In Cleveland, the campaign has gone for something sleeker, more anodyne and a good deal less traditional. There are no Obama-style Greek columns for Trump. Nor has he revived the domestic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright the way Mitt Romney did during the 2012 GOP convention in Tampa, Fla.

Instead the set is a shotgun marriage of Star Trek and Macbook modern, with perhaps a touch — in the rounded stairs, lighted from below — of Art Deco. A dark oval stage is flanked by a pair of canted silver walls, between which hang several giant video boards.

The goal seems to be a series of smooth surfaces to which none of the more direct ad hominem verbal attacks or accusations of plagiarism might stick — a slate that can be wiped clean whenever a change in tone or direction is wanted. Call it Teflon minimalism.

For those of us watching on phones, tablets and television screens, this gap between the nostalgic and often aggressive rhetoric of the speeches and the sleek, vague futurism of the set design has been among the convention’s most striking elements.

The onstage vitriol and chants from the audience have bounced oddly off the streamlined, ornament-free backdrop. It’s as if a bunch of mud-covered actors from “Game of Thrones” or “The Crucible” wandered into an Apple store.

Obama’s 2008 acceptance speech, in Denver, was marked by a similar contradiction, but with the rhetorical and architectural symbolism reversed. ....