“Tim is one of the most human-like politicians I can think of,” my eighteen-year-old sister texted me midway through the CBS vice presidential debate this past Tuesday. “He just seems real.” 

Indeed, one of the main takeaways from the debate was its congeniality: opposing presidential and vice-presidential candidates have rarely deigned to regard one another with basic respect on the debate stage in recent years. To hear Tim Walz utter the phrase “I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said,” especially on a question concerning reproductive rights—or perhaps more surprisingly, to hear J.D. Vance say “I think that Governor Walz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better” on the matter of gun violence—is astounding given the vitriol of the September Harris-Trump debate, the various Biden-Trump debates (does “will you shut up, man” ring a bell?), and especially the Clinton-Trump debates. Donald Trump’s often-misogynistic remarks towards Hillary Clinton on the debate stage, including the labeling of her as a “nasty woman,” bear resemblance to his present-day sexist and racist comments about Kamala Harris, such as his claim that she “became a Black person” on the campaign trail. In light of such comments, Americans have come to regard civility as a relic of debates long past—reserved for the eras of Reagan and Mondale, or Bush and Gore, and the crunchy audio conveying their pleasantries.

It comes as no surprise that the vice presidential debate felt like a breath of fresh air. “‘Midwest Nice’ takes the VP debate stage,” was the caption beneath a video of courteous—almost heartwarming—moments from the debate posted by The Recount on Instagram. Another Instagram video of sleeping debate-watchers overlaid with “when they actually debate the issues and don’t just yell at each other” got over one million likes, attracting comments like “I found myself just smiling at the screen cuz they were being so kind to each other.” This begs the question: why was the vice presidential debate so civil? Is this instance of civility something to be praised?

There are a couple of considerations to take into account. For one, this was a debate between two white men, meaning that there was no initial imbalance of respect based on identity. Respect was not something that one candidate was made to earn while the other candidate was applauded for giving—respect between white men is inherent, and a sizable portion of the “Midwest Nice” swapped between Vance and Walz was likely due to that fact. There was no chance for Vance to call Walz a “childless cat lady” on Tuesday night, but he maybe would have relished the opportunity had his opponent been a woman.

Secondly, J.D. Vance is a self-proclaimed liar. This is not to say that Walz was a bastion of truth throughout the debate: he danced around the question of whether he was in China during the Tiananmen Square protests (he was not), claimed that Project 2025 calls for a registry of pregnancies (it does not, although its proposed reproductive policies are dehumanizing in plenty of other ways), and made comments about opioid deaths and Trump’s tax returns that were somewhat misleading. Vance, however, is a candidate who went on CNN back in September and said that he was willing “to create stories so that the… media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.” This was in regards to Trump’s claim during the presidential debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets—a rumor that has been entirely disproven, but which led to bomb threats on the town. In the interview, Vance admitted that Trump’s comment was a fabricated story. This sets a dangerous precedent: proclaiming that lies are necessary to garner media attention around “real” issues effectively allows politicians to say whatever they want without ethical repercussions. It allows them to downgrade factual truths to opinions, and then debate them as such. 

To return briefly to my sister’s commentary: she made the distinction that Walz seems like a “real” politician, unlike Vance, who she later told me “terrified” her—and for good reason.

“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check, and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” said Vance in one of the more frightening moments of the debate, after a CBS moderator had clarified that many Haitian migrants in Springfield have legal status. This fell perfectly within the parameters of the debate: CBS executives had previously indicated that moderators were allowed to clarify murky points. Positioning fact-checking as a means of censorship is not a new conservative tactic, but it has become more prevalent than ever before.

Vance addressed censorship at another crucial point in the debate, when he was asked about the state of democracy: “I believe that we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country, but unfortunately, it’s not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about. It is the threat of censorship…it’s Kamala Harris saying that rather than debate and persuade her fellow Americans, she’d like to censor people who engage in misinformation.” For Vance to address one type of censorship (which is to say the “censorship” of mis- and disinformation) but entirely ignore another—book bannings, the 1776 Project, the erasure of DEI initiatives from classrooms across the nation—is a red flag, and it betrays his facade of concern over the state of free speech.

Vance’s denial of the violence inherent to the January 6th insurrection and Trump’s attempts to overturn election results was one of his most alarming moments: “Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020…Remember, he said that on January 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully.” This ignores the fact that, at the January 6th rally, Trump said that he had won the election “by a landslide,” and told his supporters, “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” 

At one point, Walz asked Vance point-blank: “Did he [Trump] lose the 2020 election?” When Vance pivoted, saying that he was focused on the future, Walz retorted: “That is a damning non-answer.” Walz also brought up the issue of Mike Pence’s absence: it should be noted that the primary reason why Pence is no longer Trump’s running mate, and the reason why Trump has lost his endorsement, is because Pence refused to deny the results of the 2020 election. It is a glaring sign of Trump’s authoritarianism that nobody in his cabinet is allowed to address the factual truth that he lost the last presidential election; that Vance echoes this lie is unsurprising, but a sound indication that he is willing to roll over for Donald Trump come November.

Walz, contrasted with this image, came across as down-to-earth. His civility, unlike Vance’s, did not feel like a ploy; Walz does not have to convince voters of his commitment to bipartisanship, to the peaceful transfer of power, to his willingness to engage in civil debate. He has already earned voters’ trust in this regard; he already comes across as a reasonable person. He addressed issues close to the heart of young people like myself, including reproductive rights: “We're pro-women. We're pro-freedom to make your own choice. We know what the implications are to not be that.” He condemned Vance’s dehumanization of immigrants crossing the southern border,  pointing out that Trump has a tendency to “demonize” issues rather than solve them. On gun violence, he made a poignant statement about the talking point of the mental health crisis, which many young activists have conveyed for years: “This idea of stigmatizing mental health; just because you have a mental health issue doesn't mean you're violent. And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it is just the guns.” 

Of course, Tim Walz is far from a perfect candidate. His statement on the Middle East, like Harris’ statements thus far, was notably lacking in substance and unsurprisingly failed to address the genocide of Palestinians and U.S.-funded attacks by Israel in the broader region. Vance was no better on this front, stating: “Look, it is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe. And we should support our allies wherever they are when they're fighting the bad guys.” According to the Gaza Health Ministry, nearly 42,000 Palestinians—most of them civilians—have been killed and roughly 97,000 more injured since the start of the war; the U.S. has contributed $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel in that time. 

Civility in American politics is a nice notion, and certainly an aspirational one, but it should not be the primary takeaway from a debate where one of the candidates denounced fact-checking and denied the truth of the 2016 presidential election; and where both candidates downplayed the severity of the war in Gaza. The Trump-Vance campaign has made its distaste for truth and its unwillingness to accept the proceedings of democracy clear. Trump has vowed to be a dictator on day one. There are certain dangers that surpass the confines of polite conversation; there are certain lies that do not warrant or deserve respect.