Mike Pence defended Donald J. Trump by scarcely defending him at all.

For 90 minutes on Tuesday night, Mr. Pence, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, was asked, over and over, to carry out perhaps the most unenviable, thankless and futile task in American politics: answering for Mr. Trump’s cruel name-calling, factual distortions and radical proposals.

Instead, he dodged, deflected and demurred — deciding, it seemed, that all of the fires that Mr. Trump has set in the past year could not be doused in a single night.

When his Democratic rival, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, delivered a scorching rebuke of Mr. Trump’s affection for autocrats like Vladimir V. Putin and Saddam Hussein, both of whom he has praised, Mr. Pence, the governor of Indiana, looked over, weighed the message and promptly changed the subject.

“Did you work on that one a long time?” Mr. Pence mischievously asked his rival. “Because that had a lot of really creative lines in it.”