Senator JD Vance of Ohio and governor Tim Walz of Minnesota clashed Tuesday in a vice-presidential debate in which Vance’s well-honed, television-friendly style came up against an aw-shucks approach from Walz that was at times nervous and halting.

But Walz found his footing late, when the debate turned to the question of former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.

When he directly asked Vance if Trump lost in 2020, the Republican said he was “focused on the future” — with Walz calling it a “damning non-answer”. It was perhaps the sharpest exchange of the night.

Vance, the Republican, and Walz, the Democrat, kept disagreements civil and almost entirely avoided personal attacks as they answered questions about news stories of the day, including Iran’s attack on Israel and Walz’s false claim that he had been in Hong Kong during China’s deadly crackdown on the Tiananmen protests in 1989.

“I’m a knucklehead at times,” Walz said in a meandering response that provided little clarity about his misleading comments.

Vance had his work cut out for him, too, during the 107-minute debate broadcast from New York.

Time and again, he tried to rewrite Trump’s four years in office — which ended with a deadly pandemic and economic recession — in ways that bordered on brazen. He described Trump’s anti-abortion position as a desire “to make it easier for moms to have babies.”

And on Trump’s repeated failures to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which he had promised to do during his 2016 campaign, Vance praised the former President for leaving health-care options in place for Americans.

Both Walz and Vance also avoided giving a straight answer when asked whether they would support Israel if it launched a pre-emptive military strike against Iran.

While neither candidate seemed to land the kind of viral knockout blow that can make a debate memorable, they both generally accomplished the golden measure of a vice- presidential debate: Do no harm to your running mate.

Vance delivered the message that Trump so often failed to hit in his presidential debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris last month: Democrats have been in charge for four years, and things have not got better.

Walz did his best to imitate the approach that Harris used in her debate with Trump, attacking on Trump’s character and performance in the White House. But he sometimes stumbled over his words.

On immigration, Walz referred to false claims by Vance about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of residents in Springfield, Ohio. “There are consequences for this,” Walz said. To this, Vance replied, “The people I care most about in Springfield are the American citizens.”

New York Times News Service and Reuters