That’s what Democrats did effectively at the first hearing. They made the most of a rule that permitted an attorney for each side to conduct 45 minutes of uninterrupted questioning. Experienced trial lawyers are better at asking questions than politicians, and it takes time to develop a strong line of questioning, and Democrats chose well turning to an experienced former federal prosecutor who has handled many high-profile cases involving organized crime.

Daniel Goldman observed a cardinal rule for trial attorneys: Let your own witnesses shine. He served up softballs for Taylor and let his testimony—not Goldman’s questions—be the focus. Twitter was agog at his performance, as if he had put on some kind of master class. Actually, I thought the virtue of his performance was how basic it was. Only once did he call attention to himself with a very dry line about wanting to spend a little time reading from the transcript, “as we’ve been encouraged to do.”

But make no mistake about it—Goldman had an easy job. William Taylor, the State Department’s top diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, the State Department’s top expert on Ukraine, made for exceptional witnesses. Both men have long records of service under Republican and Democratic administrations. Taylor, slightly older, has the added distinction of being a West Point grad and Bronze Star recipient in Vietnam. Over several hours of testimony Wednesday, they came across as credible, even-tempered and nonpartisan.

Many commentators have bashed the performance of Republican attorney Steve Castor, openly predicting that he will be mocked on the upcoming edition of “Saturday Night Live.” Certainly his lack of experience trying cases showed. His opening line of questions, which attempted unsuccessfully to get Taylor and Kent to agree to a confusing conspiracy theory about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, was particularly choppy. But Castor had very little to work with, and unlike an attorney at a trial, Castor wasn’t allowed to just ask a few questions and sit down. It appeared that he was told he had to fill 45 minutes, which is not easy to do when your side has no legitimate defense on the merits. He tried his best to testify through his questioning and confuse the issues—he spent a lot of time trying to get Taylor to acknowledge that Rudy Giuliani’s “irregular” diplomatic channel wasn’t as irregular as it could have been—but he could have sharpened his questions considerably.