Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence delivered a polished and confident debate performance on Tuesday, attacking Hillary Clinton for decisions he called irresponsible and a foreign policy record he called “weak and feckless.”

He had a big problem, though: he is the running mate of Donald Trump.

Pence, the governor of Indiana, used the lone vice-presidential debate against Democrat Tim Kaine to offer up a standard Republican vision – a tough stand on illegal immigrants and Russian aggression, unyielding support for the police, low taxes – that sometimes bore little resemblance to the unorthodox platform put forward by Trump himself.

He was calmer and smoother than Kaine, especially in the debate’s first half-hour, when Kaine interrupted him repeatedly. But he had no real answers to his rival’s criticism of the outrages of the demagogue at the top of the Republican ticket.

Time after time, Pence either ignored Kaine’s points or denied that Trump had said things that he did, in fact, say.

In one especially audacious moment, he accused Kaine of uttering an “avalanche of insults” for simply listing insults actually uttered by Trump. Later, he claimed, falsely, that it was “absolutely false” that Trump had vowed to keep out migrants who are Muslim.

He issued only feeble retorts when Kaine cornered him with Trump’s words.

“Donald Trump during his campaign has called Mexicans rapists and criminals. He’s called women slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting. I don’t like saying that in front of my wife and my mother. He attacked an Indiana-born federal judge and said he was unqualified to hear a federal lawsuit because his parents were Mexican,” Kaine said. He concluded: “If you want to have a society where people are respected and respect laws, you can’t have somebody at the top who demeans every group that he talks about.”

In the last 15 minutes, Kaine pressed Pence on why Trump had called for women who obtain abortions to be punished if, as Pence said, he did not believe this. Pence’s response: “He’s not a polished politician like you and Hillary Clinton.” When Kaine again raised Trump’s campaign-opening accusation that Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals, Pence protested that Kaine had omitted the part where Trump said some were also good people.

Kaine, a Virginia senator and former governor, pounced on Pence’s evasions in the debate’s final half-hour.

“He’s refused to defend his running mate,” Kaine said. “And yet he is asking everybody to vote for somebody that he cannot defend.”

The debate came a week after the first debate between Clinton and Trump, which Clinton won handily, and after perhaps the rockiest week of Trump’s roller-coaster campaign – during which he engaged in a prolonged attack on a Latina former beauty queen, lashed out at Clinton’s health and marriage, and struggled to respond to a bombshell New York Times report that showed he lost more than $900 million in one year in the 1990s and may not have paid federal taxes for 18 years.

The debate, at Longwood University in tiny Farmville, Virginia, presented none of the dramatic visual contrasts of the Clinton-Trump clash. Though Kaine is a liberal and Pence is a conservative, they are both affable longtime politicians, vocal Christians and white men.

CNN’s focus group of undecided voters gave Kaine a decisive win; focus groups held by Fox News and CBS gave Pence a decisive win, with voters critical of Kaine’s interruptions and tone. Regardless, it was unclear whether the debate would matter much in a race between two polarizing heavyweights. Not one person in the CBS group said it would affect their vote.

Pence’s divergence from his running mate was starkest on the matter of Russia. Pence called Vladimir Putin, a man Trump has repeatedly called a stronger leader than Barack Obama, a “small and bullying leader” whose “provocations” in Syria “need to be met with American strength.”

Pence attempted to turn every question about Trump weaknesses into attacks on Clinton. Asked by moderator Elaine Quijano why many Americans see Trump as “too erratic,” Pence turned to Clinton’s record as Obama’s secretary of state.

“Literally, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, where she was the architect of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, we see entire portions of the world, particularly the wider Middle East, literally spinning out of control,” he said. “I mean, the situation we’re watching hour by hour in Syria today is the result of the failed foreign policy and the weak foreign policy that Hillary Clinton helped lead in this administration and create.”

Pence may have won on style. Kaine, known for his cheerful disposition, seemed at first to struggle with vice-presidential candidate’s traditional role as attack dog, talking over Pence and delivering clunky scripted lines Pence promptly mocked.

One of their most thorough disagreements was on the subject of police bias. Pence castigated Clinton for saying, at the first debate, that everyone including police officers has implicit biases.

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“Senator, please,” Pence said. “You know, enough of this seeking every opportunity to demean law enforcement broadly by making the accusation of implicit bias every time tragedy occurs.”

Kaine responded by telling the story of Philando Castile, the beloved school cafeteria employee shot dead by a police officer in Minnesota. He said it was vital to discuss police bias.

“If you’re afraid to have the discussion, you’ll never solve it,” he said.

Recap: Vice-presidential debate

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