Could gratitude win the 2024 Presidential Election?

Congratulations America, you’ve moved on.

We live in an era where, it seems like, everyone is mad and everyone is scared.

Media pundits, pollsters, political aficionado’s, elected officials, your conservative Uncle Jonathan and your liberal cousin Melinda all say that only the toughest candidate will win the 2024 Presidential election.

I appreciate the musings of the opinionated prognosticators in your life. I just disagree with them.

What if much of America has evolved beyond a very temporary, pretend-strongman fetish? What if the news pundits are wrong and what if most Americans don’t want to elect a dumber version of a Hungarian-style, democratic tyrant?

First, let’s step back a few years.

Trump never quite emerged as the strongman that a majority of voters chose in 2015. Quite the opposite, he immediately showed himself to be a thin-skinned, weakling from the get-go.

On inauguration day, 2016, the newly elected, wannabe authoritarian obsessed, not about a pretend belief that the nation was in a dismal state of “carnage”, but about the disappointing crowd size.

Emotionally bruised and psychologically battered the desperate President concocted a face saving scheme that would have the total net effect of publicly humiliating his already insecure Press Secretary.

Paraded in front the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room podium, Sean Spicer woefully declared, “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe."

Spicer appeared laughably juvenile and sounded objectively ridiculous. Especially since the White House press Corps had already debunked Trump’s crowd size mythology with photographic evidence.

That may have been the beginning of the end of America’s fascination with the strong man.

Six years later, with Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s figurehead, the GOP has underperformed in two midterm elections and one presidential election. There is no reason, not even Biden’s controversial handling of the war in Gaza, to expect that Trump will suddenly win an election, any election, in the near future.

We need a hero.

I’m not suggesting that the typical American voter doesn’t want a modern day, non-racist, more well rounded version of John Wayne or a real-live, all American James Bond. They do. We do.

We all want a hero who will save us from climate change, home grown terrorists and real or perceived authoritarians. Unfortunately, she’s not running for the Office of President of the United States.

Since we‘re not going to get an duly elected savior, and since all our problems can only be solved by each of us doing our part, doing actual make-the-country-better work, we’ll have to settle for a guy who is driven by a force more powerful than the faux-toughness of an insecure, school-yard-level, emotionally unstable, octogenarian bully.

The person who wins the 2024 presidential election, whether it be Joe Biden or an unexpected challenger, will be someone who truly appreciates the United States of America and its citizens. It will be someone with the emotional maturity to be able to express that appreciation in words and deeds.

That person will not be Donald Trump because, unfortunately for Donald Trump, he is wholly incapable of sincere gratitude.

The person who wins the 2024 election will be someone who is empathetic, intelligent and, at very least, emotionally mature.