America is going through, what historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jr. calls “cycles” in American history, when the tide of action, passion, idealism and reform gives way to seasons of drift, quiescence, hedonism, and cynicism. The cheapness and shoddiness of the moment that saw Americans put their money on a salesman like Donald Trump will peter out. The liberal moorings of the traditional Americans and the innovative and exciting energy of the immigrants would see the Trump interregnum off, without permanent damage to the American soul”, says the author.

Barack Obama hasvacated the presidency of the United States, the most powerful and still the most consequential office in the world. As his successor, the Americans have opted for a man who has not held an elective office before nor has any record of public service. Modern day advertisement mechanisms and social media gladiators ensure that the winner is deemed to be endowed with all the virtues of a noble ruler; Donald Trump is already being serenaded as a worthy tribute to the American democracy and its capacity for innovation and inclusion. Inversely, the Democrats’ defeat in the race for the White House is seen – both by the Trump fanatics and the liberals themselves – as a repudiation of Obama’s legacy and his leadership. But a fair question needs to be asked: do we necessarily have to lower our standards by which to judge a leader just because Mr. Trump has managed to swagger his way to the White House?Are democracies increasingly doomed to be saddled with skilled demagogues?

Every nation constitutes itself into a political community, with its own peculiar history and geography, with its own sense of comfort over distribution of power, wealth and privilege, and with its own set of ideals and principles. Every political community experiences convulsions and conflict when the realities of power do not match the professed ideals. The Americans see themselves as having organized the United States into a unique political community, premised on lofted principles of equality, openness and opportunity. Historically the United States benefited, economically and culturally, from the raw energy and enterprise of the immigrant; and, in the post-World War the American political community redeemed itself as it struggled to redesign its civil rights regime in line with its own protestations of equality for all citizens. Post 9/11, the United States took it upon itself to be the global prosecutor for democracy.

When Obama won the presidency in 2008, his victory was a triumph of the American ideal. The Americans were finally beginning – or, so it seemed – to come to terms with the logic of their own democratic history. A black man had come to live in the White House. A glorious moment that redeemed the uniqueness of the American experiment. And, it was comforting that Obama had won the presidential race not by inciting racial animosities in the manner of a Malcolm X but by inviting the Americans to be true to their own nobler instincts, by offering intelligent and worthy answers to America’s problems, and by assuring the outside world of a moderate, reasonable American leadership. Ironically enough, he is often chided for being too professorial, too cerebral, and too nuanced to be an “effective” leader.

Was he a bad leader? Obama’s eight years in the White House turned out, at best, to be a mixed blessing. As a matter of fact, this “mixed blessing” is now perhaps the inevitable verdict on almost every leader in the modern democracy; more so in the American political arrangement where the Executive is institutionally obliged to negotiate power and authority with the Legislature. Effective leadership does not easily or automatically accrue to the President. And, it was sought to be denied to the first black President from the moment he walked into the Oval Office. That, of course, is simply politics.

Yet the basic question that students of democracy around the world have to ask and answer for themselves is: do we need to redefine the qualities we look for in our leaders? Just because a real-estate mogul can successfully tap into the presumed anger and resentment of the white Americans, does the task of leadership stand redefined? Do leaders have necessarily to be crude and corny, always over-eager to appeal to our ugliest and baser instincts? Ultra-nationalists are on the rampage in Europe and there seems to be inevitability about these rogues. Compassionate competence of an Angela Merkel is sought to be belittled, while demagogues are being heard respectfully. And, depressingly enough, the narrative industry is working overtime to rationalize the rise of Trump and other ultra-right leaders in Europe as a justifiable revolt against the elites and their presumed indifference to the masses’ concern. The so-called elites are deemed to have received their well-deserved karmic comeuppance.

America is going through, what historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jr. calls “cycles” in American history, when the tide of action, passion, idealism and reform gives way to seasons of drift, quiescence, hedonism, and cynicism. The cheapness and shoddiness of the moment that saw Americans put their money on a salesman like Donald Trump will peter out. The liberal moorings of the traditional Americans and the innovative and exciting energy of the immigrants would see the Trump interregnum off, without permanent damage to the American soul.

While arguments and slogans are necessarily designed to mobilize a section of the electorate in a partisan way, the task of the political leadership is inherently a noble quest, especially in a democratic format. The political leadership imposes a noble burden on a President or a Prime Minister – the burden of pursuit of national interest, even national glory, in a manner that redeems, rather than diminishes, the citizen. Whenever a leader fails to live up to the spirit of that noble burden, his own fellow-citizens end up paying a price as does the world at large.

We increasingly like to live un-historically. While it may be fashionably easy to castigate Barack Obama’s inadequacies, it would be worthwhile to ponder what would have been America’s – and, the world’s – fate if he had failed to defeat his Republican rival in 2008. America and the world would have certainly hurtled down to the path of one confrontation after another, instigating instability and disorder on a grand global scale. If nothing else, we should be thankful that Obama could roll back the George Bush-Dick Chenny era’s excesses. At home, on Obama’s watch, the United States became a calmer and easier society, even if a lot of Americans did become angrier and wilder. Trump’s success in no way diminishes Obama’s accomplishments. It would be a terrible historical mistake to read Trump’s arrival as historically inevitable.

Centuries ago Aristotle had hinted at our present-day dilemma: the man or group of men to govern solely for the best interests of the people at large is rare and hard to be found. Democracy, of course, constitutes the best and fairest mechanism to locate and anoint such honorable rulers. And, precisely for that reason, Trump’s victory cannot be used to lower the bar in democracies around the world.

(The author is Editor in chief of Tribune group of newspapers)