Tonight, the candidates for vice president will debate. Now, the vice-presidential debate is truly the Rodney Dangerfield of political events. Don't believe me? Here an the actual headline I read in my morning newspaper today: "Oh, There's A Vice Presidential Debate, Too." It don't get no respect, I tells ya... no respect.

I find that even I am not sufficiently excited about this event (which is another way of saying to my readers: "I won't be after-blogging tonight"). The two campaigns have made it pretty impossible to get excited about the vice-presidential debate, by dint of their choices for vice-presidential candidates. Mike Pence? Tim Kaine? Really? That's who you picked? Excuse me while I yawn enormously....

I suppose I shouldn't be so snarky. After all, it wasn't that long ago that I was snarking about the VP debate having too much entertainment value (shades of Sarah Palin, in other words). Although even Sarah Palin didn't manage to come up with the most memorable line during her debate -- that was left to Tina Fey's satiric portrayal of Palin on Saturday Night Live: "I can see Russia from my house." Palin will be long remembered for a line she never actually uttered, which is kind of bizarre. And testament to Fey's comic genius, as well.

But we don't have anything approaching Palin's entertainment value this time around. No, this time around the entertainment value is at the top of the Republican ticket. How many people are tuning in to the presidential debates just to see what crazy things Donald says? Approximately the same number who turned in to watch Palin do the exact same thing, I would venture a guess.

Trump made a very smart choice in picking Mike Pence, in all honesty. Trump desperately needed a boring and traditional politician to balance his ticket. If he had named someone like Chris Christie or (shudder) Rudy Giuliani, the rest of the campaign would have been a competition between the running mates as to who could say the most outrageous thing out on the stump. And Trump doesn't like competition in this arena, to put it mildly. You can say a lot of things about Mike Pence, but he's never going to overshadow Trump in any meaningful (or even meaningless) way.

Hillary Clinton had a different problem, but she chose the same solution as Trump. For Hillary, if she had named someone exciting (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) to her ticket, she would endlessly be compared to them in terms of crowd excitement and audience appeal (as indeed John McCain was to Palin). Hillary's already weak enough in those departments, so she smartly chose not to focus the entire rest of her campaign on the issue. She chose someone who, days before being named, described himself on national television as "boring." Clinton certainly didn't need any balance on experience, the way Trump obviously did, which left her free to choose a candidate who (a) won't outshine her, and (b) hails from a swing state. So far, this strategy seems to be paying off well, as Virginia isn't even on most pundits' lists of battleground states any more. The Clinton campaign signaled how confident they were in the state by pulling ad money out over a month ago, and Virginia still seems pretty solidly Democratic. How much Kaine had to do with all of this is debatable, but it certainly didn't hurt her chances in Virginia to pick him.

So we've got Governor Dull and Governor Boring in tonight's vice-presidential debate. The drinking games tonight should not revolve around alcohol, but rather on shots of espresso and Red Bull, just to keep everyone awake.

Perhaps that's too snarky. In reality, this could actually be the most substantive debate of the entire 2016 election season. Rather than a giant clash of personalities, the two men will have to defend their running mates' policy positions. In Pence's case, he'll also have to defend a wide range of outrageous Trump comments that Trump has refused to discuss. But for the most part, what tonight should bring is a meaningful examination of the differences the two major American political parties have in their respective agendas for the future. Pence may brush off Trump's outrageousness, but he can't do so for the conservative or Tea Party agenda, which he's been a strong fan of for his entire political career. So I look for him to make this case tonight, since it's familiar ground for him.

Tim Kaine, likewise, supports the Democratic agenda and should be well able to make this case to the American public. If he gets any questions about Clinton's scandals, he'll probably brush them off ("I've never even gotten an email from Hillary" might be a good line to use, if true). But he's got to make a strong case for the platform she's running on.

Of course, the traditional role of the vice-presidential candidates during the campaign is to be the attack dog. This year, that hasn't really been necessary for either one of them, as the attack-dog fight is being fought at the top of the ticket. This is a direct result of the picks both candidates made, it's worth mentioning -- both Clinton and Trump wanted the media focus to be solely on them, and that is precisely what has happened. No matter how much Kaine rips into Trump or Pence rips into Clinton, neither one of them is going to match the level of ferocity that Trump and Clinton display against each other in their own debates. To put this another way, I expect both Kaine and Pence to attempt some attack-dog lines tonight, but I don't really expect either one of them to be particularly good at it. I think most of the clever soundbites will fall pretty flat, considering the two men who will be delivering them. I could easily be wrong about this, I should mention -- perhaps we'll see fireworks tonight that are even more eye-opening than watching Trump and Clinton share a stage.

If that doesn't happen, then the 2016 vice-presidential debate will become nothing more than a footnote, the way it usually does. What is truly sad about this is that it might be the only substantive policy discussion between the two major parties of the entire election season. If so, it will only serve to further a larger (and depressing) point about American politics: policy is boring. It's a snoozer with the public, for the most part. Every four years, the media does a horrible job covering policy differences, and they justify their horserace obsession by saying "that's not what the public wants to hear." The depressing part is they are quite likely right. The public does tune out when boring candidates discuss policy details.

The first Clinton-Trump debate set the historic record for television viewership for all presidential debates. The vice-presidential debate, to put it mildly, will not even come close to matching those ratings. Somewhere, Rodney Dangerfield is looking down on us from Comedian Heaven and muttering: "It don't get no respect."

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant