The Democratic National Convention put forward a non-traditional, soft version of American masculinity. In place of svelte musculature and stoic bearing it elevated to a place of honor dad bods the Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff together with vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz. Both men put on touchy-feely “girl dad” personas—Emhoff was seen embracing his 25-year-old daughter Ella, who’s become a  tattooed hipster mascot of the DNC while Walz’s daughter made heart gestures at her dad during his acceptance speech.

Feminist pundit Jill Filipovic gushed: “‘Sweet dads who love their kids’ really a theme at the DNC this year.” Never mind that the “sweet dad” Emhoff once knocked up the nanny and likely paid for her abortion. That episode led to divorce and arguably his daughter’s hatred of all things that are, like her dad, Jewish. The Second Daughter said she doesn’t identify with her father’s lineage and fundraised for Hamas in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. But pretend Doug’s betrayals didn’t happen.

Even then what the DNC is selling is a wronged woman’s idea of a good dad. The archetype they’re after is a woman who has been used by selfish men and is now content with living vicariously through the spectacle of news channel queen bees and their nice husbands. She may believe she is watching the hopeful solution to her own bitter life, but in reality, it’s just another version of it.

It’s not wrong for men to be sweet with their children, of course, but the role of a father is different from that of the mother—father is the law. Father explains right and the wrong and the consequences of transgressions. Gender experiments, workplace dynamics, and shifting family needs can pull society every which way, but mother is still nurturing, and father is logical and disciplined. Walz’s DNC performance fell short of that expectation.                                                                                                                                  

His acceptance speech was big on theatrics the men in football uniforms center stage, his “mind your own damn business” catchphrase—but low on substance. The surprisingly short address did not dwell on policy. The lack of masculine intellectual rigor is contrasted by his own recent vignette about the olden days when his relatives talked about infrastructure over Thanksgiving. If these folksy Midwesterners geeked out over the details of majestic government projects, why can’t he?

I don’t want to suggest that it’s weird for a man and a father to be an aesthete, to be bored with policy and excel in creating moods. It is, however, a decadent niche—not something to be looked for in a politician. But even by this standard the vice-presidential candidate’s place in the campaign of vibes provides low brow physical comedy. There is no wit, the kind of humor Americans expect from their leaders, only, as countless commentators have pointed out, sitcom dad buffoonery. And it’s demeaning to men.

His failure as a comic stands in contrast to the male comedians who showed up in full force at the DNC. Alex Strenger, expertly trolled the BBC pretending to be one of the #WhiteDudesForKamala who uses he/they pronouns and “learned so much” from his wife’s black lover. The writer and filmmaker Matt Walsh also went undercover fishing for content for his upcoming feature Am I Racist? and ended up getting Don Lemon to promote it. Lionel McGolin’s interviews revealed the tormented personal lives of the rank-and-file assembled at the DNC and the punitive plans of Washington insiders who can’t wait to tax rich white men.

True comedy is threatening because it unmasks hidden truths and challenges the established order. By contrast, Walz’s shtick is to constantly point to Harris while drowning himself in purposeless physical movement. His physical comedy is obliging and stylized to draw attention away from milady’s verbal awkwardness.

Walz’s stage-managed eccentricities fail to conceal the fact that his personality, while stereotypically fitting for a politician, hardly makes him a model father. I am referring, of course, to the fact that Walz is a compulsive liar.

He lied, most notoriously, about his military service. On multiple occasions the governor of Minnesota misrepresented his rank and implied that he saw combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. A recent letter from Republican veterans in Congress accused Walz of stolen valor:

You have stated you are ‘damn proud’ of your service, and like any American veteran should be. But there is no honor in lying about the nature of your service. Repeatedly claiming to be a ‘retired command sergeant major’ when you did not complete the requirements was not honorable.

Nor was it honorable to claim to carry weapons ‘in war’ when you had not served in war, and abandoning the men and women under your leadership just as they were getting ready to deploy was certainly not honorable either.

While the Minnesota governor was, as he often says, “deployed” during the Iraq war, he typically doesn’t qualify that he was deployed to Europe in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and that he unexpectedly retired a few short months before his scheduled rotation to the Middle Eastern country. His surprised retirement left the men formerly under his command wondering what would happen next. A father figure worth imitating would never bail on his subordinates.          

If Walz’s anti-Second Amendment motive for lying about carrying weapons “in war” is obvious, the motive for his other trademark lie is difficult to decipher. Time and again the governor claimed to have been the “coach” of an award-winning high school football team when he was only a walk-on assistant. The Harris-Walz campaign repeatedly exaggerated and played into this self-aggrandizement, printing “Coach Walz” signs and, as I mentioned above, making a show of young men in football uniforms at the convention. This woke socialist buffoon can’t resist bending the truth.

Equally baffling is the way Walz deceived the public about his private life, namely about his children and their supposed conception via IVF. Again, I can see the political rationale—the current campaign line is that Donald Trump would ban IVF, so a story of personal suffering and transcendence helps the ticket. But Walz’s children owe their lives to a different procedure called intrauterine insemination (IUI). Post-speech defenses of the VP hopeful  that ordinary people call all fertility treatments IVF ring hollow. First, people don’t and secondly a vice-presidential candidate should be expected to be precise about both his biography and his policy proposals. The latter brings us back to the question of Walz’s lack of substance.

The Harris-Walz ticket balances the supposed joviality of Walz with the purported “warrior for justice” Kamala assuming the more traditional masculine role. She is the prosecutor who fights, the nation is told. The feminist Washington Post commentator Catherine Rampell imagines her being a part of power couple with Emhoff—both alphas, but she is “alphier,” thus he gave up his career to support her. Rampell is so impressed by this apparent self-abnegation of a powerful man, she declares the meek-bodied cheater Doug a “progressive sex symbol.”

Prosecutorial impulse is inherent in the female psyche. It’s a Karen move, but women attach themselves to power, demanding security and retribution. Men, on the other hand, tend to have a rebellious streak and identify with the outlaw. This fact alone can explain the enormous gender gap in voters’ presidential preferences this election. Women, particularly single women who have had their fair share of romantic misadventures, choose Kamala, the prosecutor—she will avenge them—and men choose Trump, the singular character they want on their team.

The idea that Harris is some sort of uber-alpha is pure fairytale. Sure, standing at a podium with the lights pointing at her she can tell a heckler “I am speaking.” But there is a four-year-old video of an unscripted Chuck Schumer barely moving his lips to put her in her place. Since her stint as Willie Brown’s girlfriend, the current veep has been a loyal machine apparatchik. Today, she lends feminist vibes to what is widely believed to be a Barack Obama operation. Emhoff is probably there for his nest egg.

It will serve American women well to recognize these power dynamics—otherwise they will end up disappointed, not only because they will be chasing the unattainable but because they will open themselves to abuse. In his DNC speech, Barack Obama urged listeners to trust the government:

The other side knows it’s easier to play on people’s fears and cynicism. They will tell you that government is inherently corrupt.

Considering he is likely part of the shadow government, Obama’s statement is not unlike a master manipulator telling his lover to trust him. It should be a red flag, and deep down, the liberal women casting ballots for Kamala understand what’s happening—and yet comply. There are many wronged women in this country but acting on that disappointment is likely to make them disappointed again.

Each family has its own moments of unhappiness and the dynamics of the interaction between the sexes is an inescapable part of life. But if a mother can get away with being nurturing alone, the father’s mission is to set his children straight. A pathological bullshitter cannot transfer to his children an honorable moral code, no matter how jovial or soft he comes across.

A good man doesn’t need to be an “alpha”—whatever that means—but he surely can’t be defined by “sweetness.” Progressive ideology may tickle women’s imaginations by reversing the expected sex roles, but it offers little besides corruption. Don’t trust the men promoting it.