Minnesota Governor Tim Walz served a long time in the National Guard, was a teacher, and a member of Congress for 12 years. As governor, he promoted, for example, free school meals, the fight against climate change or the expansion of paid leave. What would you add to his portrait?
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Kamala Harris could have chosen much more interesting personalities. The man who was a naval pilot, the man who became an astronaut and then a senator. People who have mountains of positive results behind them. Tim Walz is perfectly normal compared to them. He is a person who looks and talks like an ordinary American.
Does this mean that he is not a prominent figure in American politics?
He is striking in how inconspicuous he is. Among politicians you will find people with huge self-confidence, people who have accumulated billions of fortunes, who have climbed the Himalayas or achieved something huge.
Tim Walz is a man who has been down to earth his whole life. He is a Midwesterner, which in itself indicates a certain type of American. And it’s in the context of the American Midwest, the part of America that you fly through because the main life is either on the East Coast or the West Coast, that this person is interesting because he’s even more normal than other normal people.
In the profiles, we read that he supports women’s right to abortion, that he supports the LGBTQ community, that he supports longer vacations, paid vacations, but also that he was a hunter, that he supports the right to bear arms, which of course is a big topic in the United States lately. How does this all fit together?
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It all goes together. For example, he explained that it took his wife seven years to conceive. During these long years, he learned what pregnancy means to a woman. So, for example, when he supports the right of women to decide whether or not to be pregnant, it is not an expression of his socialism or communism, but a life experience.
The fact that he supports the right to keep guns is in turn an expression of being from the Midwest, where people actually use guns to hunt, not to put them in their pockets and go drink at a bar where anything can happen.
Tim Walz supports things that are normal in Europe, like longer paid holidays
It also supports the idea that there should be somewhat longer paid vacation in America, which certainly shouldn’t look like some kind of socialism in Europe. This was introduced by Bismarck in the 19th century. My daughters in the United States have a vacation that is literally 10 days a year. And if they took these 10 days in one piece, everyone would look at them as lazy, which is why Americans usually take day two to add to a longer weekend.
So it is necessary to understand that he is not some social engineer who wants to change the face of America, but he is a person who wants to bring normal things that have been common in Europe and maybe elsewhere since the 19th century.
Why did Kamala Harris choose a person who is remarkable for being unremarkable?
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I think she chose him precisely because she herself is part African-American, part Asian-American, part white, which of course makes her stand out and attract attention in this election. A candidate for the office of president has to choose his running mate to run for the office of vice president, and there needs to be a balance in that.
So, for example, because she is a woman, she chooses a man, because having two women might be difficult for the American electorate to accept. And since she stands out in the categories I mentioned, maybe that’s why she chose a person who doesn’t stand out at all.
I’m sure she talked to him at length to make sure there was good personal chemistry between them, that in short, they would be able to sit side by side for at least four years, if not eight, solving one crisis after another. Because that’s the nature of working in the White House…
How does Donald Trump’s choice compare to Kamala Harris’ choice? And how important are vice presidential candidates in US elections? Do they decide? Listen to the entire Twenty Minutes of Radio Journal.
