The most important takeaway from the vice-presidential debate between Senator J.D. Vance and Governor Tim Walz is that this is what a serious debate for high office should look like. It was calm but impassioned, thoughtful, and truly helpful to any voter who wants to understand the policy differences between the two tickets. The candidates actually listened to each other, acknowledged some agreements and identified genuine areas of difference. Equally important, each managed to put forward a coherent case for his own ticket, stressing the key issues in their respective campaigns.

Both the tone and substance of the debate was far superior to the two presidential debates. The Trump-Biden debate was the most consequential, of course, because it showed what the White House had hidden for months: the sitting president is saddled with serious cognitive problems. The public concluded he could not serve for another term and might not be fit to serve now. That led to his sharp decline in the polls and gave senior Democrats the leverage to oust him from the race.

The vice-presidential debate was also superior to Trump’s debate with Kamala Harris, where the former president, irritated by Harris’ attacks, tumbled down the hole of personal attacks and vitriol, losing focus on the policy issues that matter to voters and on which polls show Trump has an advantage.

Tim Walz, who had held no one-on-one interviews during the campaign, used the debate to introduce himself – and did it well. He handled the main task of any vice-presidential candidate: he made a strong, coherent argument for the top of the ticket.

What did Walz’s argument look like? On the positive side, it........

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