SPEND any time on the campaign trail, and before too long a cynical voter will complain that there is no difference between candidates on the ballot paper. Let nobody make that claim ahead of the 2016 presidential election. On June 13th Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump gave duelling speeches in response to the murder the day before of 49 people at a gay club in Orlando, Florida by a rifle-wielding 29-year-old who dedicated his hate-filled evil to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist network. The two speeches were polar opposites, giving a glimpse of a general election campaign that will offer America its starkest choice in decades. Mrs Clinton set out to sound practical, even wonkish, offering a three-part plan for tackling IS and other “radical jihadist groups” that includes all arms of the government, the brightest minds in Silicon Valley and community groups. Her to-do list included such tasks as disrupting money transfers between terrorists, and tracking extremist social media postings. She was detailed, citing a pilot programme she had visited in Minneapolis that helps “parents, teachers, imams, mental health professionals and others” spot when young people are being radicalised and work with law enforcement before it is too late. The presumptive Democratic nominee was cautious, noting that many facts about the mass shooting remained to be learned. She praised existing efforts by Barack Obama and allied anti-IS forces to take back territory from the extremists, but used her freedom as a candidate to go further than officials in office can, declaring it “long past time” for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and other countries to stop their citizens from funding extremists—and to stop supporting radical schools and mosques around the world. In framing the Orlando shooting as a test of American values, Mrs Clinton struck an optimistic note, saying: “Our open, diverse society is an asset in the struggle against terrorism, not a liability. It makes us stronger and more resistant to radicalisation.”

Though Mr Trump read from a teleprompter, in a concession to the seriousness of the subject matter, he struck a tone that was vengeful and dystopian. If America does not get tough and smart, he announced early on: “we’re not going to have a country any more, there will be nothing left.” Frequently departing from his prepared text, he scorned facts, trampled logic and levelled a string of false accusations. He did not just take issue with Mrs Clinton’s plans to combat terrorism, but charged that Mrs Clinton “wants to allow radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country.” Without caveats, he cast the Muslim community in America as a fifth-column of terrorist sympathisers, and immigration as a source of danger. “The Muslims have to work with us,” he said to a crowd of supporters in New Hampshire, accusing Muslims of knowing about bad people in their midst and failing to hand them in. “They know what’s going on,” Mr Trump added, declaring that anyone who failed to help law enforcement should face “big consequences.”

His central policy proposals were less a practical to-do list than a primal bellow of suspicion. Where Mr Trump strayed from his text, his claims often made no sense. Thus, in his telling, the Orlando shooter was “born an Afghan, of Afghan parents”, so “the bottom line is that the only reason that the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here. That is a fact, and it’s a fact we need to talk about.” Another fact is that the killer was an American citizen, born in New York, and his family came to America when Ronald Reagan was president—making a discussion about his presence in the country somewhat academic without access to a time-machine.

Where unseen speechwriters and advisers had refined his proposals and brought them into line with the basics of constitutional law, they were alarming. Late last year after terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, Mr Trump floated a temporary entry ban for Muslims—an act of religious discrimination that would never be allowed by the courts. In his response to the Orlando massacre Mr Trump offered an updated version of a Muslim ban, noting that immigration laws include powers to exclude classes of people “that the president deems detrimental to the interests or security of the United States.” If elected, he said he would “suspend immigration from areas of the world when there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies”, lifting that ban only when America can “perfectly screen” people entering the country.

Yet the Republican nominee could not maintain that legalistic tone for long. Though he was at some points careful to talk about “radical Islam” and the need to screen migrants from such specific countries as Syria and Afghanistan, at other times he conflated terrorism and Islam. At moments he sweepingly denounced the idea of admitting people from “dangerous countries”. He accused Mrs Clinton of planning to admit “hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalisation of their children,” before inserting as an ad lib: “not only their children, by the way, they are trying to take over our children and convince them how wonderful ISIS is and how wonderful Islam is.”

Mr Trump’s harshest language was aimed at his angriest core supporters, as when he flirted with conspiracy theories painting Mr Obama as a secret terrorist sympathiser. Earlier on June 13th, he told Fox News television that the president is either “not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind.” Questioning why Mr Obama will not use the words “radical Islamic terrorism” when discussing the threat to America, Mr Trump mused: “There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”

Yet Mr Trump also used his speech to woo a different sort of voter—casting himself as the true defender of American women and gays from a radical-Islamic ideology he called “anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-American.” In earlier interviews, including with The Economist, Mr Trump has mused about his chances with women voters anxious about terrorism, known as “security moms” during elections soon after the September 2001 attacks. Sounding very different from a conventional Republican presidential candidate, Mr Trump repeatedly called for solidarity with gays and the “LGBT community”. In a move straight from the Republican playbook perfected by Karl Rove in the 2000 and 2004 elections, Mr Trump tried to attack Mrs Clinton on what most see as her strongest point, her appeal to women, gays and other minorities. Who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community, Mr Trump asked, demanding that Mrs Clinton explain why “we should admit anyone into our country who supports violence of any kind against gay or lesbian Americans”?

Might Mr Trump succeed as a unifier of anxious America? As it happens there is no reason to think that Mr Trump is anti-gay. He spent most of his life as a New York businessman and socialite. What is more, Americans are deeply disenchanted with the foreign policy record of Mr Obama and his team, including Mrs Clinton, his first secretary of state. So there should be an opportunity there. But in a crisis, he has chosen—once again—to appeal to fear, suspicion and prejudice.

Islamic extremism is a very real threat. Mrs Clinton has work to do to reassure millions of frightened Americans that she knows how to fight it. But Mr Trump is offering impractical policies that would harm America if enacted, by driving away precisely those Muslim allies best placed to help. Mr Trump is a man full of surprises. But he is reliably a disappointment.