don’t worry about being overly aggressive. Trump on ticket, not Pence.”
“Kaine working hard to get these out there,” tweeted Sargent. “1) Trump insults of Mexicans/women/Obama 2) Trump deportation plan 3) Trump tax avoidance.”
After the debate, I asked Fallon about what Stein and Sargent said. Was that the idea? “I agree with that,” Fallon answered.
Did the Clinton team really believe that, or were they just trying to spin the best of a bad situation? Perhaps a little of both. But while they were glad that Kaine had gotten the Trump charges out there, they were clearly frustrated that Pence was able to parry, or just plain avoid them.
“I think [Pence] was very clever about demurring and refusing to confront or provide solid answers to the challenges against the things that Donald Trump has said and done,” said Mook.
“It’s easy to seem agreeable when you’re not making any case on behalf of your own running mate,” added Fallon. “There was a habit of Pence shaking his head, which is intended to softly convey disagreement, and then when it was his turn to talk, changing gears to move on and deflect.”
In not so many words, that might be an admission that Kaine had a hard time laying a glove on Pence.
It’s a legitimate question whether the VP debate will change anything in the race. By the time it sinks in, and people have had time to talk about it, the campaign will be on to next Sunday’s second Trump-Clinton debate, and that will be all the news. So this debate, like VP showdowns before it, might well disappear without much of a trace.
But it still might have some real benefit for the Republican Party at a difficult time in the campaign. Throughout the night, GOP activists and officials across the country watched the debate, cheered for their side, and booed the other guys.
“Kaine is truly an embarrassment,” tweeted Jeff Kaufmann, the Republican Party chairman in the swing state of Iowa. “Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this is in debate history.”
“Is it ‘smugger’ or ‘more smug?’ tweeted Matt Borges, head of the Ohio GOP. “Either way, Kaine is more over the top than Hillary, which is REALLY hard to do.”
That kind of thing helps unite a party in a fight, even when the party’s nominee can be a disruptive force.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Pence helped Republicans calm down, at least for a while. All the punditry is right — it has been a rough patch for Trump and the party since the first presidential debate. A win, and a winning performance, from Pence was a real boost.
Before the debate, I talked to someone in the extended Pence circle who recognized the challenge. The team prepared for a worst-case scenario, he explained, and this past week was pretty much that worst-scenario. A good Pence performance could calm the waters, he said, but it couldn’t turn the tide. Still, even calming the waters would be valuable because things had gotten so choppy in recent days.
And that’s what Pence did in Farmville. He helped calm the Republican waters, if only for a brief time.
