NBC’s “Commander in Chief Forum,” held Wednesday night aboard the USS Intrepid in New York, was the closest thing to a debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton until the real thing on Sept. 26. And it showed an advantage Trump might have when the two meet face-to-face: she has a record in government to defend, while he doesn’t. On that score, Trump, at 70 a newcomer to politics, seems new, while Clinton, at 68 a veteran of decades in public life, seems, well, not new.

The format of the NBC forum, in which the two candidates were separated by only a commercial break, put that contrast into higher relief than ever before.