Introduction

The script of the 2016 presidential election combined elements of a Sturm und Drang yarn that literary wordsmiths past and present might well have dismissed as too fictionally outlandish to be believable. Yet to suspend one's disbelief is to recognize that the consequences of the populist narrative from across the political spectrum were as disruptive as they were far-reaching in challenging the political order well beyond the outcome on November 8. The screenplay continues to unfold without a dénouement in advance of the 2020 presidential contest.

Like Cervantes’ self-aggrandizing knight-errant searching for a new adventure—declaring patriotism his suit of armor, donning a volatile temperament from reports of chronic insomnia, and engaging in a series of misadventures aimed at freeing the oppressed—Donald Trump emerged on the political scene in 2015 as a quixotic figure that captivated supporters as much as he confounded opponents. Raising his rhetorical sword at political elites amidst lurid tales of chauvinism conflated with chivalry, the business mogul railed against his “establishment” Republican rivals with unprecedented, personally offensive rhetoric, won the GOP nomination with arguments against “stupid people” in government, demonized illegal immigrants as an existential threat to national sovereignty, and sought to remake the Republican Party in his own image. Accusing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the general election campaign not only of co-founding the Islamic State with former President Obama but also being “the devil,” his sexist verbal assaults were best characterized by a deleted re-tweet that rekindled memory of Bill Clinton's dalliances in the White House as a means of indicting the former Secretary of State while deflecting his own record of infidelities: “If [Hillary] Clinton can't satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?”