Some things that come to mind for me are the loyalty program, value for miles, oneworld alliance affiliation, the new lounges, the 78P was really good from my experience, I think they actually have a more consistently good premium cabin soft product than UA and DL which is controversial but it's been my experience. I could name more but these are all things I've found great value in at the present moment. I think on top of that there's tons of potential things like the new lounges and the 78P are proof to me that AA can be really good when they try to be. The XLR on the other hand I haven't flown on yet myself but have heard very mixed things, but I'd be interested to see how UA's XLRs is and DL's transcon 321neos will be in comparison.

You are completely right though that there's a lot of conflicting visions though which does make this hard, which is why they need to just embrace a premium strategy.