Where Kaine should have calmly shredded his opponent’s inconsistencies, he came across as the nervous and jittery one – interrupting Pence far too often 
 
 Donald Trump’s running mate casually slipped a damning indictment of his boss into the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday. 
 
 
 
 Unfortunately for Democrats, it was all but completely muffled by the clumsy sound of their vice-presidential nominee interrupting. 
 
 Trump on trial: Pence defends running mate against Kaine's attacks in debate Read more 
 
 This was a perfect moment for Tim Kaine to keep calm and ask his opponent to carry on. 
 
 “He’s not a polished politician like you and Hillary Clinton,” began Mike Pence, after he was challenged for the umpteenth time to explain away one of Trump’s absurd outbursts. 
 
 But Kaine proved he was not quite polished enough to accept the back-handed compliment and proceeded to talk loudly over Pence at just the wrong moment. 
 
 Close examination of the tape reveals the Indiana governor went on to dig the hole for Trump deeper, confirming what is becoming increasingly obvious to many aghast Americans by acknowledging: “Things don’t always come out exactly the way he means.” 
 
 These mistakes pouring from the top of the ticket were “small potatoes”, Pence later insisted unconvincingly, but the night will be remembered less for GOP candour than the continued failure of Democrats to bury their rivals once and for all. 
 
 Where Kaine should have calmly shredded the inconsistencies between Trump and the rest of planet Republican, he came across as the nervous and jittery one – interrupting so often, he then had to reassure the moderator that “we’re having fun” when asked to cool it. 
 
 It would not have mattered if the putdowns were landing on target, but Kaine’s zingers often fell flat. “Do you want a ‘you’re hired’ president or a ‘you’re fired’ president?” joked the Democrat in a particularly wooden reference to Trump’s catchphrase on The Apprentice. 
 
 A more surreal misfire came when Kaine suggested the Republicans were erecting an alternative Mount Rushmore in honour of dictators such as Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-un. 
 
 VP debate fact-check: Mike Pence and Tim Kaine's claims reviewed Read more 
 
 It all merely provided Pence with an opportunity to remind viewers that Clinton’s prepared jokes had often felt equally awkward during her otherwise strong debate performance against Trump last week. 
 
 On style, Pence wiped the floor with his opponent this time around: speaking directly to the camera with crinkly eyes and borrowed Ronald Reagan quips (“there they go again”) to reassure viewers that Trump was not quite the unaccompanied minor he may appear to be on TV. 
 
 And yet, on matters of substance, so much of what the vice-presidential nominee had to say in defence of his boss did not pass the smell test. Pence even contradicted himself by insisting he had never called Putin a better leader than Barack Obama. When it came to dealing with the facts, the otherwise rational-sounding governor borrowed from the post-truth politics of Trump to appeal to the gut rather than the head: “Honestly you can roll out the numbers, but people in Scranton know different.” 
 
 Yet Kaine made this scratchy debate even harder to watch than the car crash performance of Trump, missing a chance to bury him further beneath the cold hard logic of the Clinton ascendancy. 
 
 Nearly 40% of Americans polled beforehand said they could not name either vice-presidential nominee. It is a figure unlikely to have been improved by Tuesday night’s performance. ||||| FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2016, file photo, Longwood University students walk to class at the school in Farmville, Va. The school is hosting the vice presidential debate on Oct. 4. Tuesday night’s vice... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2016, file photo, Longwood University students walk to class at the school in Farmville, Va. The school is hosting the vice presidential debate on Oct. 4. Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — We interrupt this year's slugfest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to bring you their understudies: two low-key, middle-aged guys. 
 
 Tuesday night's vice presidential debate between Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia pits a former radio host who's described himself as "Rush Limbaugh on decaf" against a harmonica-playing former missionary whose aw-shucks style has spawned a thousand dad jokes. 
 
 Barring the unexpected, their 90-minute faceoff is unlikely to alter the trajectory of the presidential race. 
 
 But don't hit the snooze button just yet. Debate history suggests there's still the potential for some memorable moments. 
 
 Some things to watch for in Tuesday's debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. 
 
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 SAY WHO? 
 
 Pence and Kaine have campaigned full tilt for more than two months now, but plenty of people still don't have a feel for them. In a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, more than half of registered voters said they didn't know enough about Kaine to venture an opinion about him, and about 44 percent said the same for Pence. This is their big moment to show they're qualified to be next in line to the president. 
 
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 SCOUT MOTTO 
 
 Trump may disdain traditional debate prep, but Kaine and Pence both have embraced the Scout motto: Be prepared. Each must be ready to defend his own record, skewer his opponent and do the same for the top of the ticket. 
 
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 THE MISSION 
 
 Pence and Kaine have to decide whether to focus more on one another or on Trump and Clinton. Watch how they toggle between the two tasks. Look for Pence, who calls Clinton "the most dishonest person ever to seek the presidency," to zero in on lines of attack that Trump hardly touched in the first debate, such as questions about whether Clinton played favorites as secretary of state with donors to the Clinton Foundation. Kaine will try to act as a character witness for Clinton and go after Trump, of whom the senator says his "only recognized passion in his life has been for himself." 
 
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 DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE 
 
 Pence will have the added herculean task of explaining away the steady stream of insults, barbs and inflammatory comments delivered by his running mate, including the latest contretemps over a beauty queen whom Trump has shamed for gaining weight. Pence has had plenty of practice in recent weeks. Expect him to employ a strategy of praising Trump for his unscripted style as a "bold truth teller" without arguing the merits of the GOP nominee's specific comments. 
 
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 THREADING THE NEEDLE 
 
 Both candidates may need to navigate areas where they have policy differences with their running mates; Pence more so than Kaine. Pence, for example, says it's clear that human activity is affecting the climate while Trump has called global warming a hoax. Kaine holds that U.S. military operations against the Islamic State group have not been properly approved by Congress, a point of disagreement with Clinton. 
 
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 AMEN CORNER 
 
 Expect both Pence, an evangelical, and Kaine, a former Catholic missionary, to showcase their religious backgrounds in an effort to appeal to different constituencies. Pence likes to say of himself: "I'm a Christian, a conservative and a Republican — in that order." Kaine often brings up his time as a missionary in Honduras, working in a few lines of Spanish along the way to reach out to Hispanics. 
 
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 TOO CLEVER? 
 
 Past vice presidential debates have provided some memorable lines. Republican Bob Dole's cutting quip in 1976 about all the Americans killed in "Democrat wars" did him no good. Democrat Lloyd Bentsen's 1988 putdown of Republican Dan Quayle with his "You're no Jack Kennedy" line still singes. Third-party candidate James Stockdale's rambling 1992 opening questions of "Who am I? Why am I here?" captured a candidate who was clearly out of his element. Four years ago, Vice President Joe Biden's denunciations of Republican Paul Ryan's budget math as "a bunch of malarkey" showed considerably more spark than did President Barack Obama's leaden performance against rival Mitt Romney in the leadoff debate. 
 
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 MODERATION 
 
 CBS News' Elaine Quijano will be under the microscope as moderator, especially since Trump has complained that NBC's Lester Holt, the moderator of last week's debate, was too tough on him. 
 
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 Associated Press writers Kathleen Ronayne in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/nbenac
– Moderator Elaine Quijano did her best to keep the candidates in check at Tuesday's vice presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., and it was a night of plenty of interruptions, aggressive challenges, and spirited defenses as Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine finally met head to head, the AP reports. Some of the night's highlights: Both candidates came out of the gate ready to rumble, with each one playing the role of defender for their respective running mates. The AP notes that the "usually easygoing" Kaine went after Pence right from the get-go, to which the "unflappable" Pence did a lot of head-shaking, laughing, and lobbing accusations of a Kaine-Clinton "insult-driven campaign." Kaine did get in zingers (or what Pence at one point called an extension of the Democratic campaign's "avalanche of insults), including saying that Donald Trump "loves dictators"—"He's got like a personal Mount Rushmore: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Moammar Gadhafi, and Saddam Hussein"—and claiming that Clinton would be a "you're hired" president, while Trump would be a "you're fired" president, tapping into Trump's oft-used line from The Apprentice. Pence dismissed Kaine's lobs as "pre-done" lines, per ABC News. Trump's tax returns were broached, with Pence noting his running mate had faced some "pretty tough times" in the mid-'90s (including apparently taking a $1B loss in 1995), but that he worked the tax code "brilliantly" to his advantage. Kaine, however, said Trump should release his tax returns, audit or no audit, noting the GOP nominee should at least meet the "Nixon standard," per CNN. (Nixon tried to keep his tax records from the public for similar auditing reasons in 1973.) Russian President Vladimir Putin also entered the conversation, with Kaine accusing Trump of calling Putin a better leader than President Obama, and Pence deflecting those accusations. "Putin's run his economy into the ground, he persecutes LGBT folks and journalists," Kaine said, per the Los Angeles Times. "If you don't know the difference between dictatorship and leadership, then you have got to go back to a fifth-grade civics class."