By now it has become an established meme that Donald Trump’s standing in the competition for the Republican party’s nomination for president is a predictable result of the party’s strategy to build a coalition of voters by cynically appealing to the fears and loathings of various groups and subgroups in a highly heterogenous nation that is designed to be held together by an idea, namely, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This idea is an ideal, a goal, the achievement of which is resisted by that “human nature” that has been in the process of development since the Stone Age.
Now we are engaged in a great political struggle, “testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” Are the ideals of Liberty and Equality complementary, or are they contradictory? Is it possible to create a durable polity conceived in liberty and dedicated to a proposition that has little warrant in human experience beyond tribal societies whose organization is based on consanguinity?
I think it’s fair to say that the American response to the Great Depression amounted to a paradigm shift, from an emphasis on Liberty to a corrective emphasis on Equality, and that since the Goldwater candidacy of 1964 there has been a concerted effort to rebalance the polity towards Liberty, achieving and then going too far in the Reagan presidency of 1980-88. A correction was made by the Clinton years 1992-2000, followed by the regressive Bush presidency of 2000-2008, followed by an attempt to rebalance towards Equality by the present Obama administration. In the midst of all this balancing and rebalancing, the question becomes most insistent: are these idea(l)s complementary or contradictory? Can any nation so dedicated to these ideals long endure?
President Obama seems to have seen as his mandate the goal to “change the culture of Washington,” which by 2008 had become polarized between the party of Liberty vs. the party of Equality. The Founders’ vision of the twin ideals as complementary had given way to the sense that they are contradictory. Obama’s efforts to reorient this thinking utterly failed, and for several reasons, perhaps the main one being that few of our political leaders understand the radical challenge to human nature that was proposed by Jefferson and restated by Lincoln as the basis for national unity.
We all know that something is very wrong. The “more perfect union” sought by the institutionalization of the principles of the Declaration in the Constitution and its amendment process is in a kind of crisis, and one symptom of that crisis is the rise of candidate Trump.
RES PUBLICA 
I think it’s a little harsh or misleading to say that Obama’s effort to re-orient our thinking utterly failed. For one thing, Obama energized some younger voters, at least briefly. I’m not young, but Obama brought me back to the Democratic Party. For years, I was a nominal Republican, too cynical and demoralized to change my party affiliation, but too disapproving of the Republicans to identify with them. I changed my party affiliation in part at alarm and disgust at the insanity of the Republicans, but also under Obama’s influence. I just found it admirable that the Democrats were still a party of offices open to talent. The Republicans are not.
Second, compare Obama’s approach with that of the Republicans. Consider how the Republicans handled the “birther” controversy early in Obama’s presidency. A quote from the NYT:
While Mr. Ryan politely rejected the birth inquiries, others did not. Asked in 2011 on the NBC program “Meet the Press” about the birth certificate conspiracy, and House members still promoting it, Mr. Boehner responded, “It really is not our job to tell the American people what to believe and what to think.” Asked on the same program about such “crazy talk,” Mr. Cantor replied, “I don’t think it’s, it’s nice to call anyone crazy, O.K.?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/us/politics/paul-ryan-faces-tea-party-forces-that-he-helped-unleash.html
In other words, these were people who didn’t even regard leadership as part of their job description. So how surprised can we be, when we see discourse lapse into a form of mass hysteria?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/politics/donald-trump-supremacists.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/politics/donald-trump-conspiracy-theories.html
By comparison with this cesspool, Obama is a shining success.
In my opinion the preceding stories draw attention to the real failure here–a failure of the American people. No one, no matter how persuasive, can force people to care about the truth, and think in a manner conducive to discovering it. If Obama failed to persuade or change the culture, it wasn’t for lack of trying, but for lack of thought and receptiveness on the part of his audience.
I didn’t always agree with him, but Obama was the most impressive president I’ve seen in my lifetime–since Nixon. The response he got from the American people may well be enough to turn me into an unapologetic “anti-American” for the rest of my lifetime.
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I quite agree how impressive has been Obama’s effort to implement his admirable values and the contemptible treatment he has received from the GOP. I do see his priority to ‘change the Washington culture’ to be naive and misplaced. His willingness to bend was predictably seen as weakness, and he lost much momentum for change. When he had a majority in the first two years, he needed to push through the ACA single-payer. Also, he is reproved for being ‘aloof.’ The pols want to be courted. LBJ showed how you can push your agenda playing hardball and still schmooz with the opposition.
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