In the Vice-Presidential Debate, Tim Walz Had Better Policy Points, But His Agitated Delivery Rolled Right Off J.D. Vance’s Reaganesque Smoothness

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Donald Trump, as dark and threatening as his second presidency would be to this country, has never stopped acting like the politician as walking TV show — a reality-based character who is really, in his way, an entire series, because he carries so much drama around with him.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we have to extend the candidate-as-entertainment-character metaphor to the other players in the 2024 U.S.

presidential election. Yet in the case of the two vice-presidential candidates, Tim Walz and J.D. Vance, one almost can’t help it.

These two, in the campaign thus far, have really been characters: Walz the middle-aged sitcom dad, benign and earnest and well-meaning, willing to look like a goofball, yet with a plainspoken moral center and the ability to deliver a zinger that makes him the show’s secret weapon.