Let’s, then, go through a few insults and criticisms of Trump that don’t seem to work very well. A few of the most obvious:
Trump is orange
Trump is vulgar
Trump is dumb
​Trump has funny hair
These are all given frequent mention. They are also beside the point. One should care far more about what Trump thinks and does than what he looks like. Now, one could say that what he looks like is in some ways a reflection of who he is, since the ridiculous spray-tan with the little white eye-regions is the product and consequence of his vanity. But the broader principle of progressives should be: what someone looks like is of minimal relevance in evaluating them. That’s what we believe. And we should be consistent in that belief. If someone made fun of our candidate’s appearance, no matter what that appearance was, we would declare that as a matter of principle, image should matter less than substance. Such high-mindedness is both admirable and correct. But it has no force unless you maintain it consistently, even as applied to people whom you detest.

In this context, Barack Obama will likely be viewed by posterity as a status quo President who sought to maintain continuity with U.S. grand strategy and alliance partnerships, even if he tried to do so on the cheap. Perceiving a rising China as the greatest challenge to the United States, in his first term he reduced military assets in Europe and attempted to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; both moves were intended to shift scarce resources to Asia. But Putin’s assault on Ukraine and the explosive emergence of ISIS forced him to reengage in both Europe and the Middle East. Whipsawed by events, Obama has been justly criticized for misreading Putin, underestimating ISIS, and damaging U.S. credibility thanks to his feckless posturing with respect to Assad.

However, these assessments often fail to account for the global perspective that a U.S. President responsible for sustaining American primacy in all theaters of the globe must constantly bear in mind. For Obama this meant putting a premium on husbanding strength and avoiding military entanglements while relying on the panoply of instruments within the U.S. diplomatic toolbox—what Kennan referred to as “measures short of war.” But such is the mismatch between U.S. resources and global commitments that Obama arguably ended up overstretching the U.S. military anyway, while still under-resourcing his de facto containment strategy toward China.

Obama, in short, has attempted to execute a balance of power strategy that in principle is well suited to a multipolar global system. Whether such cold, Nixonian realism in foreign policy is suited to the American temperament is another question altogether. Since the radical break with isolationist tradition in the wake of World War II, public support for U.S. global leadership has been sustained by a romantic faith in America’s overseas mission—a kind of internationalized Manifest Destiny. Obama’s challenge to the myth of omnipotence, although based on a realistic appraisal of the changing balance of power in the world, has been psychologically deflating. The risk over time is that the American people will choose to recoil from a world that readily bends neither to America’s power nor its moral vision. In the meantime, especially when feelings of vulnerability run high due to recurrent terrorist attacks in Europe and on U.S. soil, the public nostalgically hankers for leadership that projects confidence in America’s capacity to defeat all comers: thus the attraction throughout 2016 of candidates who promised a restoration of American primacy—an America that wins again.

Trump either fails to see the moral emptiness at Kane’s core, or else he does, and it doesn’t strike him as exceptional. Either way, however we spin it—wherever we draw the line of his self-delusion—Trump is admitting that he’s every bit as hollow as Charlie Kane; every bit “the empty box” (as Welles called him); every bit the liar and narcissist and demagogue.

​The night was sad. The center failed to hold. Did I blame the rioting kids? I did. Did I blame Trump? I did. This, Mr. Trump, I thought, is why we practice civility. This is why, before we say exactly what is on our minds, we run it past ourselves, to see if it makes sense, is true, is fair, has a flavor of kindness, and won’t hurt someone or make someone’s difficult life more difficult. Because there are, among us, in every political camp, limited, angry, violent, and/or damaged people, waiting for any excuse to throw off the tethers of restraint and get after it. After which it falls to the rest of us, right and left, to clean up the mess.