Financial analyst and our contributor Donald Luskin has described Donald Trump as a “black swan” over the political economy. He’s referring to an outlier event that few anticipated and whose impact is impossible to predict. As the voting season begins in Iowa, this strikes us as a useful way for Republicans to think about the Trump candidacy.
We’ve been critical of Mr. Trump on many grounds and our views have not changed. But we also respect the American public, and the brash New Yorker hasn’t stayed atop the GOP polls for six months because of his charm. Democracies sometimes elect poor leaders—see the last eight years—but their choices can’t be dismissed as mindless unless you want to give up on democracy itself.
The most hopeful way to interpret Mr. Trump’s support is that the American people aren’t taking decline lying down. They know the damage that has been done to them over the last decade—in lower incomes, diminished economic prospects, and a far more dangerous world. But they aren’t about to accept this as their fate.
Americans aren’t Japanese or Europeans—at least not yet. Mr. Trump’s promise to “make America great again” is for many patriotic voters a rallying cry for U.S. revival. In that sense it is motivated more by hope than by the “anger” so commonly described in the media.