Tim Kaine just did something remarkable: He made Dan Quayle look good by comparison.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee turned in the worst major debate performance since Lloyd Bentsen squashed Quayle like a bug in 1988 when the 41 year-old Indiana Republican made the mistake of trying to liken himself to John F. Kennedy when it came to senatorial experience.

Tim Kaine was no Lloyd Bentsen. This time the Republican guy from Indiana — Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s running mate — crushed the Democrat. Pence never delivered a knockout blow, he just jabbed and parried and ducked and weaved. Kaine kept trying to deliver roundhouses, but almost every time, he swung and missed and fell on his posterior as he did it.

He seemed determined to bait Mike Pence, but his constant interruptions and preachy assertions that Pence couldn’t possibly defend his running mate succeeded only in making him look annoying and insubstantial.

Pence’s ju-jitsu was masterful. After Kaine said Trump was running an “insult-driven campaign,” Pence asserted Kaine’s accusation was itself a mark of an “insult-driven campaign” run by Hillary Clinton — and continued to use the line against Kaine throughout the debate.

From the first minute, Pence found an almost perfect tone — calm, reasonable, fluent and understated. He responded more in sorrow than in anger when Kaine kept doing whatever he could to interrupt and throw him off his talking points. Like Kaine, he came well-prepared, but unlike Kaine, he wore his preparation lightly.

Kaine seemed eager to mimic Joe Biden’s style during the 2012 debate with Paul Ryan, but it was Pence who nailed it by laughing when he wanted to convey the idea that Kaine had just said something beyond the pale and shaking his head with a slight smile when Kaine defended Hillary Clinton on indefensible matters (like the Clinton Foundation’s conduct).

Until the last exchange about their personal faith, in which he finally came across as likable and thoughtful, Kaine came across as programmed and testy and hectoring. If all you had to go on was this debate, there’s no way you could make sense of Hillary Clinton choosing him of all people to be her running mate. That’s how bad he was.

All of this is about performance, though. When it came to substance, Pence was remarkably disingenuous and dishonest, and in a manner that did not do him credit.

Kaine said Trump wants more nations to have nuclear weapons and Pence said that wasn’t true. It is true.

Kaine pointed out that both Pence and Trump had said Vladimir Putin was a stronger leader than Barack Obama and Pence heatedly denied it — when in fact both have said exactly that.

Most striking was Pence’s harsh critique of Putin and Russia. His powerful condemnation went entirely against Donald Trump’s extraordinarily conciliatory and friendly rhetoric. It seemed clear that Pence went into the debate determined to defend the Donald Trump he would prefer to the Donald Trump who actually exists.

He wasn’t the only dishonest politician on the stage. Kaine asserted that Israel’s senior military leadership supports the Iran deal, which is not true. Israel’s Defense Ministry explicitly compared the deal to the Munich pact that led Adolf Hitler to wage World War II.

He said Pence did not have the right to question the decision of the Obama Justice Department not to indict Hillary Clinton for the way her private server compromised national security, which is patently ridiculous.

The coming days will likely see an onslaught against Pence for his prevarications about Trump, and after the fact-checking and the split-screen revelations of his dishonesty, his triumph Tuesday night may seem far less impressive by the end of the week.

And these veep contests aren’t worth a warm pitcher of spit anyway. Quayle may have been crushed in 1988, but don’t forget his running mate, George H.W. Bush, won in November by 8 points. Quayle got to be vice president. All anyone remembers about Lloyd Bentsen is that he won a meaningless debate.