Peggy Noonan

We have been thinking about disasters, about Hurricane Helene and North Carolina, about Milton and Florida. It sent me back to the great classic on American disaster, “The Johnstown Flood” by David McCullough, published in 1968. I hadn’t remembered it contains information pertinent to the current moment.

Johnstown, Pa., in the western part of the state and the heart of the Allegheny Mountains, was a growing, thriving steel-mill and factory town in 1889, one of a string of such towns in a deep valley that McCullough likened to “an enormous hole in the Alleghenies.” The Cambria Iron Co. had giant converters going there, making steel for rails and plowshares. The place was alive.

Twenty-three thousand people lived in the valley, 15,000 of them in Johnstown, of all types, sorts and classes—doctors and lawyers, laborers and factory workers, small-business men and steel executives. There was just about every ethnicity too—Italians, Poles, Hungarians and Russians, though the majority of the population were Irish, Scots-Irish, German and Welsh. There were blacks—Johnstown had been a stop on the Underground Railroad—and Jewish merchants.

The mood of the town was the mood of the country, aspirational. There was a busy library and an opera house, and people worked hard, “not only because that was how life was then, but because people had the feeling they were getting somewhere. The country seemed hell bent for a glorious new age.”

Johnstown was built at the confluence of two rivers. Above the town was a reservoir, whose formal name was Lake Conemaugh but which everyone called the South Fork Dam. There had long been worries about that dam. It was controlled by a powerful trust whose leaders hadn’t always been interested in warnings from townspeople that it wasn’t sturdy enough or maintained. The lake was about 2 miles long, a mile wide, and in some places 10 feet deep. It was a fearsome body of water to have up there on a mountain over a town.

There had been heavy rains through the spring of 1889, and on Memorial Day more storms came in. The rivers ran high. The lake rose. On Friday the dam was breached. Then its center collapsed, and the lake fell down into the valley, and Johnstown was drowned.

Within days, McCullough writes, the Johnstown flood was the greatest story since the death of Lincoln. Newspaper reporters from Pittsburgh, New York and Philadelphia struggled to the scene, taking trains until the tracks washed out, then horses and mules, and finally slogging through seas of mud.

One by one they got there and saw: devastation.

The heart of the town was empty spaces, “an unbroken swath of destruction.” Landmarks were gone. Huge trees, whole houses, dead livestock and barns had been plunged into a huge wall of water. When the water came into sight, an eyewitness said, “It just seemed like a mountain coming.” Most of the people of Johnstown never saw it coming, “they only heard it; and those who lived to tell about it would for years after try to describe the sound of the thing as it rushed on them.” It was a deep, steady rumble, a roar like thunder, like the rush of an oncoming train.

The drowning of the city took about 10 minutes. Well over 2,000 were killed, but hundreds unaccounted for would never be found. The flood killed just about 1 person in 10 in the valley, 1 in 9 in Johnstown.

Word of what had happened electrified the nation and ignited the biggest humanitarian response America had ever seen. Within days food, water, clothing and blankets poured in. Even Clara Barton came with her newly organized group, the Red Cross. It was their first real disaster. Barton vowed, as she threw up hospital tents, to be “the last to leave the field.” She stayed five months, never left once, and when she departed the people of Johnstown cheered with tears in their eyes and gave her a golden locket. Johnstown made the Red Cross.

Newsmen spread other stories, too. Within days of the flood came reports that bands of “Hunkies”—local Hungarian laborers—were robbing, raping and pillaging. It wasn’t true but caused plenty of trouble, and it turned out the rumors were started by a local lawyer who’d lost his wife and children and gone off his head.

There were true tales of heroism. Seventeen-year-old Bill Heppenstall was at the water’s edge when a small house in the swift current lodged, for a moment, in a clump of trees. He heard a baby crying, but the house was too far to reach. He got a bell cord from a railcar, tied it around his waist, swam to the house, and came back with the child. Witnesses cheered. He’d seen a mother in the house and went back for her too, and as they reached shore together the house was torn from the trees and spun madly downstream.

Also, unbelievably, survivors organized almost immediately. They formed citizen committees to establish morgues, improvise housing, see to unclaimed children. They appointed policemen, who cut tin stars from tomato cans found in the wreckage.

The inventive rigged up rope bridges; the brave crossed them to find survivors.

What are our thoughts from this?

In great disasters rumors spread quick as fire. When you’re in one you must take this into account.

When you’ve got a feeling about something, when your mind keeps going to it, unbidden—I don’t trust that dam—listen to it, even if you don’t understand it. Act on it. Premonitions have to be followed by action or they’re just something that keeps you up at night.

We have always been a clever people but in the past we were clever not only with our heads but our hands. We made things, knew how to work wood and metal, and in a physical crisis we knew how to rig up the rope ladder and build a raft, quickly. When we lost the mills and factories we lost jobs, yes, but we also saw the lessening of a capability, a broad ability to handle the physical world when that world turns dark. We need to pay more attention to this.

History reminds us: America is and always has been a freak show. We should accept this in ourselves more, that it is in our nature as a people. When the floodwaters receded and camp towns sprang up, the region’s prostitutes came in, followed by the ladies of the Christian Temperance Union. We are cantankerous. When strangers who had survived overnight in an attic saw that a stone church next door had broken the wall of water, someone said, “The Methodist church saved us.” Within seconds a voice shot out: “Only the Catholic Church can save!”

We did something nobody ever tried before, to fill a continent with people from every country in the world, and ask them to come, build something, get along, and invent an arrangement of rules and rights by which they could operate together. It produced a dazzling, strange and gifted nation, a freak show, and a fabulous one.

To read our history is to say, “We got through that.”

We’ve got through a lot. Whatever’s coming, immediately and further out, we’ll likely get through that, too.

For the love of God, Madam Vice President, reverse your decision and come to the Archdiocese of New York’s Al Smith dinner. There’s still time, schedules free up, and announcing you’ll speak will make you look both humble (“on second thought”) and heroic (into the lion’s den).

Why would she snub the famous, ancestral, bipartisan dinner, which has taken place every third Thursday in October since 1945 (virtually in 2020), that Theodore White lauded as an irreplaceable ritual of every presidential year?

It couldn’t be disdain for institutional Catholicism. The dinner exists to raise money to feed the hungry, teach the child, heal the sick, house the immigrant.

It couldn’t be antipathy for Catholics themselves. They’re 70 million strong and the famous deciders of national politics, backing Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2016. They pick the winner!

It couldn’t be insensitivity toward Latinos, who compose an estimated one-third to half of the Archdiocese’s parishioners, who are its growing presence and its loving future.

It would be wrong to suggest every Catholic in America sits around thinking about who goes to the big Catholic dinner, and yet we . . . notice such things. Every four years it’s news. A simple refusal—I don’t have time—could be misinterpreted as disrespect for Catholics in general. Pennsylvania’s population is roughly a quarter Catholic. It would be sad if some of them misunderstood.

It couldn’t be fear of the audience. More than half are Democrats. The dais is the top officials of New York state, all of whom are Democrats.

It couldn’t be dislike of the archbishop—everyone likes Cardinal Timothy Dolan and he likes everyone back.

And it couldn’t be that the dinner is old. It is, but its age is its virtue. It’s stood the test of time, lasted in this world where nothing lasts.

It must be something else—a simple mistake, the kind made by fast-moving campaign advisers who have no time to reflect.

That’s what jolly Archbishop Dolan thinks. He was in Yonkers after the announcement, visiting a children’s hospital supported by the church. Pressed for a response, he said he was disappointed of course but it must be an error; Ms. Harris has always spoken so well and warmly of healing our divisions. “This hasn’t happened in 40 years,” he said, referring to Walter Mondale, the Democrats’ 1984 nominee, who declined the dinner. The cardinal helpfully recalled the outcome: “He lost 49 out of 50 states. I don’t wanna say there’s a direct connection.”

Ms. Harris’s staffers likely think she can’t be in nailed-down New York near the end of a close race, she’s got to be in the battlegrounds.

But an elegant man in a tough race of his own gave the best answer to that thinking. President Barack Obama took the podium of the 2012 Al Smith and said, “In less than three weeks, voters in states like Ohio and Virginia and Florida will decide this incredibly important election. Which begs the question: What are we doing here?” The audience roared. We are here, Mr. Obama said, not only to honor the Catholic church. “It says something about who we are as a people that in the middle of a contentious election season, opposing candidates can share the same stage; people from both parties can come together to support a worthy cause.”

The Al Smith dinner is the only occasion each presidential year when both major-party candidates come together, sit, talk, have a drink, give dueling speeches, and give them not only with wit and humor but while radiating a deep democratic regard. It is a splendid thing. Those candidates demonstrate through the fact of their togetherness that our democratic system, which often seems so frail, so ready to give way, still holds, still endures, that it has a hidden health, a latent strength that will bear us through. Politicians speak plaintively of finding common ground. This dinner is common ground.

To be dead to this tradition, to say no to it in a way that will inevitably bring more no’s in the future—the dinner is never convenient—is to contribute to the ending of something good. In that sense it is worse than a mistake, it is a sin.

Think of the fabled tradition Ms. Harris becomes part of if she comes. In the 1960 dinner, John F. Kennedy was sly, playing “the religious issue” to his advantage. “I am glad to be here at this notable dinner once again, and I am glad that Mr. Nixon is here also. Now that Cardinal Spellman has demonstrated the proper spirit, I assume that shortly I will be invited to a Quaker dinner honoring Herbert Hoover.” Quakers were a tiny minority, Hoover the least popular recent president. Under that Harvard veneer resided a tough little Boston pol.

The 2012 dinner was a triumph for Mitt Romney, formerly of Bain Capital. He was handsome and dashing in his white tie and tails, and he brought down the house when he spoke of the “wardrobe changes” campaigning entails—jeans for one event, a suit for another. “But it’s nice to finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the house.” He paid tribute to Mr. Obama as a man of “many gifts.”

The 2016 dinner will never be forgotten by anyone who was there. Hillary Clinton was radiant, won the crowd and, speaking after Mr. Trump, won the night. “You know, come to think of it, it’s amazing I’m up here after Donald. I didn’t think he’d be OK with a peaceful transition of power. . . . Every year, this dinner brings together a collection of sensible, committed, mainstream Republicans—or, as we now like to call them, Hillary supporters. . . . Whoever wins this election, the outcome will be historic. We’ll either have the first female president or the first president who started a Twitter war with Cher. . . . He has no policies—I keep hearing that. I’d actually like to defend him on this. Donald has issues, serious issues.”

The applause was thunderous. Mr. Trump got off a good line: “The media is even more biased this year than ever before, ever. You want proof? Michelle Obama gives a speech and everyone loves it, it’s fantastic, they think she’s absolutely great. My wife, Melania, gave the exact same speech and people got on her case.” (Critics had noted similarities between Mrs. Trump’s 2016 convention speech and Mrs. Obama’s from 2008.) The room exploded in laughter. Then he ruined it all, attacking Mrs. Clinton as “corrupt” and saying: “Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.” He was the only speaker ever to be booed.

Here is something Ms. Harris will receive if she attends: worldwide attention in the media capital of the world as she, having finished her speech, is embraced by the laughing cardinal in a picture that will be seen everywhere, and her lines repeated everywhere.

Or she can be in some grim studio on some grim podcast reciting her latest positions in a way that will move and dazzle no one.

We are a church of miracles—the water into wine, the lame man who walked, the campaign advisers healed of their blindness. The little children of New York will no doubt be praying on coming Sundays in Mass, as they put their pennies in the collection plate, “Oh God, please change Kamala Harris’s mind, let her come to us, help the nice lady avoid the Mondale Curse. Amen.”

Jump ball, deadlock, coin flip, tossup. We’re running out of election metaphors.

Everyone’s texting each other, every interaction turns quickly to “Whaddaya think, what’s gonna happen?” You feel an urgency but also a sincerity: They honestly don’t know.

Kamala Harris holds a close lead in the nationwide polls, Donald Trump in several battlegrounds. I think there’s probably still an “undercover” Trump vote; I suspect a lot of the undecided are Trump voters who can’t admit it to themselves or are waiting to see something from Ms. Harris that makes them think: her.

We’re braced for October surprises and black swans. Maybe the swans—the Mideast, deadly, historic floods in neck-and-neck North Carolina—have already swum by. Maybe not.

Still, I have a sneaking feeling maybe the table’s set more than we know, that if the nation voted today, it would produce about the same outcome we’ll see on the morning of Nov. 6. And if you could jump ahead and be told the result, you would quickly be able to explain it to yourself. “I don’t think people liked her that much.” “They just didn’t want to go back to his chaos.” “She didn’t feel like a turning of the page but more of the same.” “He seemed at the end more insane than even my husband could tolerate.”

Were I a Harris supporter I would be concerned about these things:

The first is so obvious it barely needs saying, but with a month to go should be said again. She still hasn’t given voters a satisfying sense of what she is about, what the purpose of her political career is. She hasn’t fleshed out her political intent—what she stands for, what she won’t abide, what she means to establish, what she won’t let happen.

What is her essential mission? Is it national “repair,” is it to “stabilize” an uncertain country, is it “relaunch”? Is it “more from the top for the bottom, period”? Is it “America as defender of democracy in the world”? Is it about focusing—now, first, and until something works—on the high daily cost of living? When things can’t be reduced to their essentials it’s because they’re not real, there’s nothing to reduce. She so far hasn’t conveyed a sense of intellectual grasp.

Her campaign has placed too many chips on the idea of the mood, the vibe, the picture. “She’s bringing us a politics of joy,” Gov. Tim Walz said, again, in his summation the other night in the vice-presidential debate. But look, “the politics of joy” didn’t help Hubert Humphrey when he used exactly those words in his announcement for the presidency in April 1968. The country was becoming undone by Vietnam and he was talking about . . . joy? It made no one smile or feel inspired except his opponent, Richard Nixon.

It didn’t do Mayor John Lindsay any good in 1966, in the middle of a transit strike and other municipal strikes, with crime starting to creep up, when he called New York “fun city.”

He meant to sound upbeat. It came across as cheery mindlessness, a deep cluelessness. New Yorkers resented it. Doesn’t this guy know what time it is?

Americans feel surrounded by crises—inflation, the Mideast, Vladimir Putin, AI’s gonna eat your brain and no one’s gonna stop it, China. You can see this in the right track/wrong track numbers, which continue underwater—the whole country fears we’re on a losing slide in a dangerous world.

They feel like Brad Pitt as Billy Beane in the movie “Moneyball.” The Oakland A’s have lost another one, and the manager, Beane, walks by the locker room and hears music. He walks in, the players are dancing and joking, and he slams a bat against the wall to silence them. “Is losing fun?” he asks them.

They shake their heads. “What are you having fun for?”

That’s more like how people feel. Is losing fun? Then why are you proclaiming joy and having fun?

If I were a Trump supporter I would be worried about what Trump supporters have worried about since he came down the escalator, that he is squandering it away every day. Voters and observers have spent a decade saying “he’s getting crazier,” “he’s going too far,” and they’re always right and are right now. He’s selling $100,000 watches and having Truth Social meltdowns, free-associating about movies and dribbling away arguments. Ms. Harris insists almost to the point of credibility that the Biden-Harris administration didn’t let the border be overwhelmed, the Biden-Harris administration tried to control the border and put forward the toughest bill and Donald Trump stopped it. And she’s getting away with it! With the Jan. 6 filings released this week, his focus is sure to return to the endless murk and mire of personal grievance.

What should both sides be watching now? John Ellis, in his Political News Items Substack, notes an intriguing sidebar from a recent Gallup survey. “Nearly identical percentages of US adults rate Donald Trump (46%) and Kamala Harris (44%) favorably in Gallup’s latest Sept 3-15 poll.” But both candidates have higher unfavorable ratings than favorable. Mr. Trump’s unfavorable rating is 7 points higher than his favorable—and Ms. Harris’s is 10 points higher. Her favorable numbers have “moderated” since her rise to the nomination, while Mr. Trump’s are up 5 points since last month.

Look at the numbers involving independent voters, Mr. Ellis continues. Majorities of independents view Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris unfavorably, but he holds a favorability edge over her with independents, at 44% vs. 35%. More: “Assuming the poll is accurate”—he does—“the fact that 60 percent of independents have an ‘unfavorable’ opinion of Harris is surprising.” In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump among independents, 52% to 43%.

Back to the Harris campaign. It’s odd that some political professionals think nobody cares if she does an interview with some newspaper. When all the public sees is scripted stuff, punctuated infrequently by an interview with a highly respectful and sympathetic interviewer, they pick it up. They get a sense that something is being hidden from them. Well-produced rallies with good enough speeches and softball interviews won’t really cut it. In Hollywood they used to try to soften the picture of a star losing her luster by putting a coat of Vaseline on the camera lens, to soften the focus. The Harris campaign is using too much metaphoric Vaseline, and it feels not like an attempt to soften but to obscure.

It would be better if she’d done interview after interview from day one of her candidacy, and better if her campaign had accepted the wobbles, accepted the imperfections, gotten people rooting for her, and helped her get more at ease, more confident, and let her build. That they didn’t implies they didn’t think she could build.

Hiding in plain sight works for a while but not forever.

Is there time to make a change? There’s time to throw a long ball, and that would consist of greater exposure of their candidate. There’s a month to go. Everyone’s still watching, talking and texting.

The race is deadlocked with six weeks to go and if you’re an undecided, unsure or wavering voter it looks like Awful vs. Empty.

Kamala Harris has made quite an impression. That walk is a stride, and she has appetite—she loves this thing, running for high office. She has sentiments—she loves to say what divides us isn’t as big as what unites us, which, though a dreadful cliché, is true.

But in terms of policy she is coming across as wholly without substance.

Joe Biden stepped aside, and Ms. Harris was elevated, two months ago. That is enough time at least to start making clear what she believes, wants and means to do. She hasn’t.

This week she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer a single question straight, and people could see it. She is an artless dodger.

In her unscripted 11-minute interview with ABC’s Philadelphia station on Tuesday, the reporter asked, meekly, for “one or two specific things you have in mind” to get prices down.

Mr. Harris: “Well, I’ll start with this: I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard. She was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people, you know, construction workers and nurses and teachers. And I try to explain to some people who may not have had the same experience, you know, if—but a lot of people will relate to this. You know, I grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn, you know? And I was raised to believe and to know that all people deserve dignity, and that we as Americans have a beautiful character, you know, we have ambitions and aspirations and dreams. But not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions. So when I talk about building an opportunity economy, it is very much with the mind of investing in the ambitions and aspirations and the incredible work ethic of the American people . . .” On it went, with a few policy ideas tacked on at the end.

Also from the interview: “Focusing on, again, the aspirations and the dreams but also just recognizing that at this moment in time, some of the stuff we could take for granted years ago, we can’t take for granted anymore.” “And so my approach is about new ideas, new policies that are directed at the current moment, and also to be very honest with you, my focus is very much on what we need to do over the next ten, twenty years. To catch up to the 21st century around, again, capacity but also challenges.”

This is word-saying gibberish. Only when speaking of her personal biography does she seem authoritative. Otherwise she is airy, evasive, nonresponsive.

How to appeal to Trump voters who might be open to her? “I, based on experience, and a lived experience, know in my heart, I know in my soul, I know that the vast majority of us as Americans have so much more in common than what separates us. And I also believe that I am accurate in knowing that most Americans want a leader who brings us together as Americans . . .”

That isn’t the answer of a candidate trying to be forthcoming and using her limited time in an attempt to be better understood. It is the sound of someone running out the clock.

In an appearance Tuesday at the National Association of Black Journalists, Ms. Harris was asked about increasing her support among black men.

“The policies and the perspectives I have understands what we must do to recognize the needs of all communities, and I intend to be a president for all people . . .” Again, she spoke of her “economic opportunity tour.”

Why does she dodge away from clarity? Why doesn’t she take opportunities to deepen public understanding of her thinking?

Here are some guesses, one or more of which may be correct.

• Because she’s not that interested in policy. This would be strange, because politics is the policy business; that’s what politicians make. But she forged her political life in California, where politics is an offshoot of its other great industry, show business. It is possible that she views policy as just something you have to do to advance your personal standing and enjoy being on top. It is clear she has memorized certain position points (help small businesses) that have perhaps been urged on her by professionals who do politics for a living.
• Because she’ll figure it out later. Specificity divides while sentiment gathers.
• Because she doesn’t want you to understand where she stands. Because she’s more progressive than she admits, and there’s no gain in telling you now.
• Because at bottom she’s as progressive as Joe Biden, meaning as progressive as the traffic will bear. But that would mean she’s more of the same, so why talk about it?

Some supporters think she needs to be more “specific,” but it isn’t specificity per se that is the glaring omission. Her problem is not that she doesn’t say she’ll repeal section 13(c) of some regulatory act. No one knows what 13(c) is. What people want to hear, and deserve to hear, is her essential meaning and purpose as a political figure. It’s not about data points and the arcana of government; it’s about belief and the philosophical underpinnings of that belief.

What are her thoughts, right now, about illegal immigration and the border? After the past three years of a historic influx she said in the debate that she’d hire more border agents. Why? Toward what end, in pursuit of what larger goal?

Was the influx a good thing? Why? Does it constitute a national emergency? Why? What attitude does she bring to this crucial question?

Failing to speak plainly and deeply now about illegal immigration is political malpractice on a grand scale. There are other large questions. What philosophical predilection does she bring to taxing, spending, regulation, to the national debt?

She owes us these answers. It is wrong that she can’t or won’t address them. It is disrespectful to the electorate.

If voters don’t get a sense of her deeper beliefs they will think of her as a construct, something other people built so they can run the country as she does photo-ops. Half of America wonders who’s really running things as the Biden years ebb. They won’t want to wonder for another four years.

Which gets us back to Awful vs. Empty. When Americans feel that’s the choice and neither side gives them reason to believe otherwise, they’ll likely start to think in ways they believe practical. Empty means trouble, a blur when we need a rudder, a national gamble based on insufficient information. It means a policy regime that would be unpredictable, perhaps extreme. You don’t want that.

Awful is—well, awful. But he was president for four years, we didn’t all explode, institutions held, the threatened Constitution maintained. So—maybe that’s their vote. “Close your eyes and think of England.”

Unless of course in the next six weeks somebody surprises them, and impresses them.

He lost, she won, full stop.

Kamala Harris is a political athlete. And she can act—the amused, skeptical squint, the laughing tilt of the head, the hand on her chin. She was more interesting than Donald Trump, not only because she conveyed a greater air of dynamism but because she seemed interested in what was going on around her.

The two major headlines: First, Ms. Harris showed what she needed to show, that she is tough enough, bright enough, quick enough. People hadn’t really seen her tested. She had been elevated with mysterious speed in a drama whose facts we still don’t fully know. In the summer she made a good early impression with strong speeches and events. But she did all that on teleprompter. In the debate she wasn’t on teleprompter. She had to stand there and do it, and she did. Did she present herself as a plausible president? Yes.

Second, the incapacity of Mr. Trump. He was famously unable to portray her as outside the mainstream, but the news is he didn’t seem to try. He couldn’t prosecute his case because his sentences collapsed. He leaves words out, and he’ll refer to “he” and “them” and you’re not sure who he’s talking about. His mind has always pinballed, but Tuesday night the pinball machine seemed broken, like the flipper button wasn’t working and the launcher was clogged. He has been spoiled by his safe space, his rallies, where his weird free associations amuse the crowd and his non sequiturs are applauded as authenticity. That doesn’t work on a debate stage. It is strange he didn’t know this. And here is the news, for me. In the past it was possible to think he might make more sense next time. But I don’t think he can do better than this. I felt a lot of his supporters would be coming to terms with a deterioration in his ability to publicly present himself.

But here is an important sub-headline. Ms. Harris won shallowly. I mean not that she won on points, or that it was close—it wasn’t, she creamed him—but that she won while using prepared feints and sallies and pieces of stump speech, not by attempting to be more substantive or revealing. When you address questions in a straightforward way and reveal your thinking, you are showing respect. You’re showing you trust people to give you a fair hearing and make a measured decision. Voters can see it, and they appreciate it. They feel the absence of these things, too, and don’t like it.

She was often evasive, and full of clever and not-so-clever dodges. Trump supporters, and not only they, perceived a disparity in how the moderators treated the candidates. So did I. When Ms. Harris didn’t fully answer—even questions of major importance, such as immigration, the Afghanistan withdrawal, and her changes in political stands—they did not follow up or press her. I don’t remember a moment when anyone—including Mr. Trump—tried to pin her down. She got away with a lot of highly rehearsed glibness and often seemed slippery. Sometimes you have to slip and slide in politics but slipperiness doesn’t wear well.

Still, if you would be a Republican and president you must know how to ride with media predilections, how to be stern with your foe when the press won’t. And it’s hard to respect Mr. Trump for not calling the moderators on it in real time and then using it afterwards, like a blubbering baby, as an excuse for his failures.

We’ll see soon in polls the impact of her victory, whether it’s small or significant, and whether it changed much in the battleground states.

What should each candidate do now? I asked some Republican veterans, almost all of whom worked on George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign, after the debate. One said there is nothing for either camp to do but focus on turnout. “I think we are beyond changing minds, and I doubt the ‘debate’ did much to change any minds or significantly reduce the number of undecided. I think both sides are down to the ground game.”

Another agreed, saying that experience and data had taught him the value of reaching out and knocking on doors: “The best way to get out the vote is face-to-face contact.” Another said, “‘Let Trump be Trump’ isn’t where the electorate is at, and at this point is kinda self-defeating.” Mr. Trump should make sure his base maintains its excitement: “Do as many Fox and OAN town halls as possible.” A fourth old hound said the Harris campaign “should have a full-court press to get young women to vote, starting with sororities” in North Carolina and Georgia. He was thinking of Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Ms. Harris and its potential impact.

She should also do interviews—a lot.

Should there be a second debate? Absolutely. With 7½ weeks to go there’s plenty of time, and it would serve the public in that the more information the better; the better you know them the better. It could be good for both candidates. For Ms. Harris it would be a chance to appear more substantive in terms of policy and to nail down what progress she made Tuesday night. Whatever you like or could like, she could deepen. If she wins, that deepening would help her presidency. And clearly she’s not afraid. Mr. Trump could use another debate to try to recover from whatever he just lost, and to see if he can make a coherent case against the current administration, and for change. I don’t know if he has what it takes to achieve that. (Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he will refuse a second debate, so maybe he wonders too. But he not infrequently changes his mind.)

Finally, yes, it is amazing that Ms. Swift’s endorsement could change the outcome of the election but: America. We’ve been in love with our entertainers and celebrities since forever. If Rudolph Valentino had come out in support of Calvin Coolidge in 1924, his landslide would have been even bigger.

Ms. Swift’s statement, released at the end of the debate, was a little master class in how to cloak a dramatic move that might invite charges of hubris in an air of velvety modesty. She urged her fans to read up on the issues and do more political research. She timed her announcement so that it came at the exact moment everyone was consumed and distracted by the debate, thus taking any hard edges off its impact. She sweetly offered that she felt she had to make her stand clear because there was an artificial-intelligence thing out there in which she appears, falsely, to be endorsing Mr. Trump, and unfortunately he posted it to his site. So she’s just trying to clear things up and correct the record. It went out to her 284 million followers on Instagram.

Ms. Swift’s a real athlete too. And there is no way, in a 50/50 race, her decision won’t have impact.

Next Tuesday’s presidential debate will be as important as everyone says. In a close race, a good performance by one candidate could be dispositive. More dramatically one might implode, as Joe Biden did in June. People will watch to see if it happens again. This is so far the only Trump-Harris debate scheduled, and may be both the first and last time we see the candidates together and get to compare and contrast their presentation and views. We should be ashamed both parties give us so little and we allow it.

What does Donald Trump have to do? He has to demonstrate he’s sane enough, stable enough and knowledgeable enough to make wavering, centrist and independent voters grow more comfortable with the idea of “The Trump Presidency, Act II.” How might he do that? If I were advising him I’d say by presenting himself as calm, reasonable, laid back, even friendly.

He should walk across the stage, give America a break and shake his opponent’s hand.

He should let the game come to him.

He shouldn’t start out swinging; he should answer questions with spirit but steadiness. This might have the added benefit of putting Kamala Harris off her game. She probably expects jumpy aggressions and sarcasm. She will no doubt come armed with a handful of well-prepared lines aimed at piercing his armor or deflecting his attacks. Maybe she’ll uncork one in a way or at a moment that makes her look aggressive. From that moment Mr. Trump would feel free to do what he by nature enjoys, which is attack and beat down.

Is it possible he’d take any or all such advice? Probably not! He has trouble corralling himself and doing the sensible thing. His supporters all know this. It is a constant frustration to them.

In any case he should and probably will tie Ms. Harris to this idea: If you don’t think Joe Biden worked out so well, she is his second term. Did you like Afghanistan, high prices, illegal aliens and the homeless flooding the streets? She will bring you more. She will bring you no relief. The same people who ran Mr. Biden will run her, only they’ll be more progressive.

What does Ms. Harris have to demonstrate? That she is strong. That she is prepared. That she is smart. That she has sufficient gravitas. That she sometimes gets a thoughtful look because sometimes she has thoughts.

One of her supporters said this week that she should see the debate as a continuation of the process in which she introduces herself and what she stands for. She should, he said, embrace those parts of Bidenism she believes worked or are popular. James Carville, in an interview with Peter Hamby of Puck, suggested she should argue America currently has record employment, a record stock market, our first interest-rate cut in a long time. “She’s gonna say, ‘You want to come in and disrupt all of the things that we made progress on?’ ” Mr. Carville thinks this is a “pretty good” answer.

Right now and for the first time since her rise, Ms. Harris seems stalled, as if everyone around her is tight, tired and overthinking things. In the last week of August, when America was vacationing and distracted by back-to-school sales, her campaign announced that Ms. Harris would finally give her first interview as the nominee, accompanied by Gov. Tim Walz, her running mate.

I thought at the time: That’s not an interview, it’s a buddy movie. But more than that I thought: Oh no, they’re being clever. He takes the heat off; if she goes dry he’ll jump in. But this isn’t the time for clever, everyone sees through it and is tired of clever. They’d prefer honest if awkward: Ms. Harris getting grilled, and some of it works and some of it doesn’t, and then a few days later she’s grilled again by another reporter and it’s a little better, and so on. Genuineness is something people would be so relieved to see. Even imperfect genuineness—so what? Donald Trump isn’t imperfect?

More seriously, when CNN’s Dana Bash asked why she’d changed her mind on so many key issues, the vice president’s immediate response was both odd and too rehearsed. It was to insist “my values have not changed.” First, what does that even mean, if you don’t define your values? But second, why did she change her mind? She has to be able to explain her policy shifts to voters. In any case, was she signaling to progressive groups that as soon as she’s elected, and after they’ve stuck with her, she will become more progressive again? That’s a funny message to give when you’re trying to get the votes of nonprogressives.

Ms. Harris is doing something I’ve never seen, which is to go more moderate in her views and at the same time not come across as more moderate.

Soon after she filled in more of her economic plan, which now famously involves raising the top marginal income-tax rate on wages from 37% to 39.6% and capital gains from 20% to 28%, raising the federal corporate tax rate, and imposing a new tax on unrealized capital gains. The last is called a billionaire’s tax, and is said to be aimed only at taxpayers with wealth greater than $100 million. But what American hears “tax increases” and thinks “They’ll never raise ’em on me”?

Timing is everything. Compared with four years ago, Americans feel less safe on the streets, more vulnerable to mayhem, more overwhelmed with illegal immigration and people living in tents by the train station. They see deterioration, not improvement. A lot of people will think, “And in return for this we get to pay more taxes?”

If I were advising Ms. Harris, I would say she needs to establish her good faith, to convey a measuredness. The example I think of is this. Parents spent the pandemic monitoring their kids’ classroom Zooms and not liking everything they were hearing. In ensuing years this resulted in eruptions and rebellions at school board meetings and fights over what was on the library reading list.

It’s quieted down now, but the wounds and division remain. No one expects Ms. Harris to be “on the side of the parents.” She’s best friends with the teachers unions. But is she the kind of school-board member who has a natural respect for the parents? An ability to see their side, to give them a good-faith hearing? Or is she the school board chairperson who rolls her eyes when they stand and speak, and asks security to shut off the mic?

More and more I am getting the impression this will be a path election, not a person election.

Once you chose John F. Kennedy—young, bright, vigorous—and he led you down a path. You chose Ronald Reagan, and he led you down a path. You picked the person and that person said, “This way” and cut the path through the forest.

I’m feeling that a lot of people this year will be choosing the path, not the person. They’ll put up with the person, but it’s the path they want. And I’m not sure people want to go down the Blue Path any deeper than they already have.

Kamala Harris’s speech was fine, and delivered with assurance. I prefer “Ask not what your country can do for you” to “Never do anything half-assed,” but tastes vary. Too soon we were hearing phrases like “assure access to capital.” The text didn’t have the feeling of a story being told from some previously unknown inner depth. It stuck to résumé values and life experiences, rather than a sharing of her thinking. I’m not sure it advanced her position with those who aren’t already with her.

There is a small but persistent cloud that follows her, which can be distilled down to the idea that she was swiftly and mysteriously elevated to her current position, that we don’t know everything about how that happened, and that people aren’t fully comfortable with it. I don’t think she succeeded in lightening or removing the cloud.

The convention itself was a great success, with some sharp and memorable moments. The crowd chanting a full-throated “Bring them home” when Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg made an eloquent, pitch-perfect appeal for the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, including their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23. Seventeen-year-old Gus Walz crying, pointing at his father at the podium, and saying, “That’s my dad” was another. The fabulously human and hokey roll call of the states—unexpectedly, my eyes filled as they played “Born in the U.S.A.” and Gov. Phil Murphy spoke one of New Jersey’s unofficial anthems: “We’re from Jersey, baby, and you’re not.”

The convention’s overall impression was summed up by a relative who, watching on the second night, observed: “This is what they’re saying: ‘We’re a grand coalition, we’re more of a vibe than a party, and we’re not him.’ Plenty of people will want to join that.”

There was hunger—“We’ll sleep when we’re dead”—and boldness, too. They stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own. Also impressive was the degree to which they cast a magic conjuring sorcery spell in which viewers got the feeling the whole purpose of the Democratic Party is to break away from a grim and doom-laden reigning regime . . . when they’ve been in charge for 3½ years.

Something else. The Democratic Party has more substantial characters of recent American history to parade around on stage. The Clintons, the Obamas, Jesse Jackson, who, whatever your view of him, was there, on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, when Martin Luther King was shot. This conveyed a party with a storied past, and if you join it you’re joining something real. The Republican Party, in its great toppling, has rejected its past. You lose something when you cast your history aside, and all you’ve got for prime time is Trump sons.

And now the race. It’s a toss-up, no one knows where this is going.

Ms. Harris is limited in this respect: She never had to be anything but a person of the left to rise in the Democratic bastion of California. She never had to talk to a conservative or a Republican. What she had to do to succeed in her Democratic state was juggle different party coalitions. She could commiserate with big donors at a Bel Air fundraiser and roll her eyes at some reference to those Democratic Socialist of America types. Yes, they get a little carried away. She could meet with members of a progressive social-justice organization and roll her eyes again when they complained of donor clout: Look, we have to live in the real world; we need money to do what’s right. That’s where her political muscles were developed.

This week she appeared before some smallish crowds and gatherings, holding a mic, walking along a stage, and speaking publicly in a way that might have been planned but wasn’t scripted. And here you saw her limit as a public figure: Unscripted, she’s word-saying. She isn’t having a thought and looking for the right words to express it, she’s saying words and hoping they’ll amount to a thought. She isn’t someone who never had a thought. She seems more like someone who has learned to question whether her thoughts should be expressed.

She’ll have to get over that. She just did a pretty good job of talking to America. Now she’ll have to do it every day.

Donald Trump is famously off his game. He knows his old insult shtick isn’t working. Some of his supporters say, “All he has to do is read from the teleprompter!” but they’re wrong. He’s no good when he reads from the prompter, he doesn’t respect what’s on it. It bores him, and he talks like a tranquilized robot. He knows what he does well—shock, entertain, mention two or three big issues. He’s having trouble making a stinging critique of Democratic policy because he’s insulted everything over the years, and when he says something’s bad now it just seems part of his act and doesn’t land.

You can see him at the podium mentally ruffling around in his toolbox, looking for the right wrench or hammer. Will he find it? Or revert to form and do “Commie Kamala” and “Low IQ”? His fortunes may depend on the answer.

Trump supporters have too much invested in what a disaster Ms. Harris’s campaign was in 2019, and it was. They expect a repetition. But five years ago she was a lone rider out there on her own. This time she’s vice president, with a wholly committed party behind her and a deep bench of expertise. Trump people assume she’ll have a series of gaffes, and they’ll just have to say, “See?” They think in the Sept. 10 debate he’ll walk in like the Hulk and squish her like a peanut. I’m not sure this will happen. She’ll show discipline this time.

Her people will figure out how to finesse the question of giving interviews. Maybe they’ll start with a star-struck and sympathetic local reporter, to build her confidence. Maybe they’ll graduate to a sit-down with a rising network star (old phrase!) who very much wants to be a White House correspondent and tailors his questions accordingly. As for news conferences, maybe there won’t be a big one, or three, but a series of five-minute “impromptu” ones, perhaps near the plane, where reporters won’t get to plan or strategize questions. Maybe the relative regularity of it, and the unofficial character of it—her hair blowing in the wind—will start to give the impression she does a lot of press conferences.

In any case, her weak points aren’t really what the Trump people think—popping off in arias that go nowhere, fumbling when pressed. Her real weak point is policy. She will be perceived by many voters as farther to the left than they want to go.

One of the reasons Democrats had such unity this week is that with Ms. Harris’s elevation, the progressives kind of won a long struggle. The moderate Hillary Clinton was defeated by the seemingly more progressive Barack Obama in 2008. The moderate Joe Biden beat all comers to his left but, in his economic and social policy, tugged progressive because that’s where the rising power in his party was. Ms. Harris is of and from that rising power. We’re going to start hearing the phrase “pragmatic progressive” in the coming months.

This is going to be all about policy.

Kamala Harris just won her third week in a row of the first three weeks of the hundred-day campaign. She kept everyone in the political class wondering who her vice-presidential nominee would be, made a surprising choice, and unveiled him at a Philadelphia rally that was boffo. Now the runup to the convention, which has so far included packed rallies in Eau Claire, Wis., and Detroit, where a crowd packed into a hangar, with Air Force Two in the background. She’s stealing Donald Trump’s signature move. I continue to believe the woman isn’t creating a movement but a movement is creating her, and showing up.

Mr. Trump spent most of the week having what a GOP strategist told Politico is a “public nervous breakdown.” He has been particularly Saturnine and gloomy in his late-night postings. At every event since she was (still somewhat mysteriously!) elevated to her position as presidential nominee, most everything has been, for Ms. Harris, bright good fortune.

For the first time this week I thought people were wondering about the impact of Mr. Trump’s age. He is 78. He hasn’t been able to focus, make his case. Is he, in another irony of 2024, turning into Joe Biden?

On Thursday afternoon, at a news conference in a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, Mr. Trump aimed to put his supporters’ anxieties aside. He was not free-associative as usual, but kept to talking points. He was somber and darkly lit. He talked about the dangers facing the world—“in my opinion, we are very close to a world war”—and seemed to imply this is no time for unsteady hands. He spoke of illegal immigration and inflation. Ms. Harris is “barely competent.” “Hillary was smart.” He offered three dates for debates.

It was OK. It was proof of life, and a certain verve. He went long, took on all comers, and underlined, legitimately, that Ms. Harris is getting away with not doing news conferences or interviews.

On the choice of Gov. Tim Walz: He was a relatively moderate liberal congressman for 12 years and has been a highly progressive leftist in his past 5½ years as governor. Republicans will be sure to make his positions clear.

But the headline in Ms. Harris’s choice is that the ticket she has created is full-on progressive. No mix, no shade. She’s cementing in support for one part of the party and a particular vision of the future. She could have reached to the center, with a relative moderate like Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, to broaden her pool of voters, and didn’t.

I believe this means she’s not going broad but deep. She doesn’t intend to win this by going an inch to the right but through left-wing turnout—the young, minorities, those who haven’t steadily voted in the past, if ever. She is giving them a jolt, a straight shot of progressive: The future is left-wing. Getting them to show up is the strategy. Centrists and Trump-rejecting Republicans aren’t the central concern. If they can be won over through small symbolic or stylistic moves, fine, everyone’s welcome. But they’re not a focus. Getting out our people is the focus.

A few weeks ago I said she’d shown no sign of wanting to go to the center and may in fact think this is the time for a battle between rightist and leftist policy. Seems to me that’s what she’s doing.

I don’t know if this is a shrewd strategy to achieve victory in November, but it strikes me as a signal moment and, in the largest sense, not constructive. When you need voters who aren’t in your tent, you moderate. When you stick with your side, when it’s all or nothing, you go on, if you win, to operate in an all-or-nothing style, which in a 50/50 country causes more tension, anger and division. You aren’t persuading the other guy, you’re just overwhelming the other guy. It’s heady, and polarizing.

What progressives vs. conservatives guarantees is a country with two sharply divided blocs, with less give at the edges.

As for Mr. Walz himself, I think the Harris campaign fully understands what he stands for but assumes voters in general will be confused by the way he comes across. How is that? They’ve pushed him from the beginning as a regular guy who looks like a Republican, he hunts, ice-fishes, you want to have a beer with him. “The one thing about Tim Walz is that he kind of dropped out of a Norman Rockwell painting,” David Axelrod said on CNN. “He looks and sounds like small-town America.”

Fair enough. That’s what everyone in Washington and New York is saying: He looks like a centrist.

As I listened, my first thought was: We’re a nation of casting directors now. That is how Mr. Trump thinks: He casts people in roles based on broadcast TV values. Tall, gray-haired, distinguished Rex Tillerson looked like a secretary of state, so let’s make him secretary of state.

My second thought: I think Democratic strategists are misreading their guy. We are being instructed that he is “Minnesota nice.” He always gets personal. What I think I’m seeing is Midwestern smoothie. This is a gifted actor, a natural who plays the part of the affable Midwesterner really well. But he gets pretty lippy pretty fast; he’s a hot figure, not a warm one.

On MSNBC in December: “I think any time you can highlight how strange these people are, it’s a good thing.” “I don’t need (Mike Johnson) giving me a sermon, I need him to live one.” On CBS in 2023: Republicans are “down there debating whether slavery had a value to it.” At a rally this week: “These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.” In the “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call, referring to Mr. Trump: “Make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road.”

Excuse me, that is many things, but it isn’t Midwestern nice. He looks as if he likes Trump voters. But listening to him this week I thought: He doesn’t, not at all.

Democratic political professionals at this moment are excited by meanness, just as so many MAGA people are. It would be better if, instead, they leaned away from it, in contrast, and didn’t lean in. Hot is more alienating than they think. Ask Mr. Trump.

It is widely reported that Ms. Harris’s decision hinged on personal vibrations. I suspect this was put out there as a head-feint to obscure, after the announcement, how far to the left Mr. Walz is. It may be true, or partially true, but since when do presidential candidates have to have “chemistry” with their running mates? Jack Kennedy didn’t bond with Lyndon Johnson, Boston needed Houston, full stop. Ronald Reagan picked George H.W. Bush because he was tired, Bush had come in second in the primary and was a moderate, so take him. They grew to appreciate each other. That’s the most you can hope for. Barack Obama needed a white haired establishmentarian who didn’t frighten the horses. It wasn’t personal. Anyway, this line strikes me as more of the increasing babyishness of high politics.

Those who think about politics and history as a profession can’t resist comparing presidential years. “This is 1968 all over again.” “We’re back to the dynamics of ’72.” We do this because we know political history and love it, and because there are always parallels and lessons to be learned.

But it should be said as a reminder: This year isn’t like any previous time.

This is the year of the sudden, historically disastrous debate, the near-assassination of one of the nominees, the sudden removal of the president from his ticket, the sudden elevation of a vice president her own party had judged a liability, and her suddenly pulling even in a suddenly truncated campaign.

We have never had this year. And it continues to astound.

Kamala Harris just got two excellent weeks in the clear. Donald Trump’s campaign had to take her down early or at least hit her hard—and didn’t. She has the wind at her back; he’s scattered and stuck on the back of his heels. This week she had a good rally in Atlanta; he went before a hostile National Association of Black Journalists, was taken aback by his first questioner’s accusatory tone, matched her energy, and revealed, if you didn’t know, how cutting and personal the coming months will be.

What is remarkable is how surprised the Trump campaign seems to have been by Ms. Harris. Why? Smart people understood Joe Biden would eventually have to step aside, and she was his most likely replacement. Why have they responded as if shocked? We have a trough of videos of her talking, it’s devastating. Where is it? Is that all you’ll need to make a coherent case? When are you going to locate the meaning of this thing?

“San Francisco liberal,” “way too radical.” All that feels tired, the reflex of an aged muscle. It sounds like the 1990s. This isn’t the ’90s. New ages need new arguments, or at least arguments freshly cast.

Can Mr. Trump shift gears? He grew up, as I did, watching “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I’m sure it was on every Sunday night at 8 at the Trump house in Queens. On that show you saw every week the great Borscht Belt comics of 1950-70. Their timing—“Take my wife—please!”—is ingrained in him. What he does now is shtick, because he likes to entertain and is a performer. The boat’s sinking, the battery’s spitting, the shark’s coming! As Hannibal Lecter said, “I’d love to have you for dinner!”

This works so perfectly for those who support him. For everyone else it’s just more evidence of psychopathology. He has to freshen up his act. Can he?

Ms. Harris will dominate the coming week with the unveiling of her vice-presidential choice. Then there will be the convention, in which they’ll pull out all stops. And then August will be over. Meaning a third of the 100-day campaign will be over. Does Mr. Trump know that he’s fighting for his life?

I want to take a quick look at some factors that are major pluses for Ms. Harris.

• She is new. She seems a turning of the page away from Old Old Biden and Old Old Trump. She looks new, like a new era. She displays vigor and the joy of the battle. The mainstream media is on her side. Coverage hasn’t been tough or demanding.

• On policy she is bold to the point of shameless. This week she essentially said: You know those policies I stood for that you don’t like? I changed my mind! Her campaign began blithely disavowing previous stands, with no explanation. From the New York Times’s Reid Epstein: “The Harris campaign announced on Friday that the vice president no longer wanted to ban fracking, a significant shift from where she stood four years ago.” Campaign officials said she also now supports “increased funding for border enforcement; no longer supported a single-payer health insurance program; and echoed Mr. Biden’s call for banning assault weapons but not a requirement to sell them to the federal government.” It’s remarkable, she’s getting away with it, and it’s no doubt just the beginning. It will make it harder for the Trump campaign with its devastating videos.

Will the left of her party let her tack toward moderation? Yes. She’s what they’ve got, and in any case people on the wings of both parties have a way of recognizing their own. Progressives aren’t protesting her new stands: That’s the dog that didn’t bark.

• She too is a born performer. She knows what she’s doing when she’s campaigning. She is less sure of what she’s doing when she’s governing. But she gets a race. Running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, she wasn’t good at strategy or policy, but the part involving performing and being a public person and speaking with merry conviction—she gets that and is good at it.

• She is beautiful. You can’t take a bad picture of her. Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her over the years speak of, combines to produce: radiance. It is foolish to make believe this doesn’t matter. Politicians themselves are certain it matters, which is why so many in that male-dominated profession have taken to Botox, fillers, dermabrasion, face lifts, all the cosmetic things. Because they’re in a cosmetic profession.

• She has a wave of pent-up support behind her. By November we’ll know if something big happened. Barack Obama deliberately, painstakingly put new constituencies together. He created a movement. It had fervor and energy. What we may see this year is something different—that a movement created Kamala Harris. That is, the old constituencies held, maintained fervor and rose again when Mr. Biden stepped aside and Ms. Harris was put on top. I’m not sure we’ve seen that before.

She has many particular challenges. One is this: When you see Mr. Trump, that’s Trump. He is what you think he is. He doesn’t hide much. You look at him and think (pro or con), OK, I get it, I know who that guy is. When you see Ms. Harris, is that Harris? Is what she is showing you her? You wonder, “Is this real and genuine?” I wonder how she’ll address that or answer it.

Another: She stumbles in interviews. Will she try to get away with not doing any?

Another: People will continue to wonder how liberal she is, and how strong she is, but I think an equally or more important question will be how serious she is. Does she think seriously, deeply, soberly? I haven’t seen her betray this tendency. Mr. Obama was a serious man, Hillary Clinton was fully understood as a serious woman. (That’s why her campaign could produce and she could capitalize on the famous “3 a.m. phone call” ad.) Is Ms. Harris? Is she a credible commander of the U.S. nuclear arsenal?

Some will respond, “But Donald Trump isn’t serious!” My answer would be: That’s why he lost the popular vote twice. If Democrats lose the popular vote, they almost certainly lose the election.

Mr. Trump himself would reply: I controlled the nuclear arsenal for four years. Nothing blew up.

To the president’s speech explaining his decision to step aside: I wanted to be moved and informed and wound up impatient.

It was a speech that carried a high degree of difficulty. A president of the United States with six months to go can’t declare to the world, “I’d love to stay longer but let’s face it, I’m half gaga.” Nor could he quite admit his party forced him out—that concedes too much volatility in the American political scene. But he could speak somewhat candidly and suggestively about reality, and fill in important informational gaps, while also (and protectively) projecting a certain latent strength. Instead the proud old man insisted on his greatness and centrality. The only sparks came from the banalities crashing into the clichés. The gift of the speech was that it underlined the rightness of his decision to step aside, and his party’s decision to push him.

Vice President Kamala Harris must beware of his trying to glom on to the action and insert himself into the campaign. He won’t want to stay in the Oval Office doing quiet work, his spirit will demand involvement. Statements meant to be supportive will sound patronizing. It will make it harder for her to turn the page. Donors, it’s time to suggest you want very much to contribute to his presidential library and hope you’ll feel free to in December, as the year closes.

Now to the hundred-day race.

I had long thought Kamala Harris couldn’t beat Donald Trump. That’s wrong. She can.

We’re a 50/50 country, each side gets 40 going in, you fight for the rest but it can always go either way. As people who speak the technical language of politics say, Mr. Trump has a high floor but a low ceiling.

But beyond that, something’s happening.

Ms. Harris has not, in five years on the national stage, shown competence. She is showing it now, and that is big news. Her rollout this week demonstrated talent and hinted she may be a real political athlete.

Her past and famous verbal embarrassments, which shaped her public reputation, almost all took place in interviews and ad libbed arias. They obscured a real proficiency.

She was striking and strong in this week’s speeches in Milwaukee and Houston. She knows how to act a speech. When she is scripted she is good. That isn’t all put-down. She knows what a good speech is. She can judge it, recognize good material. Not all candidates can. Most can’t. It is its own talent.

Milwaukee especially had power. Its theme: “We’re not going back.” We’re not going back to Jan. 6, 2021, to the old ways, to unfreedom, to racism, sexism, to Trumpian America. We’re going forward into something new and exciting. She was positing that it is bigger than her.

Among those who follow politics closely and are highly online for political content, views of Ms. Harris hardened long ago. But to those of relaxed engagement, especially the young, she will be a new figure. They’ll be seeing her for the first time. They’ll be open to what they see.

Her party is newly alive and loaded for bear. This is what top Trump staffers feared, according to Tim Alberta’s heavily reported work in the Atlantic. They didn’t fear Joe Biden. What they feared was “institutional Democrats,” in the words of Susie Wiles. The Democratic Party is a machine, a vast network of groups and money lines that knows how to get out their base and a would-be base. A deteriorated Joe Biden couldn’t fully capitalize on this. A dispirited party wouldn’t fully produce it.

But a new and revived candidate who woke everybody up? That would be a danger.

There is discernible spirit already among the young, among liberal women, black women. In my town I am seeing the suddenly clenched jaw of the woman who backed Hillary, was devastated by 2016, and has one last chance to take it to Mr. Trump and get a woman over the line. It is the Revenge of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit. It will have power.

Online, the rise of the TikTok voters, the Harris supporters and their Brat video memes. They have taken Ms. Harris’s past incoherent statements and elevated them into their own Dadaesque art form. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? Ha ha! I love Venn diagrams. It is strangely mesmerizing. I started to think this isn’t idiocy, it’s Ezra Pound. This would be an unalloyed part of the sheer joy of politics if TikTok weren’t a Chinese espionage operation.

“Obama hasn’t endorsed her yet.” Barack Obama isn’t a guy who joins a chorus. He deploys himself carefully, for maximum impact. Wait for a magical rally. It will be like the one where the Kennedy family anointed him during the 2008 Democratic primary. Mr. Obama had a real coalition. He is going to get it out.

Finally, mainstream media will want to get back onside. They just did Joe Biden in, they’re not going to do in his heir. Also: Donald Trump, so what the heck.

In the end it will come down to issues and positions. She should scramble toward the center and try to hold it every day. It isn’t at all clear that is her intention. In her Thursday speech to the teachers union she took straight, down-the-line progressive postures.

Maybe she thinks all the common wisdom is wrong: She can win through a titanic battle of left and right. Maybe she can. What that will look like will matter a lot.

A final note. Everything is about to get meaner, more vicious and primal.

Biden supporters were deep down unsure, and it made them milder. Ms. Harris’s energy revives the party’s hunger; its angers will be more awake. Mr. Trump and his forces can’t not be mean, it is their essence when threatened.

Here is some urgently meant advice. The American political story right now is one of instability. We claim to be the indispensable nation, the biggest power, the secure one that can be trusted with the nuclear arsenal. If you would be all-powerful you must be an obviously stable political entity. We have been failing at this for some time and are failing now. It will have reverberations down the road.

*   *   *

For now, to cool things:

Stop showing pictures of Donald Trump with blood running down his face. Stop obsessing on the assassination attempt. It excites the unstable. I can do that too. The sick and the evil don’t need more inspirations.

Stop obsessing publicly over the inadequacy of the Secret Service. (Washington, obsess on it quietly, and fix it.) It tells the sickest among us how easy it is to get around security and get your shot. We have to stop telling them this.

America’s enemies are excited by vulnerability, weakness, a sense things are scattered. On an average day key figures in our government—the secretaries of state and defense, heads of intelligence and domestic agencies—are on the road, in the conference in Prague and the meeting in Seoul. Right now, with the aged president and the volatile politics, they should stop, stay close to home, be in their offices in Washington.

Be there, not on planes and in hotel rooms. The look of solidity is almost as good as the real thing.