The vice presidential debate between Democrat Tom Kaine and Republican Mike Pence featured two candidates that you probably know so little about that you didn’t realize their names are actually Tim Kaine and Mike Pence.

In a race dominated by one outrageous egomaniac and one half-human/half-robot, it’s only natural that the vice presidential candidates are not getting much news coverage.

However, as bland as both Kaine and Pence are, they managed to talk over each other with almost as much zeal as Trump and Clinton during the first debate.

Nothing really spectacular happened and for the VP debate to effect the presidential race in any significant way, something spectacular needed to happen.

Kaine brought up Trump’s failure to release tax returns, citing Nixon’s release of his tax returns (noticeably refraining from invoking Watergate, for some reason.) Pence brought up Clinton’s deleted emails and, echoing a popular Trumpian refrain, called for her to “release” them.

As a side note to anyone that calls for this “release” of Clinton’s deleted emails: Do you know what the word “delete” means? Let me define it for you: it means they no longer exist. Like, at all. So what are you doing?

Apart from generic attacks on the integrity of the presidential candidates, the vice presidential debate was intended to consist of policy discussion, when the candidates weren’t interrupting each other and the moderator. This was probably the result of the questions the candidates were asked, which were more specific than the presidential debate questions, and allowed for actual substance to shine through the chaos.

Actual foreign policy was discussed, beyond the usual meaningless “America needs to lead” comments propagated by Clinton and Trump. Both Kaine and Pence seemed to agree on humanitarian safe zones in Syria. Pence actually deviated from Trump’s weird bromance with Putin, the autocratic president of Russia. But don’t take too much comfort in that fact: Pence basically argued for another Cold War.

Kaine had his own problems throughout the debate as well. He repeatedly talked over Pence when he said anything about Clinton and refused to stop his remarks when the moderator attempted to move on. This represented a weird switch from the presidential debate last Monday night, when Trump was the interrupter and Clinton remained calm.

There was one very important moment from the vice presidential debate that merits the consideration of voters. When the question of how each candidate dealt with conflicts between their deeply held religious beliefs and matters of policy was posed, Kaine and Pence did something remarkable. They actually listened to each other.

In fact, before answering, both candidates even acknowledged their mutual respect for the sincerity of the other’s faith.

This segment of the debate was unlike the rest, in that both candidates offered personal, obviously sincere responses. What’s more, this moment showed that the respect that exists between them could be more important than “winning” an argument. If more moments like this one could occur in our public discourse, our country might be better off.

Overall, the debate was nothing special, but that’s exactly what was expected.

Soon, the actual policy proposals that were addressed in the vice presidential debate will be shirked in favor of zingers and irrelevant insults. Just what our country needs.