For Trump and Clinton, a partisan role reversal on the state of the nation

As the country’s two major political parties emerge from their conventions to square off for the general election, they are speaking to Americas unrecognizable to each other, in voices that sound like a political and ideological role reversal.

For Republicans, the country is a place of near-apocalyptic gloom whose best days are fast receding.

“Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life,” GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump declared in his acceptance speech in Cleveland, in which he described a country in the grips of “violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities.”

The nation of the Democrats who met here this week to nominate former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is a vibrant and diverse place. First lady Michelle Obama summarized it in her address on the first night of the convention: “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great, that somehow we need to make it great again. Because this, right now, is the greatest country on earth.”