Pence Gave Away Trump’s Biggest Policy Advantage and Kaine Didn’t Even Notice

The Vice Presidential debate last night between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence was a sad affair–Pence was able to “win” the debate without knowing any policy by repeatedly attacking Clinton’s record while only vaguely referencing policy issues. Rather than force Pence to defend his vague policy assertions, Kaine relied on a variety of canned talking points, many of which were personal attacks on Trump that moved the conversation away from the issues (Kaine repeatedly referenced my 5 bad anti-Trump arguments instead of my 5 good ones). This made Kaine look like he was running from policy, allowing Pence’s assertions to go unchallenged and giving Pence command of the room. Pence was able to accuse Kaine of running an insult-driven campaign, and Kaine’s response to that was to petulantly interrupt, get defensive, and resort to more insult-driven talking points, all of which reinforced Pence’s point. There were many claims Pence made that were open to attack, but I want to focus on one in particular today–Pence eliminated the major policy difference between his campaign’s and Kaine’s on Syria, and in so doing he eliminated the foreign policy case for Trump.

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How Trump Could “Win” a Debate Without Knowing Any Policy

Donald Trump is taking a hit in the polls after his first debate performance, in which he spent a lot of time defending his character and offering long-winded answers in which he pretended he knew what he was talking about when he very clearly didn’t. Many people have rightly pointed out that Trump came across as under-prepared, but they’re not putting the emphasis in the right place. While it’s true that Trump doesn’t know anything about policy, it was not his lack of preparation on policy that got him in trouble. Instead he got hurt because he was inadequately prepared to do what he is generally pretty good at–avoiding uncomfortable questions and criticisms by constantly attacking whoever is available as a target. So today I’d like to give Trump a little back-handed advice–here’s how Trump can get the media to give him a win when he clearly doesn’t know anything.

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The Limitations of Proportional Representation

About 23% of Americans don’t like both Trump and Clinton. Many of these people are considering third parties, or would like to be considering them but don’t feel they can safely do so because of the American voting system, which makes it very difficult for third parties to win and ensures that people who vote third party get no say in the choice between the two major party nominees. Some people have talked about wanting to switch to proportional representation (PR) to break the stranglehold of the two parties on politics. Under PR, if 8% of the population votes for a Green or a Libertarian, 8% of the legislature is comprised of Greens or Libertarians. If no party is able to put together a majority of votes, parties have to cooperate in coalitions to get things done. PR is in Jill Stein’s platform and some libertarians have expressed enthusiasm for it as well. PR cannot really be applied to the presidential race, because the president can only be one person–he or she cannot be 8% Green. But for presidential races we could employ a ranked ballot system allowing for an instant-runoff. On this system if you voted for Jill Stein your vote could be transferred to Clinton after Stein is eliminated. This may sound intriguing, but PR is not a magic bullet and it can produce some very bad situations that we should consider.

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Who is the Most Qualified Presidential Candidate Ever?

Many Hillary Clinton supporters respond to accusations from Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump that Clinton is “not qualified” by counter-asserting that she is the “most qualified candidate ever”. Now, these people are often using “qualified” to refer to very different things–Sanders said Clinton was not qualified because she takes money from Super PACs and Trump says she’s not qualified because of her judgment, but when Clinton supporters use the term “qualified” they aren’t denying that she took Super PAC money or even necessarily arguing that she has good judgment. The claim that Clinton is most qualified is made as if it were a statement of obvious fact–it reads not like a nuanced argument about judgment but more like a fact claim about experience. Clinton is said to be “most qualified” because she has the most and the best experience of anyone, and the people saying this do so with a confidence that indicates they don’t think it’s close. This strikes me as a pretty bold historical claim, so I decided to investigate to see where Clinton ranks for experience and to see whether experience has a significant effect on the way historians think about a president’s performance.

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Why It Matters that Gary Johnson Doesn’t Know What Aleppo Is

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson made a big mistake. Asked what he would do about Aleppo, he responded with “What is Aleppo?”:

Once the point was clarified, he then proceeded to give a meandering answer in which he repeatedly called Syria “a mess”. He did not address the refugee crisis and the closest he came to offering any position on Aleppo was to suggest that we need to “join hands with Russia”. There was no indication of what goals Johnson might have in a negotiation with Russia nor any explanation of how he would pursue those goals. A lot of people, including Johnson himself, are making excuses for this. Their excuses are bad. Here’s why.

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