What a stunning summer. A debate that rocked the political world as no other debate has in the history of presidential campaigns. An assassination attempt that nearly took one candidate’s life. The other candidate finally admitting the inevitable and leaving the race. No one could have predicted any of these things, and they suggest that more shocks are coming. But surely some things are predictable, and what may be predictable is this: that by late October and early November, most voters will likely be focused on the same thing they’re usually focused on—which party is presenting a better vision for America that will help them and their families.

Donald Trump will want to make the race about himself and his martyrdom—and, of course, about the fact that Kamala Harris is a Black woman. Harris and the Democrats should hit back hard at those attacks. But she could also throw Trump and the Republicans a curve by doing something most presidential campaigns are reluctant to do: She can sell Americans on the idea that the presidency is not just about one person; it’s about an entire government that consists of thousands of people who are working every day to defend their rights, as opposed to a government populated by servants of an authoritarian figure who wants to pick and choose which Americans “deserve” rights and which ones don’t. Trump wants an election that is intensely personalized. Harris shouldn’t duck that fight, but she should simultaneously make the election about two vastly different belief systems—and two approaches to running the federal government.

The president is a person, but the presidency is a machine. Think of it as a vast public corporation that touches nearly every aspect of life in the United States. A president fills about 4,000 political positions in his or her administration, more than a quarter of which require Senate confirmation. They make decisions about everything: broad economic and foreign policy, civil rights, environmental protection, labor rights, consumer protections, transportation priorities, workplace safety, regional economic development, welfare policy, education policy—you name it. Every day, those 4,000 people are making decisions about the kinds of initiatives and oversight the government will and will not pursue. Some of those decisions are minor. But a lot of them are enormously consequential.

The presidency is a vast public corporation that touches nearly every aspect of life in the United States.

A long time ago, Democratic and Republican appointees were different, but not all that different. When Gerald Ford named people to enforce civil rights laws, they … enforced civil rights laws. This started to change with Ronald Reagan, who in 1981 brought to Washington some conservatives of a stripe not seen in the capital before—people like Interior Secretary James Watt, an “anti-environmentalist” who opened up coastal waters to oil and gas drilling, among other disastrous moves. It was around this time that the right began seriously training a young cadre of believers in conservative doctrine, preparing them for jobs in Republican administrations, which also began to recruit lawyers from new right-wing law schools like Pat Robertson’s Regent University and Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. By the time George W. Bush took........

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