A little over a week ago, two American candidates from bitterly opposed political parties took to the stage and faced one another in vice-presidential debate. Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz were going to square off, both having made previous statements of “I can’t wait to debate that guy!”
As the American television audience (and Canadian) of some 43 million tuned in, everyone was a little nervous, in that these things in recent years have devolved into a theatre of the absurd, almost exclusively due to the participation of one Donald J. Trump, America’s 21st-century iteration of a snake oil salesman. To put it mildly, expectations were low for things like propriety, respect, and a constructive, polite discussion of issues and opposing approaches to dealing with them.
And then it happened.
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