Americans may have been swept up in Obamania in last year's presidential contest, but it was the much-anticipated "duel" between the VP candidates - Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden - that stole the show.
More American television viewers tuned into the Palin-Biden debate than they did for Obama versus McCain.
The debate between Indonesia's three vice presidential candidates held equal fascination. The setting ripe for a captivating script: A cast of characters pitting two "colorful" generals and everyone's favorite economist on the subject of nationhood.
What made the American debate so intriguing was the differing characteristics of the chosen running-mates to their presidential partners. Complementary opposites, a political yin and yang.
What made the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono-Jusuf Kalla partnership work, despite its shortcomings, the past five years was the complementarity of their conflicting characters and approach. A cranky marriage, functional nonetheless.
On Tuesday we learnt that all three tickets running in this year's election were three yins with no yang, or vice versa.
Indonesia's vice presidential candidates ape their respective presidential hopeful: One too proud in his ideological rhetoric, the other full of pseudo-intellectual platitudes with less vanity, while the latter is a practical showman.
True to their innate nature, we got a bravado sermon, a heavy-eyed lecture and a patchy song.
Prabowo began aggressively, perhaps too aggressively, with a fiery (by Javanese standards) swing about saving the nation from the ills of the capitalist system.
With maverick charm, albeit lacking in gravitas, he launched into a zero-sum speech about the liberal economic system versus a people-oriented economy, while neglecting to touch on how his family obtained the affluence that has helped fund his campaign thus far.
Boediono was his usual calm uninspiring self. His seven-minute opening more reminiscent of a teacher's lecture than a leader.
Therein lies his challenge.
While serving in cabinet posts under three of Indonesia's four post-Soeharto presidents, Boediono has never assumed the kind of critical leadership role his two vice presidential challengers have taken on.
Nevertheless, Boediono made the most important, yet understated, statement of the night as he asserted that one of the key assets of strengthening Indonesia's nationhood was to develop the country's culture and democracy.
Wiranto looked the most accomplished and at ease.
Instead of a speech or a lecture, he gave us a song.
A verse from the national anthem, and the classic melancholy of "Ibu Pertiwi" (My Motherland) to poetically deliver his message.
More importantly he stayed on track with his campaign theme of "Faster, better".
On at least three critical questions, both Wiranto and Prabowo gave more digestible answers.
When asked about national unity and various sectarian conflicts, Boediono spewed the normative grade-school response of the Pancasila ideology.
Despite being an economist, it was his counterparts who succinctly identified the lack of basic needs - staple goods and security - which drove anarchic desperation.
"Without basic needs, everything is theoretical," Prabowo remarked.
Wiranto was even more accurate in identifying that the roots of unity did not lie in the birth of Pancasila, as Boediono said, but in the 1928 Youth Pledge.
Queried on the question of economic disparity, Boediono's economic background failed him again as he became a Yudhoyono clone by promoting clich*s such as widening economic activity to help the disenfranchised.
It was the military man Wiranto who actually chided the overly centralized system that relies on despotic means, "that have proven to be a failure".
Prabowo on the other hand reverted to further ideological clich*s again by describing it as total systemic failure.
Several rounds in, the questioning may have gone to Wiranto if not for a witty, yet subtle comeback from Boediono.
Asked to respond to Boediono's statement on the role of religion and the state, Wiranto implied that Boediono's failure to firmly separate religion from the practical issues of the state was "normative, not sharp enough and confusing".
Boediono fired back by saying "sometimes there is an inconsistency between words and actions" in an obvious tease of the Kalla-Wiranto pair who use Islamic symbolism in their campaign.
Military officers are trained in public speaking. However, in contrast to Prabowo's stiff gestures, Wiranto's nonverbal communication was more in tune, even if his singing wasn't.
But the practicality of his answers, in Kalla's style, at times was crudely na*ve. Such as his urging of the youth to marry and propagate outside their ethnicity "so there can be only one ethnicity, Indonesian".
Those disappointed with Tuesday's debate, either because there was lack of drama or substance, then perhaps it was because expectations were too high.
The essence of the vice presidential debate was not really about policy alternatives, but gauging who would make the best leader in the event of a crisis (absence of the president) and who of the three we can trust the most.
More importantly it provided an opportunity to understand which of the these three men would likely play the role of deputy head of government, ala Kalla, and which would be satisfied with the mundane role of deputy head of state.
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