Who Gets Voted Off the Island First: Vance or Walz?

Political debates are reality TV, except you might not get the edit you want

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The vice presidential debate between Senator JD Vance and Governor Tim Walz on October 1 — likely the last debate between top candidates before the U.S. presidential election in November — was recorded live. It wasn’t an “unscripted” edited episode of Survivor or, for that matter, RuPaul’s Drag Race (although Vance did wear a fuchsia tie). It was far from consistently entertaining; the pacing dragged. Even the moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan weren’t airbrushed into perfection, their false eyelashes all too evident in the harsh light.

But for me, when actual reality (yes, those beautiful pale women wear lots of makeup) peeks through the news stage set, it’s a feature not a bug, just as sweat stains and pimples occasionally make the edit of a reality TV show. And as I was watching the debate, I already knew the editing had begun. In many ways, political news coverage, before and after a live debate, is highly edited. That has to do with partisanship, of course, but it’s also the way news is presented and packaged.

Among all the who won?, snap polls, and “5 takeaways,” here’s a sample of commentary headlines afterward:

• “JD Vance Brings ‘Sanewashing’ to the Debate” (MSNBC)

• “It Was a Very Midwestern Debate. And Vance Won” (Politico)

• “The Moment When Vance Dodged a Jan. 6 Question but Said Plenty” (New York Times)

• “Walz Stuns Internet with VP Debate Gaffe: ‘I’ve Become Friends with School Shooters’” (Fox News)

And so on. The reality-TV frame becomes more explicit here: “Friendship Bracelets and Eyeliner: the Internet Reacts to the Vance-Walz Debate” (Guardian). Entertaining and funny and so reductive.¹

By the halfway point, I was bracing for Walz’s “knucklehead” edit — or the nervous-rabbit edit. It wasn’t a good look for him, until he pushed back on Vance’s “damn non-answer” about Trump’s 2020 election denial.

With Vance, it was the handsome-devil edit — or a villain edit, but the kind of smiling con artist who’s the last one standing on the island. He’s already being dubbed the “winner,” but remember Richard Hatch, who won the first season of Survivor in 2000?²

My headline: Vance Lies Shamelessly, While Walz Fumbles Like a Normal Person

Who are these guys trying to get our vote, anyway? In 2024, we’re in uncharted territory — to extend the Survivor reference — like opposing tribes heading for separate camps at the beginning of a game in which we’re hungry, can’t make fire, and get rained on. An actual election isn’t a game on a tropical island, even if a former reality-show star is running for president.³ Yet as a longtime Survivor fan, which I resisted for at least a decade after being irritated by Hatch’s win and all the hokey colonialism of thatched huts and idols, I’m hooked by the way its game-theory and social strategizing mimic reality.

Or more to the point of politics, they mimic the various storytelling tropes (winners and losers, heroes and villains) that manufacture personal authenticity and edit out the plodding of real life. Tim Walz’s humanity was well on display, because his nervousness and verbal stumbles (some of which made me wince) were what real people do in the unglamourous real world — they’re what I do when I’m teaching.

Teaching is a performance, but it’s also about connecting with people who are listening, addressing what they say, letting them speak, even if you don’t come up with the perfect remark. In comparison, JD Vance came off as the polished void that he is, smiling through a stream of lies that have since been fact-checked by many media outlets but which viewers didn’t receive context for as they flowed.

That’s because he’s not a teacher. He’s a salesman, and he’ll sell the heck out of his own “hillbilly” past, gun-toting “illegal aliens,” the “weird science” of climate change, and his fervent desire for women to “trust” him when it comes to abortion and reproductive health. Did I mention Trump’s bible or commemorative coins?

I’m pretty sure Vance got the edit he and his Republican supporters wanted with the debate. The funny thing is, his obviously fabricated authenticity (complete with pink tie and dagger-like blue eyes) may come back to bite him. He’s smooth, a barrage of a talker, an experienced media spinner, but that also makes him annoying and out of touch with the rest of us mess-ups. Recall his inability to order donuts, including his own meta-awareness of editing a performance, when he said of one counter clerk: “She doesn’t want to be on film, guys, so just cut her out of anything.”

I don’t always pick who wins on Survivor, but I like a little messiness, the stuff where contestants sound off or succumb to anxiety attacks. Because in the performative bubble of TV — and politics — the stuff that can’t be faked does matter. Just as when Walz pointed out that what presidents say matters.

The edit I want is probably clear: Vance the smiling villain gets blindsided and voted off within a few episodes. But if these two unlikely contenders make it to the finale, I hope they have to compete against each other by making fire. I’m thinking Tim Walz would ace a campfire. Too bad they weren’t set that challenge in the “real” debate.

1. In connecting politics and reality TV, I want to nod to Emily Nussbaum’s 2024 book Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV. Her fascinating social history of the rise and impact of reality television goes back to the 1950s and 1960s with Queen for a Day and Candid Camera. And yes, she covers not only Survivor but Donald Trump’s The Apprentice. By this point, even if you don’t like reality TV, you’ve likely been exposed to its techniques in documentaries, broadcast news, social media, and scripted faux documentary series like The Office.

2. A gay corporate consultant, Richard Hatch was far from likable, playing other contestants off each other. (One of those voted out called him a “snake.”) Nussbaum describes viewer perception of Hatch as “cold, rude, exhibitionistic” in Cue the Sun!, adding “With his big belly and urge to exert power, he bore some resemblance to the other antihero of that year” (Tony Soprano). Not long after Hatch’s 2000 Survivor win, he was convicted of tax evasion and is still battling the courts over it.

3. For an additional mash-up of politics and reality TV, the first person voted off the island in the current season of Survivor was Jon Lovett, a former speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the podcast host of Pod Save America.