A VP pick who knows his neighbours

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/08/2024 (663 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the intent was to pick a vice-presidential running mate who’s a complete counterpoint to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s choice, JD Vance, it can fairly be argued presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris succeeded.

In 60-year-old Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris has a potential VP who is an armed-forces veteran, a former high school teacher and football coach, a former U.S. congressman and two-term governor of a midwestern state with a population of less than six million.

He has also been described in numerous media reports as “aggressively normal,” a label that most definitely sets him apart from both halves of the Trump-Vance ticket.

In the lead-up to Harris’s announcement on Tuesday, Walz would not have been considered a front-runner in the Democratic running-mate sweepstakes. That distinction likely belonged to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a smoothly combative orator who represents a key battleground state, or perhaps Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut from another swing state that will very much be up for grabs this November.

Walz seems a strategically safe choice. There was no question Harris’s running mate was going to be a white male, given the barrier-breaking her own candidacy already represents.

And within the white male demographic, Walz is plain-spoken with an aw-shucks delivery but capable of landing a verbal haymaker — he is, after all, the Democrat who in a recent TV interview described Trump and Vance as a couple of “weird” guys, launching a talking point that is now commonly used against the GOP tandem.

After a whirlwind process that saw her effectively secure her party’s nomination and vet a wide field of potential running mates in just a couple of weeks, Harris’s next pressing task will be to introduce her newly chosen campaign partner to the American public.

A poll conducted for NPR and PBS earlier this month showed seven in 10 Americans don’t know enough about Walz to even have an opinion about him.

That will change, quickly, as the newly formed team begins to tour the country in advance of the Democratic Party convention (Aug. 19-22) in Chicago. Harris’s team will tout Walz’s progressive record on such issues as reproductive rights, gun control, climate change and clean energy, while Republicans will use those same issues to frame the Democrat as an extremist, and will also assail Walz for what they view as a weak response as Minnesota’s governor during the 2020 riots in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

If Tuesday’s introductory rally in Philadelphia is any indication, Americans can expect a whole lot of folksy charm and no-nonsense rhetoric from Walz.

While it’s true, based on past U.S. history, that the second name on either party’s ballot actually has almost no significant impact on the outcome of a presidential election, the selection of the Minnesota governor as Harris’s running mate does create an interesting possibility for Canadians.

With Walz having worked actively to enhance trade relations between his state and its northern neighbour (Canada is Minnesota’s largest trading partner) and Harris having lived in Montreal briefly during her teenage years, a Democratic win in November would ensure an administration with a working familiarity of, and perhaps even a productive respect for, Canada.

That’s a marked difference from what a second term for combatively isolationist Trump would bring.

The potential for a healthy cross-border relationship is just one more reason for Canadians to keep a close watch on an election whose impact on U.S. foreign relations — including with this country — will be massive.