There were a few jarring moments in last night’s vice presidential debate. At one point, Tim Walz said he’d “become friends with school shooters.” Presumably, he meant to say that he’d befriended survivors of school shootings or the parents of victims. At another, J. D. Vance blatantly refused to answer a yes-or-no question about whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. What he came up with instead of an answer was, “Tim, I’m focused on the future.”

Overall though, the whole event felt shockingly normal. At the presidential debate last month, Kamala Harris did a good job of making Trump look like an angry and unpleasant man-child and herself like a reassuringly calm alternative. At the previous debate, Trump won by default because Joe Biden’s brain was so clearly leaking out of his ears. Last night’s debate, by contrast, was just two politicians tangling over policy issues and occasionally committing clippable gaffes.

If anything, it felt pleasantly boring . . . if you could ignore the elephant in the room. We could be at war with Iran by the time either Harris or Trump takes office. And on this question, the most important one discussed all evening, there was barely a debate at all.