The Pulse: An evening of substance

The minute it ended, I crowned a victor in Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas: substance.

Standing in the venue, I tweeted: "See it is possible - to have civil, intelligent discourse that is also entertaining." While 66 people immediately retweeted my observation and 89 others favorited the view, the larger confirmation came the following day when the television ratings were announced: 15 million had watched on CNN, a record for a Democratic debate.

Yes, it is a number still dwarfed by the 23 million who tuned in to CNN for the Republican debate at the Reagan Library four weeks prior, and the 24 million who watched the first GOP debate on Fox in August, but it's an encouraging sign nonetheless. Especially when considering two strikes against the Democratic debate - no Donald Trump, and competition from a Major League Baseball playoff pitting teams from the largest television markets in the nation, New York City and Los Angeles. That series also featured the controversy surrounding Chase Utley's now infamous base slide, which broke Ruben Tejada's leg.

I'm not complimenting policy. My focus is all about the candidates' presentation. The transcripts are the tale of the tape. At the GOP debate, when Jake Tapper appropriately asked the candidates to explain the differences among themselves, things quickly disintegrated into a food fight.

Carly Fiorina fielded the first question and demurred when asked whether she'd be comfortable with Trump's finger on the nuclear codes. "That's not for me to answer; it is for the voters of this country to answer, and I have a lot of faith in the common sense and good judgment of the voters of the United States of America," said the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

When Trump was invited to respond, he chose to land his first salvo - at Rand Paul:

"Well, first of all, Rand Paul shouldn't even be on this stage. He's number 11, he's got 1 percent in the polls, and how he got up here, there's far too many people anyway."

The volley having been served to Paul, the senator from Kentucky observed: "I think really there's a sophomoric quality that is entertaining about Mr. Trump, but I am worried. I'm very concerned about him - having him in charge of the nuclear weapons, because I think his response, his - his visceral response to attack people on their appearance - short, tall, fat, ugly - my goodness, that happened in junior high. Are we not way above that? Would we not all be worried to have someone like that in charge of the nuclear arsenal?"

The tone was thus set for the next three hours. It was hard to take your eyes off it for the same reason we rubberneck on the Schuylkill Expressway - to get a glimpse of political roadkill. And given the success of some outsized personalities who hold sway over our political process, it would be easy to conclude that is what it takes to get attention. But the Democratic debate just proved that wrong. And not because the candidates were cut any slack.

Anderson Cooper posed the first question to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. After enumerating a number of her policy shifts (same-sex marriage, immigration, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal), he asked: "Will you say anything to get elected?"

To Bernie Sanders, Cooper suggested he was a Republican attack ad in the making: "You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And, just this weekend, you said you're not a capitalist. Doesn't - doesn't that ad write itself?"

Like the recent GOP debate, the action in Vegas was a night of tough questioning for candidates who aspire to the highest office in the land, but unlike Simi Valley, it did not elicit name-calling or cheap shots - and still people watched. When they criticized one another, they did it without condescension. Consider that after Sanders touted his D-minus standing with the NRA, Clinton was asked whether Sanders is tough enough on guns? "No, not at all," she began, before noting that he voted five times against the Brady Bill.

The two also displayed differences - and some one- liners - when the subject was banking.

Clinton: "You know, I - I respect the passion and intensity. I represented Wall Street, as a senator from New York, and I went to Wall Street in December of 2007 - before the big crash that we had - and I basically said: 'Cut it out! Quit foreclosing on homes! Quit engaging in these kinds of speculative behaviors.' "

Sanders: "In my view, Secretary Clinton, you do not - Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress."

A few days before the debate, I jokingly asked Sean Spicer, the chief strategist of the Republican National Committee, whether he was willing to lend Trump to the Democrats for just one night to spur interest.

"I have a feeling that this is going to be a snooze-fest for the people who do tune in because there's really not much out there. At some point, Linc Chafee debating whether or not we go to the metric system isn't exactly what the American people are trying to figure out, the big issues that they're feeling right now."

I feared he was right, but it turns out we both underestimated the American people.

Michael Smerconish can be heard from 9 a.m. to noon on Sirius XM's POTUS Channel 124 and seen hosting "Smerconish" at 9 a.m. Saturdays

on CNN.