In his occasional New York Post column this morning, David Harsanyi mocks the deep thoughts of our eminently mockable Minnesota Governor Tim Walz:
Former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz recently told an audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School that former Vice President Kamala Harris chose him as a running mate because of his uncanny ability to connect with the average Caucasian cisgender dude.
“I could code talk to white guys — watching football, fixing their truck,” he explained. “I was the permission structure to say, ‘Look, you can do this and vote for this.’”
It’s true, all the fellas are talking about “permission structures” these days.
Alas, the White Guy Whisperer didn’t really help the Democratic ticket at all in 2024.
In my own Wall Street Journal column on Walz’s selection as Kamala Harris’s running mate on the morning after, I foresaw (forgive me for quoting myself):
Like so many Democrats who have kept up with the demands of the progressive agenda, Mr. Walz has “grown” in office. In his second term, he has been the most left-wing Minnesota governor since the socialist Floyd B. Olson (1931-36). I doubt that Mr. Walz could be elected to Congress in his old district, which is now represented by a Republican. The idea that he can appeal to voters who don’t already support Ms. Harris seems far-fetched.
However, I did not foresee that Walz would display the effeminate theatrics that helped make him a joke on the national stage. I did not foresee that he would be exposed as a compulsive liar or wear out his welcome within two or three weeks, if not days. Accustomed to the oversize “permission structure” of his home state media — the operative “permission structure” in this case — Walz was unprepared even for the mildly critical treatment he received from the national press.
