Here are the winners and losers in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate:

WINNER

Sen. J.D. Vance. Donald Trump’s running mate was confident and clearly articulated his arguments, which were usually concise and on point. He was effective in addressing viewers at home, as when he acknowledged that many viewers are worried “that the American dream is unattainable.”

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Mr. Vance also easily brushed aside what seemed like one-sided, and unexpected, fact-checking of him by CBS’s moderators. He quickly turned it to his advantage in a discussion of illegal immigration.

The Republican was masterful in a disarming way of paying backhanded compliments to the Democratic ticket. For example, he said some of Vice President Kamala Harris’ costly plans sound great, until you turn around and realize the impact is that food prices are 25% higher than four years ago.

After a campaign beset with media criticisms of him, Mr. Vance came across as smart, likable and in easy command of the facts. He conveyed compassion, and in doing so trashed the media’s caricature of him.

LOSER

Gov. Tim Walz. Mr. Trump was right, the Democrat sounded “as nervous as you can get” at the start of the debate. He stumbled through an answer about war in the Middle East, at one point confusing Israel with Iran, saying “the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute fundamental necessity for the United States to have the steady leadership there.” Huh? He also once said he’s become friends with school shooters. Huh?

Mr. Walz recovered for a time, and showed he is a caring and personable man. But then came the question about whether he had lied about being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. He delivered a filibustering word salad in which, if you listened closely, he admitted that he had lied about it. He was in Hong Kong later in the same summer, but not when the protest took place.

“I misspoke on this,” he said, calling himself a “knucklehead” and saying he got “caught up in the rhetoric.”

This would be a mulligan, maybe, if it didn’t come during a campaign in which Mr. Walz has already been called out for embellishing his National Guard record. With his answer in the debate, he cemented his record as a serial embellisher, putting himself in harm’s way in China and Iraq in his own mind, when he actually never was.

LOSER

CBS moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell. Their heavy-handed fact-checking of Mr. Vance on climate change and immigration broke their pre-debate pledge to let the candidates fact-check themselves. When Mr. Vance called them on it, they responded by cutting off his mic.

Even their one-sided intervention couldn’t prevent Mr. Vance from winning the night.