Feisty and unfazed in veep debate

Kaine and Pence in their vice presidential debate Tuesday night

 

By Ray O’Hanlon

With just about a month to go before the presidential election, the only certain thing that can be said is that the next vice president will be Irish American.

With Irish American Joe Biden currently holding the job this ethnic like-for-like transition will amount to the nearest thing to guaranteed continuity in a most volatile electoral year.

Tim Kaine and Mike Pence duked it out in their one and only debate Tuesday night, but it was Democratic vice presidential candidate Kaine who dropped the “Irish” into the exchange by at one point citing the discrimination faced by Irish immigrants in past times.

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To an observer unfamiliar with the backgrounds of both men, Kaine was indeed the Irish guy in the fray, at least in terms of the pugnacious style that script writers would likely demand of an actor playing an Irish political role.

And Kaine himself confirmed this image the following day at a rally in Philadelphia.

"The debate was a little feisty. I gotta admit, I am Irish," Kaine said.

Wherever he was, Joe Biden, the essence of feisty Irishness, was laughing along with Kaine’s admission.

Republican Mike Pence is Irish too, of course.

But Pence doesn’t quite fit the classical feisty Irish mold in the way that Kaine does.

Pence, who spent boyhood days in Sligo and Clare, can lay claim to an Irish grandfather, Richard Cawley, a bus driver in Chicago.

During the debate, Pence also referred to an unnamed uncle who was a Chicago cop.

No name was mentioned, but it’s a fair bet he was talking about a classic American symbol: a big city Irish cop.

Pence doesn’t do feisty like Kaine does.

He’s lower key and cooler.

Kaine – with roots in Kilkenny and Longford - mentioned Ronald Reagan (Tipperary) several times in the debate, but it was Pence who debated rather more like the two term Republican president.

His style versus substance tactic, if it was a tactic, seemed to score better with people responding to post-debate polls.

Sometimes feisty does it, sometimes it doesn’t.

That said, Kaine isn’t apologizing for his feisty style.

And Mike Pence remains unfazed.

 

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