The vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) was nearly the polar opposite of the clash in last week’s debate between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden. In fact, the one doing the most interrupting last night was the moderator, USA Today’s Susan Page, whose focus on holding the candidates to two-minute answers and an absurd 15 seconds for rebuttals bordered on the obsessive. That said, while Pence didn’t come away unscathed, he was the clear winner.

Harris’s strongest moments came early. She came out blasting Trump and Pence over their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, hyperbolically asserting that it is “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.” Her most potent accusation centered on Trump’s comments to Bob Woodward. “They knew what was happening, and they didn’t tell you,” she declared. “They knew and they covered it up.” It was clear that Biden, Harris, and their fellow Democrats share the same sentiments as Jane Fonda, who said, “COVID is God’s gift to the Left.”

However, after weathering the storm of Harris’s hysterical and factually inaccurate retelling of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic, Pence deftly countered by observing that Biden’s plan for confronting the coronavirus was essentially the same as Trump’s. “It looks a little bit like plagiarism,” he quipped, “which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about.” Furthermore, Pence slammed Harris for undermining confidence in a coronavirus vaccine after she said she would refuse a vaccine if Trump recommended it, telling her to “stop playing politics with people’s lives.”

As the debate wore on, it become clear that, beyond hitting Trump for COVID-19 and fearmongering over his putative plan to end ObamaCare, Harris had little ammunition and even fewer facts. Even Harris’s histrionics regarding Abraham Lincoln’s supposed refusal to nominate a justice for the Supreme Court during an election year fell flat, primarily due to her condescending quip about teaching Pence a history lesson. And most egregiously, Harris’s “history” lesson was so grossly inaccurate it could only be classified as a fabrication.

Meanwhile, Pence worked to effectively expose the extreme radical policy positions of the Biden-Harris ticket. His biggest moment came as he doggedly went after Harris over her refusal to answer whether she and Biden would pack the Supreme Court. After noting her stonewalling, Pence astutely surmised that a non-answer was in fact an answer in the affirmative — that Biden and Harris would indeed pack the Court.

While Harris was light on facts, she certainly wasn’t thin on bloviation — especially when it came to spouting outright lies, with the biggest being the “very fine people” hoax.

Since Biden chose to make this lie the centerpiece of his campaign by claiming it was the very reason he decided to run, Harris, being the good little soldier, had to repeat the demonstrably false claim: “[President Trump] called Mexicans ‘rapists’ and ‘criminals.’ He instituted, as his first act, a ‘Muslim ban.’ He — on the issue of Charlottesville, where people were peacefully protesting the need for racial justice, where a young woman was killed, and on the other side, there were neo-Nazis, carrying tiki torches, shouting racial epithets, antisemitic slurs, and Donald Trump, when asked about it said: ‘There were fine people on both sides.’ This is who we have as the president of the United States — and America, you deserve better. Joe Biden will be a president who brings our country together and recognizes the beauty in our diversity, and the fact that we have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Fortunately, Pence didn’t leave Harris’s slanderous claims unchecked. “You know,” he mused, “I think this is one of the things that makes people dislike the media so much in this country, Susan, is that you selectively edit — just like Senator Harris did — the comments that President Trump and I and others on our side of the aisle make. I mean, Senator Harris conveniently omitted [that] after the president made comments about people on either side of the debate over monuments, he condemned the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, and has done so repeatedly. You’re concerned that he ‘doesn’t condemn neo-Nazis’? President Trump has Jewish grandchildren! His daughter and son-in-law are Jewish. This is a president who respects and cherishes all of the American people.”

In the final analysis, Pence was the clear winner as he was strong on substance, policy distinctions, and temperament. He made a clear case for reelecting Trump by highlighting the administration’s impressive accomplishments and exposing the extremism of the Biden/Harris ticket, while displaying a clear concern and love for the nation. Harris was more energetic and clearly comfortable in the role of Biden’s attack dog, but she too often came across as condescending (“I will not be lectured to”) and self-righteous. We were left wondering if Harris even views Trump as a fellow human being. With her incessant laughing, exaggerated smiles, and constant head-shaking (all borrowed from Biden’s 2012 debate with Paul Ryan), what she communicated was that her distain for Trump was her primary motivation for seeking election, not love of country or concern for bettering the lives of American people.

Will Pence’s performance move the needle for Trump? That remains to be seen, but it’s certainly clear that Pence did his boss and his country proud. Harris did what was expected and avoided any major gaffes, but she did nothing to improve her low likability as the real top of the Democrat ticket.

(Edited.)