The vice-presidential debate Tuesday night was a civil, relatively restrained debate about the issues facing American voters during the 2024 election campaign.

That made it unlike the two presidential debates that took place earlier this year.

There were moments when JD Vance, the Republican candidate, bristled at what he though was unfair fact-checking from the two CBS moderators, and at one point the microphones of both candidates were temporarily muted.

But for the most part, the exchanges between the two – and between the candidates and the moderators – were civil.

In fact, there were times when the two candidates agreed – and said so.

“There’s a lot of commonality here,” Democrat Tim Walz said toward the end of the evening.

When the topic turned to affordable housing, co-moderator Nora O’Donnell noted that both candidates seemed to care strongly about the issue. And when Walz, running with Kamala Harris, spoke of his 17-year-old witnessing a shooting at a community center, Vance seemed genuinely concerned.

“I’m sorry about that and I hope he’s doing OK,” Vance said. “Christ have mercy, it is awful.”

A tempered debate, with few political body blows, probably served Vance best in the end, as it gave him space to defend his running mate, Donald Trump, and smooth over some of the former president’s rougher edges.

“Something these guys do is make a lot of claims that if Donald Trump becomes president, all these terrible things will come true,” he said. “He did his job, which is govern in a bipartisan way.”

If Vance was picked because he put some ideological meat on the bones of Trump’s conservative populism, on Wednesday night Vance also put a police, humble face on them, as well.

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North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.