As the vice presidential debate got under way in the CBS News studios on Tuesday evening, there was a strange feeling that only grew stronger as 90 minutes of detailed policy discussion unfolded: Was the United States in danger of regaining its sanity?

After weeks and months of being assaulted by Donald Trump’s dystopian evocation of a country on the brink of self-destruction, amplified by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ dire warnings about democracy in peril, here was something very different. The two vice presidential candidates embraced the most endangered American political species: consensus.

“Tim, I actually think I agree with you,” said JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, as he addressed his counterpart Tim Walz during the discussion on immigration.

“A lot of what the senator said there, I agree with him,” said Walz, the Minnesota governor and Democratic nominee, as they focused on trade policy.

Of course it wasn’t true. The two men were no closer to an agreement than their bosses, who showed in their own presidential debate last month that they were worlds apart.

But on Tuesday, it was as if the CBS News studio in downtown Manhattan had been transported back to a prelapsarian — or at least pre-Maga — time. To an era when politicians could be polite, and to get ahead you didn’t have to denounce your opponent as an enemy of the people.

For Vance, the metamorphosis was especially striking. After all, he is the running mate of the architect of ‘American carnage’.

For his part, the Ohio senator has spread malicious falsehoods about legally resident Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s cats and dogs. Not to mention he’s the “childless cat lady” guy.

An unrecognizable Vance appeared on stage in New York. The latter listened respectfully to his debate partner, spoke in full and largely measured sentences, and even went so far as to admit his own fallibility – three qualities that the former president rarely emulates.

Vance may have had reason to present himself differently than Trump. At 40, to Trump’s 78th, he has the future to think about – his own future.

But his affable attitude was also artificial. When it came to the content of his words, the Republican vice presidential candidate was as careful with the truth as his supervisor.

He even lied with abandon. He just did it with a silken tongue.

He talked about the vice president presiding over an “open border” with Mexico when border crossings are actually at their lowest level in four years. He claimed he wouldn’t have supported a national abortion ban — oh yeah, he did that repeatedly during his 2022 senatorial race.

On the Middle East crisis, he accused the “Kamala Harris administration” of giving Iran $100 billion in the form of unfrozen assets – which is not true. It cost $55 billion and was negotiated under Barack Obama.

Perhaps most egregiously, he said that Trump had “saved” the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obama’s wildly popular health insurance policy known as Obamacare. “Saved” was an interesting word choice for Trump, who tried to overturn the ACA 60 times without offering any alternative.

Still, it would have taken an attentive viewer to see behind Vance’s lenient attitude toward the lies he peddled. The former tech investor and bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy looked comfortable on stage and in his own skin, presenting himself as the reasonable Trump, a Magal lion in sheep’s clothing.

Walz, on the other hand, had moments where he appeared tense and uncomfortable, with the pre-debate nerves reported by CNN appearing to be genuine. As Vance turned his piercing blue eyes directly to the camera, the Minnesota governor frequently glanced down at his notes.

The folksy, awesome “Coach Walz” who has taken the US by storm since he was plucked from Minnesota obscurity to become Harris’ running mate was largely absent.

He occasionally stumbled and twisted his words to refer to the fact that he had become “friends” with school shooters rather than the families of their victims. And he answered the question of why he had falsely claimed to have visited China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, while woodenly trying to dodge the issue by calling himself a “knucklehead.”

But when push came to shove, Walz came through. On the issues most important to Harris in her bid to become the first woman president, and the first woman of color in the Oval Office, he hit Vance hard — politely, but hard.

On abortion, he followed his running mate’s lead and spoke movingly about the personal impact of Trump’s effective eradication of Roe v Wade. He invoked the story of Amber Thurman, who died while seeking reproductive care from Georgia to North Carolina.

That even prompted one of the evening’s most surprising “I agree” comments from staunchly anti-abortion Vance: “Governor, I agree with you, Amber Thurman should still be alive… and I certainly would like that she was.’

There was only one moment in the evening when the kid gloves came off and the show of friendliness was rejected by both sides. It came when Vance had the temerity to claim – silkily, of course – that Harris’ attempts to “censor” disinformation in public debate posed a far greater threat to democracy than Trump’s efforts to throw the 2020 election on January 6 to undo.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance declined when Walz asked him directly if Trump had lost that race. “That’s a damn non-answer,” the Democrat shot back, his face pained.

In the end, both men only played the role of side-kick. They may have raised hopes that civility could make a comeback in American politics, but let Trump have the final say.

“Walz was a low IQ disaster – much like Kamala,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site shortly after the debate ended. And just like that, it was business as usual.