The thing we kept thinking as we watched President Trump and Vice President Harris debate is that the 45th president was truer to himself. Vice President Harris tried valiantly to insist that her values haven’t changed. The claim, though, fails to jibe with the policies she now says she’ll pursue — policies she has never pursued before and it’s hard to believe, if she gets elected, she’ll prove committed to in office. Or are the flip-flops themselves her values?

The Democrat made a better showing on comportment — a younger, more cheerful figure whose world is her oyster. The Republican, though, was offering a plan — growth, energy, jobs, deregulation, lower tax cuts, lower prices, less inflation, higher tariffs, and a secure border — that he pursued from before he went into politics. He has stuck with it and used it to produce, in his first term, a far better economy than the incumbents have produced.

Doubts that Ms. Harris is running on her real values is what her opponent is driving at with his question toward the end, “Why hasn’t she done it?” The Times reckons he waited too long to land that blow, but, by our lights, oomph. Ms. Harris wants us to believe she’ll always be there for Israel. Why didn’t she show up when its premier made his speech to the congressional joint meeting? Why is there always a caveat when she expresses her support?

Ms. Harris struck us as weak on foreign policy. And not only the war part. Neither she nor Trump mentioned the Abraham Accords, a towering achievement by the 45th president. She tried to put the gloss on her administration’s surrender of Afghanistan. What values was she standing on there? President Trump, in any event, was broadly more credible on foreign policy because he has a record that he believes in.

On abortion and similar social issues, we thought Ms. Harris was quite eloquent. And, for once, keeping true to her values — and those no doubt of many others. Yet neither she, nor any other Democrat, has acknowledged what to us doomed the era of Roe v. Wade: The fact that the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe failed over 50 long years to bring the country together — in contrast to, say, Brown v. Board of Education. Trump pegged her as a radical.

That Ms. Harris’s values got jumbled on the economy is no small thing. By our lights — and many leading polls — the economy is by far the No. 1 issue in this race. It goes to Trump. Not since Reagan have we seen a candidate so at ease, and so true to his own values, and as fluent as Trump is on the economy. He has no doubt that his program is better for working men and women than is Ms. Harris’s. Her middle class tax cuts turn out to be targeted credits.

By our lights, the economic principles that Trump can be counted on to pursue would be enough to decide this election. They were  unfathomed by Ms. Harris. We don’t gainsay the issue of comportment and optimism that Ms. Harris, despite her policies, managed to project last night as a hulking President Trump scowled from his podium. The race is so tight it could yet go to the House. Wonder what kind of protest the Democrats might mount then.