Almost “Nothing New Under the Sun”: American politics and the election of Donald Trump

Trump’s unusual victory

Trump’s victory in 2016 was unusual, arguably unprecedented, in two ways. First was the pattern of states he won. Second, it was only fourth presidential election in US history where the popular vote winner lost in the United States’ own, very strange Electoral College. Regarding the pattern, Trump took not only Southern, Farm and Mountain states that had been strongly Republican for over 50 years he also won in states that had been reliably Democratic for most of the past three decades (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin noted above, plus Iowa). No other candidate in close elections, winning or losing, put together that coalition of Southern, Farm, Mountain, and Rust Belt states. The closest precedent was Democrat Harry Truman’s victory in 1948. Truman won 18 of the 30 states that Trump won, including eight Southern states, three Rust Belt states, two Farm states, and five Mountain states. To the extent Trump’s winning formula had a precedent, it was taken from a Democrat, in the days before the Civil Rights movement had switched the South to the Republican Party.

America’s unique Electoral College—an archaic invention put together in 1787 to favor small states and slave states—counts 538 electoral votes distributed among the 50 states based on each one’s population. Whoever wins a majority of the electoral votes wins the election, regardless of the overall popular vote. Each state except Maine and Nebraska awards all of its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in that state. Maine and Nebraska award two electoral votes to the overall state winner and their other electoral votes to the winner of each congressional district. It has always been possible for the loser of the national popular vote to be elected president by narrowly winning enough states to amass the majority of electoral votes even while losing all other states by lopsided margins. Prior to Trump’s election, that had only happened three times. Clinton’s narrow, bitter defeats in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were the main contributors to that outcome in 2016. It was especially galling to Clinton supporters that her “mismatch” loss had such a glaring discrepancy between the popular vote margin (over 2% for Clinton) and the electoral vote margin (74 for Trump). Earlier mismatch elections had either a tiny electoral vote victory (just one in 1876), a less than 1% popular margin (1888), or both (2000—that year Al Gore won the popular vote by a half percent while George W. Bush won the electoral vote by four, 271–267). More than the three earlier mismatch elections, Clinton’s loss combined a clear popular vote win with an equally clear electoral vote defeat.

The pattern by which Democrats won the popular but lost the electoral vote in two of the last five elections should cause some alarm for that party. Trump won by gaining narrow victories in most swing states, while Clinton racked up huge pluralities in several other big states. Much like what happens in state Gerrymandering, Democratic votes were “stacked” and many were therefore “wasted” in California and New York, which Clinton won by 4.3 and 1.7 million votes, respectively. Those huge margins were useless in countering her loss of just over 100,000 votes among Florida’s more than nine million, or her defeat by 44,000 votes in Pennsylvania’s six million total. If the Trump formula holds for Republicans in the future, Democrats may see more popular vote wins overcome by Electoral College math. Mismatch outcomes could be even more striking in the future if two things happen. One is that the very large margins for Democrats in Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington, along with those in California and New York, grow. Clinton actually won the latter two states by larger combined margins that Barack Obama won them in 2008 or 2012. The other is that as a result of changing demographics, there is a shrinking Republican advantage in Texas. Trump’s popular margin there, his largest by far, was 1.2 million. Both these scenarios are plausible, even likely. Then Democrats will have to win in a new group of swing states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona and perhaps Georgia. There are enough changes from one election to the next to not gamble on increasingly large mismatches, but they seem more than plausible.

Trump’s victory in political time

Although unusual, Trump’s election is less surprising when seen in the context of Stephen Skowronek’s analysis of “the politics presidents make” in different periods of “political time” (Skowronek, 1997). Skowronek argues that since 1980, thanks in large measure to the South’s jump to the Republican Party during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the GOP has become the dominant force, or “regime” in American politics. Describing the GOP as the dominant force in American politics may not seem convincing given that prior to Trump, Democrats had held the White House for eight of the previous twelve years and since, and counting Trump’s election, Democrats have won the presidential popular vote in six of the past seven elections. However, Republicans now control the United States Senate, dominate the House of Representatives by a bigger margin than since the 1920s, and control the vast majority of state governorships and state legislatures.

Skowronek classifies presidencies (not presidents) into one of four categories and outlines the opportunities for independent action in each one. Elected presidents are either affiliated with or opposed to the dominant political “regime” or “orthodoxy” and that regime is itself either resilient or vulnerable. Presidents who are fortunate enough to be elected as opponents of a vulnerable regime can sweep the political field and institute a whole new politics, a whole new way of governing. Since the opposition has worn itself out and lost political credibility, the “opposed-to-a-vulnerable-regime” president can be Reconstructive. Five presidents qualify as Reconstructive by this standard: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. While Skowronek acknowledges that these men may have been exceptional in some way, the logic of his thesis is that they were primarily lucky. They came into office at the right moment during the cycles of political time.

Skowronek further argues that the “orthodoxy” with which Reagan governed is still resilient, that conservativism is still the “received wisdom” ruling the political system. If that is so, then how do we explain the elections of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, whom Skowronek labels “Preemptive,” since their politics opposed the resilient conservative regime? That is, if the Republican regime of Reagan and the first Bush is so resilient, then how did Clinton and Obama get elected in the first place? The answer is that Preemptive presidencies can happen when prospective preemptive candidates have special personal qualifications that get them elected despite their opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy. Take three recent examples: Dwight Eisenhower was a personally attractive war hero whose campaign slogan “I Like Ike” pretty much summed up his appeal. Bill Clinton was an extremely effective Southern Democrat who combined the ability to explain complex policy initiatives with down-to-earth folksiness that did not seem elitist. Barack Obama was an exceptionally eloquent and charismatic orator with an appealingly inclusive story that touched the most generous and optimistic instincts of the American people, what Abraham Lincoln would have called “the better angels of our nature.”

Two things theoretically happen to preemptive presidents. One is that the resilient regime successfully strikes back. Both Clinton and Obama lost control of Congress in their first mid-term election, in 1994 and 2010, respectively. In the first case, New Gingrich led a stunning Republican takeover of both houses of congress, even defeating the incumbent Democrat Speaker of the House. In the second, the new “Tea Party” wing of the GOP gave Obama’s presidency what he called a “shellacking.” Those reversals are consistent with the theory. The second outcome of preemptive presidencies is that their successors are never of the same party. Their personal appeal fails to transfer to their aspiring successors. Thus, Skowronek’s framework predicted that Al Gore and Hillary Clinton would lose. Well, they did, sort of. But they won the popular vote. So it isn’t clear that the Skowronek’s analysis completely works. Still, his argument that the conservative orthodoxy is resilient is strongly supported by the balance of congressional elections and state elections during the post-Reagan era.

If Reagan governed in a Reconstructive presidency, and Clinton and Obama were Preemptives, where does Trump fit into this framework, and what is his likely political fate? Trump is affiliated with a resilient Republican regime. Such affiliates are typically “orthodox innovators.” They are caught in a bind because presidents are expected to act independently, but orthodox innovators are also constrained by the expectation that they govern much like the Reconstructive president who first created their resilient regime, in this case, Ronald Reagan. What this analysis fails to capture about Trump and his presidency is that his base is not simply Ronald Reagan’s base. While the two bases overlap considerably, Trump’s base expects him to be himself, and not a pale imitation of Reagan. His base is much smaller than Reagan’s but arguably more passionate and stable in its attachment to his unique persona. He is clearly a variation or mutation of the GOP orthodoxy that came to fruition with Reagan. His power in the months and years ahead will depend on Reagan disciples in Congress continuing to support him. The day after Trump’s inauguration, in a forum in Richmond, Virginia, author Jon Meacham likened Trump to an airplane hijacker who has won over the passengers. Time will tell whether the passengers, that is, the Republican establishment, will continue to support Trump’s highly independent political act. The overall upshot of Skowronek’s thesis is that given the current dominance of a Southern-based right wing GOP politics, Trump’s victory is less surprising. However, there’s much more to Trump’s victory than his being a Republican in a resilient conservative regime.

Trump and the psychodynamics of leadership

A New York Times video of crowds at Trump rallies during the 2016 campaign revealed an ugly brew of resentment, anger, and aggression that shows that “there is nothing new under the sun” in the dynamics of mobs and their relationship to their leaders. It’s likely that that constellation has been unleashed by charismatic leadership throughout human history. In 1851, Herman Melville illustrated its complex, multifaceted dimensions in his classic fictional account of Captain Ahab’s leadership, and his crew’s followership, in his monumental novel Moby Dick (Warner, 2008). The 20th century gave us the real thing in Adolph Hitler. Charisma doesn’t always produce such “toxic” results, but it is crucial to understand how it can. Recent theory and research have so focused on ennobling and elevating leadership concepts such as Burns’ (1978, 2003) influential idea of transforming leadership, Bass’s (1985) related studies of transformational leadership (Nye, 2013; Van Knippenberg and Simkin, 2013), and recent studies of authentic (Gardner et al., 2011), servant (Greenleaf, 1977) and even heroic leadership (Allison et al., 2017) that we have tended to overlook some of the perhaps more mundane and less comforting consequences of the leader–follower dynamic. These include the strong emotional and affective ties between leaders and followers, and where they can and often do lead.

Sigmund Freud’s analysis of leadership in his 1921 essay “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” mentions many of the elements of leader–follower dynamics that are seen in Trump rallies and, in the end, Trump votes. Heavily influenced by French physician and essayist Gustave LeBon’s Psychologie des Foules (or, The Crowd), Freud focused on the power of the crowd leader in unleashing normally suppressed primitive impulses such as sex and aggression. LeBon wrote that “Isolated [a man] may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings” (from Freud, 1920: 77). Freud emphasizes the impulsive behavior of people in crowds and their diminished intellectual functioning. He also argues that because people in groups become selfless, they become capable of being “generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly” and even having their “moral standards raised by a group” (Freud, 1920: 77, 79). That is, people are not really capable of thinking in a crowd setting, but they can be mobilized for good or evil, with evil the most common result due to the pleasure crowds allow for release from everyday inhibitions. The direction that they go depends on the leader.

The essential dynamics are strong affective ties between leaders and followers and among followers themselves. Capitalizing on these libidinal ties, leaders can take followers almost anywhere, from mob lynching in the American South to the mass suicide of Jonestown in 1978, where charismatic preacher Jim Jones commanded roughly 900 people to drink cyanide-laced Kool Aid (Tourish, 2013). People’s intellect and their pride in their individuality and morality (Freud calls it their narcissism) can be submerged in the release from personal responsibility that happens when the leader and fellow followers lead the way. But it also true that the leader responds to whatever emotions he or she releases in the crowd, and fans their flames. In the case of Trump, his followers experienced joyful and malicious bonding in having him boast that he would build a wall and that Mexico would pay for it, and also in encouraging chants of “Lock her up.” Trump took his cue from these rallies and emphasized the Mexican-funded wall and “Crooked Hillary” in many of his speeches. Nativist, sexist and even racist feelings not often given voice in mainstream politics were amplified in ways that call to mind Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar where he rages “And Casesar’s spirit …. Shall … with a monarch’s voice, Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.” Trump’s spirit had much the same impact. It is important to note that while Freud’s initial focus is on leaders of crowds, his analysis of leader–follower dynamics extends far beyond them.

A crucial element in Freud’s analysis is his comparison of followers’ attachment to their leaders to the overevaluation of love objects that is common in close relationships. The idealized loved one becomes the ego-ideal and can direct the loving one almost anywhere. In his analysis of power, James MacGregor Burns points out that “The person possessed by love … is a slave to the one loved, as the plight of Philip in Somerset Maugham’s marvelously titled Of Human Bondage illustrates.” It’s a scary thing. To the extent that a leader is irrationally loved in ways that block out thought, he or she has enormous power to shape, mobilize and persuade followers. In Trump’s case, many followers seem to feel that he can do no wrong. His obvious lies and exaggerations, his own narcissism and self-aggrandizement, his putdowns of women or the disabled, are overlooked or even celebrated. They define a new norm, a new sense of what is “OK” in political discourse.

We need to ask then what about Trump specifically gives him the power to transform a group of people in a rally into an aggressive mob and mobilize his base into a cohort of devoted acolytes. Freud argues that leaders meet a need people have to be led, and that they do so by having a “strong and imposing will.” Furthermore, they themselves “must be held in fascination by a strong faith (in an idea) that must awaken” follower’s faith (p. 81). That is, if the leader appears strong and offers a compelling and inspiring vison, he can mesmerize his audience. That faith or idea need not be very complicated. Freud emphasizes the “truly magical power of words” and that the leader “needs no logical adjustment in his arguments; he must paint in the most forcible colours, he must exaggerate, and he must repeat the same thing again and again” (pp. 78, 80). Make America Great Again was a marvelously memorable, resonant slogan that was repeated over and over again. It clearly inspired his base.

Still, as useful as is Freud’s analysis of leader–follower emotional ties may be, we have to ask what made Trump’s vision or faith so appealing. Both the message and the messenger have to work in order to inspire the kind of unquestioning love and obedience Freud suggests. Burns’ definition of leadership notes that potential leaders mobilize potential followers “in competition or conflict with others” (Burns, 1978: 18). Similarly, Howard Gardner argues that leaders influence followers through stories, particularly their stories about a group’s identity, and that her or his story competes with “counterstories” (Gardner, 1995). During the 2016 campaign, there were many stories about how great America already was, and what might make it better or worse. Why was Trump’s simple but decidedly divisive slogan of lost American eminence so powerful?

Trump’s “story” was clearly about American identity, or at least about the identity of some Americans, and it was clearly, in Gardner’s terms, an “exclusionary” story. His message to followers was that you are good, and that others of many stripes are bad. Furthermore, those others don’t represent the real America. This story and his base’s reaction to it is usefully understood in the context of Michael Hogg’s social identity theory of leadership (Van Knippenberg et al., 2004; Hogg, 2001). Hogg actually combines two closely related but different theories in social psychology: Tajfel’s social identity theory and Turner’s self-categorization theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Turner, 1985). Social identity theory holds that human beings strive for a positive sense of self and that that conception is based both on their individual self-concepts and their evaluation of the groups to which they feel that they belong. People want to view their personal achievements and values positively—or as Eliot Aronson put it years ago, they want to avoid feeling stupid and feeling guilty—and they also want to view positively the group memberships that define them. They want a positive social identity as well as a positive individual identity. Since the value attached to one’s social identity is always in comparison to the value placed on other groups, people show a great deal of ingroup favoritism in their relative evaluations of their own groups and “outgroups.”

Self-categorization theory adds that the categorization of people into groups is very fluid, and that people psychologically categorize themselves and others into different groups according to context. Different categorizations are cognitively salient at different times. Hogg writes “That categorization becomes salient, which best accounts for relevant similarities and differences among people in the context… and which best satisfies self-enhancement and self-evaluative concerns” and that “people ‘try out’ different categories or prototypes to make sense of the social field in ways that also evaluate self relatively favorably” (p. 188). Both of these theories amplify William James’ (1892) writing about the “social self.” James argues that people have as many social selves as they have significant groups of people with whom they interact. They show different sides of themselves to different individuals or groups, depending on what is appropriate to the context, and that they maintain relationships with individuals or groups in which they are viewed positively.

These ideas suggest that the fluidity and multiplicity in people’s self-conceptions allow potential leaders to call to mind or make salient varying categorizations, that is, different social identities. As noted earlier, Howard Gardner argues that the identities that leaders’ stories define can be inclusive or exclusive. Stories include dynamic narratives in which the leader and followers are portrayed as principal actors in “a drama that unfolds over time,” and in which they are the “principal characters or heroes” (p. 14). These stories relate where the group is coming from, where it is going, what challenges it will meet, and what its future can be. Trump’s campaign told its base a distinctly exclusive story. Other Americans and foreigners needed to be struggled against. They were in the way of making America great again. They needed to be put in their place. It’s of interest that William James noted resentment as a special human instinct. People can nurse resentments, and leaders who tell them that they have a right to resent others validate their own sense of self-worth. In May of 2017, his fifth month in office, Trump spoke to a convention of New York police and told them how unfairly that had been treated by others. Trump was on their side against elites, Black Lives Matter proponents and others. It was typical Trump—defining a group in an exclusive manner, telling them how good they are, and how bad people in different groups are.

Trump’s zealous validation of the identity of white, working class and relatively uneducated Americans must be compared with competing stories about that group told by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment. Her apparent definition of that group was crystalized in a speech two months before the election in which she stated “you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. … And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to” them. Much like Republican Mitt Romney’s comment derogating the “47%” in 2012, Clinton denigrated a huge segment of the American population. Her remarks suggest that the basket of deplorables is inhabited by straight, white, Christian, American men. They make the division of the electorate into that large group vs. African Americans, women, gays, lesbians, immigrants and others the salient categories. While Trump fed and validated the resentments of a huge segment of the population toward the liberal urban elite, Clinton defined them in a stunningly negative manner. No wonder they so strongly supported Trump.

The social identity theory perspective recalls the earlier point that our social identity is based on the value we put on the groups to which we belong and the contrasting value we put on various outgroups. However, inclusive Democrats intend their support for African Americans, women, Hispanics, the LBGTQ community and others, they must understand that in applauding the identity of people in those groups they can easily be perceived as viewing negatively the identities of people not in those categories. A remark like “basket of deplorables” confirms that potential understanding of her view. This problem goes to the heart of a central question in the social identity literature: is ingroup bias based solely on seeing one’s own group in a positive light or does it also entail viewing outgroups negatively? Brewer’s (1979) influential review of a great deal of relevant literature concludes that “in-group bias rests on the perception that one’s own group is better, although the out-group is not necessarily deprecated” (p. 322, italics added). However, as Brewer acknowledges, many studies do show outgroup derogation as one element of ingroup bias. Furthermore, the downward social comparison literature shows that at times ingroup enhancement is facilitated by outgroup derogation, or even discrimination and aggression toward the outgroup (Wills, 1981). Both Trump and Clinton can be seen to have validated their respective bases by derogating their respective outgroups.

Hogg’s social identity theory of leadership also takes a perspective on charisma which is highly relevant to considering how much Trump’s base’s attachment to him is attributable to his personal charisma rather than his validation of their social identity. Hogg suggests that the two are closely related in that once a person is seen as the leader of a group, often based on their group prototypicality, charismatic qualities are attributed and an idealized image is constructed. Did Trump become the leader of his base because he was perceived as charismatic or did he come to be seen as charismatic because he became its leader? Clearly, many Trump supporters find him charismatic, while large groups of his opponents regard him as personally repulsive. It seems likely that that in return for validating their identity, especially in contrast to the perceived liberal denigration of their identity, Trump’s base has attributed to him the kind of “exceptional powers or qualities” associated with the charismatic leader (Weber, 1947). The fact that he was on their side came first. Experiencing him as charismatic came second. However, the two elements are surely very much intertwined. This question merits further research.

In contemplating the future of both American politics and American society, it is disturbing that Trump’s validation of his white working class base is largely defined by derogation of outgroups—the media, liberals, elites, and often minorities. Therefore, it is refreshing to recall that other recent US presidents have sounded more inclusive notes. Soon after Jimmy Carter became Governor of Georgia in 1971, he was featured on the cover of Time magazine as one of several “New South” governors who opposed racial segregation and wanted the South to move past its racist past. In his inaugural address that year Carter proclaimed that the time for such division was over, and when he ran for president in 1976 he frequently, and somewhat surprisingly, stated that the 1964 civil rights act was the best thing that ever happened to the South. He articulated an inclusive view of Southern identity and an inclusive story of that region’s place within the nation as a whole. Those stances and his own Southern background allowed him to win 10 of the 11 former Confederate states, the backbone of his winning the election with a majority of both popular and electoral votes. No Democrat since has won as much support in the South.

Barack Obama famously burst onto the political scene at the Democratic Party convention in 2004. His highly inclusive story of American identity resonated with the country’s majority and won Obama a conclusive victory in 2008. His 2004 address included the memorable phrases “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States of America” and referring to his own youth he recalled “the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.”

Clearly, Carter’s America and Obama’s America are not the polarized one defined by Donald Trump. Their stories appealed to the best in the American spirit. Trump’s surely does not. How might his dystopic, divisive vision of the United States be countered by a story of American’s common identity that again appeals to our better angels? In addressing this question, it is helpful to keep in mind how in the past a range of inclusive identity stories have prevailed over exclusive counterstories. The key may be that they effectively engaged several other human motives along with the powerful need for a positive social identity. James MacGregor Burns’ (1978) definition of leadership, already quoted in part above, is a helpful starting point. Burns wrote that potential leaders “arouse, engage, and satisfy the motives of followers” in “competition or conflict with” other potential leaders. Aspiring leaders, presidential candidates among them, will win those competitions or conflicts if the set of motives they arouse, engage or satisfy is more compelling that the set of motives addressed by other potential leaders. Burns was particularly influenced by Abraham Maslow’s need hierarchy of motivation, which identifies physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness needs and esteem needs as motives that must be satisfied before self-actualization, the highest need in the hierarchy, can be addressed (Burns, 2003). Esteem needs include both the need for a positive individual identity, based on one’s achievements and other people’s positive evaluation of those achievements, and a positive social identity. One implication is that a potential leader who satisfies or promises to satisfy unmet lower needs (physiological, safety, and belongingness) can then appeal to esteem or identity needs. Another is that if the lower needs and identity of the ingroup have been gratified, or promise to be by a potential leader, that individual can then broaden the ingroups’ identity to include other groups which might ordinarily be considered outgroups. Maslow’s approach suggests that adopting an inclusive social identity is part of feeling self-actualized, that is, feeling that one is developing one’s highest potentials.

These implications are clearly speculative. Can they be seen in the leadership of specific individuals who told successful inclusive identity stories? We’ve already mentioned Carter’s and Obama’s successful inclusive identity stories. Their narratives can be seen to both validate the identity of particular groups (Southerners in Carter’s case, white Americans in Obama’s) while making salient an appealing broader, more inclusive social identity for those groups. Howard Gardner discusses inclusive stories told by Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s and US Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947. Pope John’s story defined an open, welcoming Roman Catholic Church. Obviously secure in his own personal and Catholic identity, John could refer to Protestants as “our departed brethren” rather than an inferior order, and even reach out to non-believers. He once asked a Soviet diplomat, “I know you are an atheist, but won’t you accept an old man’s blessing?” (p. 178). Gardner argues that one element in the success of John’s openness was that it was rooted in the story of the very first Christian, Jesus of Nazareth, whose admonition to “love thy neighbor” essentially defined inclusivity. In Marshall’s case, proposing what became known as the Marshall Plan in a 1947 commencement address at Harvard University, the Secretary of State argued from a context in which the United States dominated the world militarily and was enjoying a robust economy. Americans felt good about who they were. Needs for safety and prosperity were satisfied. When Marshall proposed that the US help rebuild war-torn Europe, for humanitarian as well as strategic reasons, citizens were receptive to an identity story that portrayed America as a generous and open leading nation.

Three highly resonant inaugural addresses by US presidents have appealed to different motives in Maslow’s need hierarchy while relating more or less explicitly an inclusive social identity story. Their lasting appeal comes in large measure from the ways they appeal to the best elements of our humanity. Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural, concluding with the sentence beginning “With malice toward none, with charity for all” and urging the country “to do all which may achieve a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations” is the most explicitly inclusive of the three, spoken, like George Marshall’s address, from a position of ingroup strength. Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural address in 1933 famously proclaimed “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” addressing the country’s needs for economic security. Its tone conveyed that all Americans were in the struggle together. Even though he criticized, as did Jesus, the “money changers” in “the temple,” he called for a united effort at home. He also made explicit the link between a secure ingroup identity and the resulting potential for that identity to be inclusive: “I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others…” Finally, John F. Kennedy’s exhortation to his “fellow Americans” to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” also asked US citizens to work hard for a better world: “The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it–and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.” He aroused a motive to achieve and be effective in a way that contributed to both national unity and generosity.

What possibilities lie ahead for an American presidential candidate to relate a story of a country that is secure in its virtues and competencies, united in its commitments domestically and internationally, and willing to struggle for the greater good? The pages of history offer a blueprint for a leader whose self-confidence reassures and inspires, whose generosity of spirit engages charity rather than malice, and whose revealed wisdom provides a compass toward a peaceful and prosperous future. We can hope to discover and empower such a leader, sooner rather than later.