What it means to look presidential has changed. The debate proved it.

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The idea that someone can look presidential, that they can give off leader-of-the-free world pheromones, that the tenor of their voice can strike fear in autocrats and soothe recalcitrant allies – without their having the actual might and authority of the Oval Office behind them – may well be one of the last tropes of the modern presidency to fall.

Looking presidential has little to do with the policy or the positions one holds on matters of economics or foreign policy. What we deem presidential has always been rooted in a grand idea of who we are as a nation. Our leaders were expected to exhibit the strength to lead the country with dignity, integrity and empathy. The aesthetics of a candidate, the way in which they carried themselves, stood at a lectern and held the public’s gaze – vaporous though they may be – meant something vital and reassuring.

In determining whether someone looked presidential, voters typically searched for broad shoulders on which they might be able to hang the label “heroic.” They wanted someone with a calming voice who could soothe a nation during a calamity, rather than incite a populous to panic. They wanted a person with a calming demeanor during dark days rather than someone eager to underscore just how much light has gone out of the eyes of its citizens.

Entwined with those high-minded ideals are the country’s enduring prejudices. An American president looked a particular way. He – and it has always been a he – had a look of confidence and perhaps even swagger. He was tall and charismatic – the sort of man with whom a voter would want to have a beer. And, with one exception, that man was White.

When Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump met for the first time at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for a debate Tuesday night, that was the simmering question: Who would look presidential? But really, the issue was whether Harris would.

Trump long ago punctured the country’s illusions about itself and how many of its citizens wanted to be represented on the world stage. A winning majority of Americans decided that the presidential ideal as it had long been understood no longer mattered. They wanted Trump. They wanted a voice of antagonism. A brutish man was preferred so long as his savagery was on their behalf. Integrity was simply another name for weakness. They championed a form of masculinity that is by turns mythically heroic and patently toxic.

The only requirement for Trump on the debate stage was that he not self-immolate in a bonfire of his own outrage. He’d already bent the presidential archetype to his will. In whatever manner Trump behaved, whatever his whims and follies, his lies and wandering statements, Trump was allowed to be Trump. White, male and aggrieved. It might not be presidential, but it was nonetheless electable for his stalwart supporters.

But in this moment, what it means to look presidential has changed. Harris redefined it. She didn’t do it by highlighting her gender or her race, the two things that make her candidacy historic. She did so by striding onto a stage and walking over to an opponent who would barely acknowledge her presence, offering her hand in greeting and introducing herself. She looked presidential by calmly staring at her opponent with one hand perched under her chin and with an expression on her face that drifted from dismay to pity as he chafed at being called “weak” and named Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán as a character witness.

She turned steely-eyed when she spoke about reproductive rights. And she watched with a hint of dismay on her face as Trump began to yell that he “did a great service” in giving the Supreme Court a conservative majority that would overturn Roe v. Wade. When asked about his aching desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump meandered into a vague: “I have concepts of a plan.” Harris looked into the camera and spoke directly to the viewers about their desires and hopes. Trump stared down at the moderators and shouted his answers at them.

In the debate, Trump continued to press the lie that he won the 2020 election. He lied about babies being executed after they were born. He lied about people who’d illegally entered the country kidnapping and eating people’s pets.

Trump is an extreme, but the truth is that this country has elected men who have upon occasion been undignified. They’ve lacked vigor and optimum health. They’ve struggled with integrity and even turned their back on it. They’ve chosen political expediency over empathy.

And yet, this race is essentially tied. Could this Black woman of Indian and Jamaican heritage convince undecided voters and waffling supporters that all of who she is, all that she brings to the table, is as presidential as the American fantasy?

Looking presidential is not so much a bar to be cleared but a door that must be kicked in. And as Harris has said, “Sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open; sometimes they won’t. And then you need to kick that f—ing door down.”

When people ask themselves whether they can envision a particular candidate in the Oval Office, it’s often less about whether they agree with all of their policy positions and whether the person just feels right. Does the average voter bother to read a candidate’s policy positions as much as they’re detailed on a campaign website? Even as they crave more knowledge about what a Harris administration might look like, have they clicked on all her website’s drop-down menus and read her proposals to the end? Have those voters torn between the two candidates read all 887 stultifying pages of the giant Project 2025 tome?

Perhaps some have. Most, however, find themselves simply drawn to the person whose tone resonates with them. They are drawn to the person who seems to represent something that they see in themselves or something they believe about the country. Onstage in Philadelphia, the person who looked most presidential was the one who looked mystified, alarmed and bemused. And who also had a plan for the future, rather than a grievance with the past.