The Politics of a Boring Suit

A night of few fireworks between the candidates was also a night of little sartorial flair. And that was the goal.

Before either Gov. Tim Walz or Senator JD Vance uttered a single word at Tuesday night’s debate, they’d already found consensus on one matter: They would appear unremarkable.

The candidates walked onto the stage at the CBS News studios in Manhattan in nearly identical, ho-hum dark suits and starched white shirts. Each man had an American flag tacked to his left lapel. Their ties were not-so-subtle beacons of their political teams: Mr. Walz in blue, Mr. Vance in red (though his suffered under the harsh lighting, rendering the shade more of a candy pink on many screens).

There were no signs of idiosyncratic quirkiness here. No plaid pocket square for Walz. No gingham button up for Vance. On display was the same unremarkable armor that male presidential and vice-presidential candidates have favored for the better part of the last century.

But, if their outfits were boring, perhaps that was the point. During this frenetic sprint of a presidential race, each candidate has been branded, often in fiery terms, as an extremist by his rival — conveying that staid continuity might be seen as strategic.

Mr. Vance, with his false comments about pet-eating migrants and polarizing views about women, has been a sitting target for progressive pundits. Mr. Walz himself soared up the Democratic Party ranks by hurling the term “weird” at Mr. Vance and his fellow Republicans. At the same time, the Minnesota governor, with his legislative track record and history of visits to China (even the exaggerated versions), has been branded by Republicans as a Marxist radical.

There was certainly nothing radical in how either man looked at the debate.

“Bog standard” was how David Redlawsk, professor of political science at the University of Delaware, described the pair’s matching blank shirts and postage-stamp-size pins. Mr. Redlawsk did point out that Mr. Walz’s suit was shades darker than Mr. Vance’s, that his lighter blue was “a bit more professional looking” than Mr. Walz’s funereal black.

For both candidates it was a windy path to C-SPAN standard. When Mr. Vance sidled into public view in the midaughts as the author of the best seller “Hillbilly Elegy,” he dressed like an Eddie Bauer catalog model, in scuffed desert boots, his checked shirts tucked into slender jeans. Only in the past few years, as the junior senator from Ohio, has Mr. Vance fallen into the Capitol Hill standard suit-and-tie attire.

At 40, Mr. Vance has shed the boyish heft he carried a half-decade ago. Though he remains an outlier in politics for merely having a beard (he is the first major party nominee with facial hair in 75 years), that scruff was well maintained on Tuesday night, with crisp edges, as if he buzzed it seconds before stepping behind the dais.

As for Mr. Walz, it was just two years ago, during a gubernatorial debate at Farmfest in Minnesota’s rural Redwood County, that Mr. Walz sparred with opponents in a T-shirt and forest green cap. On Tuesday his stock suit strove to show the distance he had traveled.

But really, what might matter more is that what Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance wore for their debate won’t be much remembered at all. Their conventional looks were evidence that they wouldn’t crowd out their partners at the top of the respective tickets — singular figures with singular looks.

Ms. Harris, the first woman of color in U.S. history to become a major-party candidate, has eschewed the pantsuits of yore. She arrived at last month’s presidential debate not in an expected suffrage white pantsuit (as Hillary Clinton had during one of her debates) but in a demure dark-hued version. It was a style all her own.

And nearly a decade into his political career, Donald Trump has turned a baggy suit and long red tie, along with a shock of hair and a tan, into an unforgettable signature look.

There were no signatures to take in on Tuesday night. Just forgettable suits.

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