Ronald Reagan once joked that he only wanted to work with one-armed economists because they were fond of saying "on the one hand" this and "on the other hand" that. Author Frank Schaeffer once observed of born again Christians: "Evangelicals are a lot like jellyfish. They float with the tides. They do not direct their own course. Sometimes the currents of the sea beach them. Then they melt in the sun on the sand. Later they disappear altogether. The jelly dries and no trace is left. The tides goes out, the wind moans softly, and no one notices."
I thought of those two recently as I tried to make sense of Republican primary voters rejecting 16 capable leaders who had the misfortune of belonging to two groups of people: country club Republicans and born-again Christians.
The former were ably represented by Jeb Bush, the grandson of a United States Senator and the son and brother of presidents, and the latter comprised the rest of the field, individuals who could recount with elan the day they accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
What we are witnessing is not an embrace of Trump but rather a determined rejection of representatives of these two groups and a deeming of them as both untrustworthy in keeping their promises, and undependable at securing and maintaining theirs and the nation's safety.
This rejection is both visceral and guttural: Americans see unchecked immigration and terror knocking at their nation's doorstep and have simply concluded that they need to find a bully of their own who can stand up to the bullies that represent an existential threat to theirs and their nation's welfare.
Long before there were country clubs with members named Bush, Abraham Lincoln mocked what he termed the "Silk Stocking Gentry," a term later picked up by Teddy Roosevelt who told voters: "We have against us the timid silk-stocking element. ... not quite confident enough in himself to believe in himself," adding that many men of his time were "very nice, very refined, who shook their heads over political corruption and discussed it in drawing rooms and parlors, but who were wholly unable to grapple with real men in real life."
I decided to try my theory out on a man who is the authority on both bullying and Christians, Paul Coughlin, author of "No More Christian Nice Guy" and the founder of an anti-bullying group called the Protectors.
"Presidents are almost always the person that circumstances call for at that time," Coughlin told me. "Obama was probably a response to the actions of President Bush. Americans wanted a reprieve from war, so they went for someone who they were pretty sure would not declare additional wars, and who would also get us out of existing conflicts. But his demeanor, verbiage as well as behavior is perceived by many as weak, ineffective and too nice. Very similar to many of the Christians running for the Republican nomination for president. Then along comes Donald Trump who is refreshingly different. What we're seeing today is an attraction toward people who act and speak directly and even bluntly."
Although a churchgoer himself, Coughlin is highly critical of his fellow believers, in particular on the issue that Trump has most prominently ridden to the nomination and now possibly the presidency: illegal immigration:
"I'm glad that most Christians that I know do not dictate American foreign policy," Coughlin says. "Because if they did, we would all be speaking a very different language, because our borders would be overrun. They are too nice to be good. Many Christians we know are nice not because they truly care about other people but because they're indifferent and they fear conflict. Trump clearly doesn't fear conflict, he seems to enjoy it. He's a breath of fresh air for many Americans."
According to Coughlin what country-clubbers and born-againers have in spades and in common is niceness, and he doesn't mean that in a nice way.
"Niceness is almost always a knee-jerk response to pleasing other people, and it makes such people unreliable, especially when it comes to leadership," he says. "Nice people will say one thing to one group and say something completely contrary to another. They do this to garner favor and avoid conflict. We don't respect such people because they don't honor truth and clarity the way that most people want to see it in a politician or anyone else. Nice people aren't peacemakers either. They are peacefakers. Because creating peace is not appeasement and letting people walk all over you and others. Peace is the process toward justice, and it is hard to get to. Nice people, compared to good people, rarely ever do anything meaningful in life and they sure don't stand up for anything significant. They might give us good recipes or make for a good late-night TV host, but that's about it."
What is required of leaders, Coughlin argues, is "wisdom and backbone and shrewdness — qualities that most Christians just don't think are necessary but qualities Jesus exhibited without apology."
Although Hillary Clinton is neither a country-clubber nor a born-againer, she may nonetheless be defeated come November by a man who is easily the least conventionally prepared candidate in American history. But in 2016 that may not matter, for many Americans seem to want a leader who has developed personality traits and a leadership style that would be shunned at a country club or a country church but may be necessary to deal with the unique challenges their nation faces.