Yes, Tonight’s VP Debate Matters. Let Me Tell You Why

I listen to a lot of political podcasts, and almost all of the major ones have made variations on the same joke in the past few days: when discussing the vice presidential debate, the hosts will crack wise about falling asleep because both Democratic VP candidate Tim Kaine and Republican VP candidate Mike Pence are so deadly dull. And then they’ll participate in a conversation about whether or not the vice presidential debates will “matter,” because vice presidential debates have traditionally never affected the polls. This is bad, dumb thinking, on several levels. First of all: of course a vice presidential debate matters. These candidates are second in line for the most powerful job in the world. And Dick Cheney has proven that vice presidents can demonstrate an outsize effect on foreign and domestic policy even if the president stays in good health for all eight years of a presidency. Plus, vice presidential candidates traditionally take on the role of attack dogs, articulating the policies and arguments of the presidential candidates in rawer, more honest language. If you want to hear a less-polished discussion of what really matters to America, the vice presidential debate has traditionally been the event to watch. Of course, we are living in a very different year for presidential politics, one where the rules don’t seem to apply. And that’s true for this vice presidential debate, too. While it’s true that the presidential candidates—both of whom are plagued by bad favorability numbers and scandals—chose their VP candidates at least in part because they were relatively boring and straightforward politicians, tonight’s debate is potentially going to be even more important than a usual vice presidential debate. For one thing, at the top of the ticket we have the two oldest presidential candidates in history, which makes the vice
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