Kaine and Pence defend their running mates in spiteful debate

If anyone believed Tuesday night's vice-presidential debate was going to be a dead rubber, they were to be utterly disappointed.

Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Mike Pence fired plenty of shots in the direction of their opponent, in a televised debate which was quite often cantankerous to the extent that host Elaine Quijano struggled to stop the candidates repeatedly speaking over each other.

"The people at home cannot understand either one of you when you speak over each other," the host said.

The vice-presidential debate was supposed to be a measured, polite discussion between two elder statesmen, but policy disagreements were often flanked by accusations and an "avalanche of insults", as Pence referred to it.

Virgina Senator Kaine in particular seemed to interrupt Pence on a variety of occasions, and perhaps came off worse than his opponent, who appeared calm and undisturbed.

However, Indiana governor Pence consistently denied statements made by him and Donald Trump, in particular their appraisals of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Kaine accused Trump of having a "kind of personal mount Rushmore" to dictators such as Kim-Jong Il, to which Pence retorted "did you work on that one a long time? Because it had a lot of creative lines."

With regards to the economy, both candidates continued the glass half-full, half-empty dichotomy espoused by their superiors throughout the campaign so far.

Tim Kaine said that 15m jobs had been created during Barack Obama's tenure, but Pence had a reply waiting for his opponent.

"Senator, you can roll out the numbers and the sunny side, but I got to tell you, people in Scranton know different. People in Fort Wayne, Ind., know different. I mean, this economy is struggling."

Trump and rival Hillary Clinton will take to the stage in their second live debate on Sunday evening in St.Louis, with only a month to go until the November 8 election.