First Thing election special: Pence and Harris performed politics as usual

Good morning. It is perhaps a measure of the vice-presidential debate’s relative mundanity that its most exciting moment was when a fly landed on Mike Pence’s stark, white hair and stayed there for more than a minute, unbeknown to the vice-president. The most heated clash between the candidates came when Democrat Kamala Harris described the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as the “greatest failure of any presidential…