Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Sen. J.D. Vance have different views on whether the nation’s next president should rely more on “experts” or “commonsense wisdom.”

In the first — and only — vice presidential debate, Mr. Walz said former President Donald Trump and Mr. Vance have made it clear that the economists, scientists and national security professionals who criticize the GOP presidential candidate’s vision on spending, climate change and foreign entanglements “can’t be trusted.”

“Look, if you’re going to be president, you don’t have all the answers. Donald Trump believes he does,” Mr. Walz said. “My pro tip of the day is this: if you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump.”

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Mr. Vance countered that those “same experts” for decades “said that if we shipped our manufacturing base off to China, we get cheaper goods,” but “they lied about that.”

“They said if we shift our industrial base off to other countries — to Mexico and elsewhere — it will make the middle class stronger. They were wrong about that,” he said.

“We’re not going to stop it by listening to experts,” he said. “M. We’re going to stop it by listening to common sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.”

Mr. Vance said Mr. Walz is trying to have it both ways by vouching for experts while admitting that the “bipartisan consensus” in Washington fueled some of the nation’s economic problems.

“Tim, I think you got a tough job here because you’ve got to play Whack-a-Mole,” Mr. Vance said. “You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver rising take-home pay, which, of course, he did. 

“You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver lower inflation, which of course, he did,” he said. Then you simultaneously got to defend Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries and housing unaffordable for American citizens.”