Is it better to be authentic and controversial, or elusive and comforting?

The personal quality of authenticity might best be described in the same way Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once defined pornography. Straining mightily to find a way to describe it, he settled for “I know it when I see it.” While it is a particularly inelegant example, knowing it when you see it is perhaps the best — or only — way to evaluate a crucial element of character that cannot be quantified.

For years now, frustrated voters have claimed to be particularly concerned with authenticity. It was undoubtedly a critical element in the shocking election of Donald Trump in 2016, when most observers agreed that, while Trump was an authentic but blunt instrument, Hillary Clinton presented as inauthentic. The assumption has long been that the more authentic candidate in a particular race would ultimately prevail. However, that might have changed after the election of 2020 when Joe Biden campaigned as a middle-of-the-road moderate but then governed as a full-on progressive. In contrast, Barack Obama never really tried to hide his agenda, culminating with his promise to deliver the “fundamental transformation of America.”

Indeed, the value of being authentic must be measured by whether candidates’ brutal honesty about their positions might actually turn off voters who prefer more of a “vibe” candidate like Kamala Harris — in the tradition of Obama’s gauzy 2008 campaign of hope and change. Harris is the hope without the change because she is, after all, the highest-ranking official in the current administration other than Biden. But with the Democratic convention over and the hard reality of a brutal campaign dead ahead, she will not be able to legislate joy, which we’re told was overwhelming among the party’s delegates and rank-and-file.

Prominent Democratic strategist David Axelrod tried to flip the script by claiming it was Harris’ 2020 candidacy, not her 2024 campaign, that was “inauthentic,” arguing on CNN that most of her career was spent as a hard-edged prosecutor. But he warns, “One thing about presidential politics … is authenticity is the coin of the realm. If you’re not organic with the words you’re speaking, if you’re not really invested in the words you’re speaking, they don’t reflect who you really are, people will ultimately find out.”

Can voters believe Kamala Harris is authentic when she promises to fix “on day one” the problems that arose under her watch? Will they believe she can lower the cost of living by executive fiat or wave a magic wand and banish inflation? Will they believe the woman in charge of our open border has the chops to handle two ground wars that have broken out during her administration and have brought us closer than ever to World War III?

Is Trump’s Authenticity Truly an Advantage?

Harris is bound to confuse voters with her changing positions on closing the southern border, a ban on fracking, terminating private health insurance in favor of a single-payer system (Medicare for All), and criminal justice, among others. How are they to know what’s real or authentic: the radical 2020 version of Harris now being all but buried by elite media, or the pragmatic, tough-on-crime center-left version being presented in 2024?

Well, if they hate Trump enough, millions of voters won’t care about authenticity, just like conservatives who held their noses and voted for moderate Mitt Romney in 2012 when their goal was to take down Obama. It was famously said during Biden’s campaign, particularly after his cataclysmic debate with Trump, that Democrats would vote for a dead Biden over a live Trump. Message: as long as the candidate has a D or R next to his or her name, that is all that matters in a society more fractured than at any time since the 1960s — or perhaps even the 1860s.

But the question of authenticity does not stop with Harris. On the other side, VP nominee JD Vance is as authentic as they come, with his life story outlined in a best-selling book. His opposite number, Tim Walz, is on the authenticity radar despite his “Coach Tim” branding after denying his radical positions during the post-George Floyd riots and inflating his credentials in the National Guard.

While it is something every candidate seeks to project, authenticity can be a double-edged sword. Harris may be basing her fledgling campaign on elusiveness, but when Trump continues in the opposite direction, seemingly sharing his entire stream of consciousness, most explicitly in his attacks on “fake news” and using unflattering nicknames for his opponent, it is cacophonous to the millions of voters wanting to hear comforting bromides.

Two of the policies most clearly associated with Trump are building a border wall and no tax on tips. Harris has now adopted both policies. She is advocating for the now-dead “comprehensive immigration” legislation that includes building the wall uniquely associated with her opponent, knowing big media will all but ignore her flip-flop on the issue. The wall is an initiative she called “un-American” and “a medieval vanity project” during her 2020 presidential campaign when she also called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while comparing ICE agents to the Ku Klux Klan.

When a candidate’s authenticity is in question, voters must decide whether the person is obfuscating, hiding the position behind word salads, or does not have anything intelligible or defensible to bring to the table. It’s like the old TV ad debating whether a beer’s defining quality is that it’s less filling or tastes great — it’s all left to the eye of the beholder. But beyond that is the ultimate question, the one that animated the classic TV game show, To Tell the Truth: Will the real Kamala Harris please stand up?