Will the real Donald Trump and Kamala Harris please stand up? 

After last week’s conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, the U.S. now has two official presidential candidates: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.  

But do we? It seems that whoever Harris and Trump were in the past has been “disappeared” and replaced with different personalities.

From a Democratic perspective, it would seem that as far as the past three and a half years are concerned, they never happened.  

The Harris who took the oath of office as vice president on Jan. 20, 2021, was certainly not the same Harris who gave what has been regarded by most objective observers as a tour de force acceptance speech. For someone whose speaking ability has been called a “word salad” of disjointed sentences, unconnected by a common theme or sense, this transformation was stunning.

The Biden-Harris administration’s record has been airbrushed to erase setbacks and failures and revised to attribute the triumphs largely to the vice president. Once President Biden left for a California holiday after delivering his farewell address, his presence sank without a trace.  

In fairness, Harris’s address was statesmanlike and powerful. The speech writers should be congratulated. Voila, with the swipe of a pen, a new Kamala Harris who was now “the most qualified candidate” to run for the presidency emerged as if created whole from the brow of Zeus or the Democratic Party.

A similar phenomenon affected ex-president Trump. It was not that the last three and a half years were transformed, much as Harris’s were ignored. Rather, Trump’s personality and policy flaws were gradually accepted by Republicans because they thought Trump’s worst gaffes and errors were far better than what a Harris-Walz administration would deliver. Despite Trump’s ego, vanity, vulgarity, legal travails and criminal conviction, to them, Trump would still be preferable and make America great again.

Trump’s first term, from 2017-2021 was cast as the “best” in American history. The economy was never better. A gallon of gas and a cheeseburger cost about the same, and if paid for with a $5 bill would both get change. 

On foreign relations, they said the wars that followed in Ukraine and Gaza would never have occurred under a Trump presidency. His personality would be sufficient to persuade the combatants not to take up arms. And, while unspoken, it could be assumed that after making the world safer and more secure, Trump might take the seventh day off for a round of golf.

The world did indeed wonder about how these extraordinary transformations occurred in creating two radically different personalities. Perhaps Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping would fully understand this. The Soviet Union was famous for rewriting history. The People’s Republic of China was unrepentant in deleting unpleasantries from its annals.

So what next? Harris, aka Superwoman, will have to keep this up. As has been closely reported, Harris has not held a press conference or serious interview where her protective armor was at risk. Her eloquence at the convention will not be easy to maintain without a prepared script or teleprompter. And thus far her policy positions are unclear or comprehensive.

Her economic policy comprises a list of “giveaways” that do not reflect serious monetary or fiscal ideas. It is at beast questionable how granting $25,000 to first-time home buyers will bring economic growth. And she has not addressed how she will continue to rebuild infrastructure or reduce a snowballing debt that is approaching $35 trillion.

To most Republicans, Trump’s failures make no difference to his electability or suitability as president when faced with this “existential” Democratic threat. The one Republican who may not have grasped the making of a “new” Trump is Donald.  

Sensible Republicans have urged Trump to abandon his preference or necessity for an attack-based campaign in which personality and not policy is the strategic center of gravity. Trump so far has rejected this advice.

Harris is not the “most qualified candidate” ever. Just compare her record to that of her boss. 

Trump’s fixation on placing his interests above all else is dangerous and made more so by how he believes only in his own retelling of the past and not reality or fact.  

In short, America has entered a political wonderland unconnected to reality.

That means the campaign will degenerate into a contest of personalities and not policies. Trump’s willingness to change course and Harris’s ability to sustain this “new look” will determine the winner. 

Style has become substance. And when both are distorted, that makes the voter’s choice an agonizing one. 

Harlan Ullman, Ph.D. is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD:  How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon.