My mentor in college used to say that the people we elect reflect who we are.

Those were the long-ago days of Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon. I was a freshman, starry-eyed and idealistic about politics. I was utterly confident that, polls notwithstanding, Americans would surely reject Nixon’s mendacity in favor of the Democratic senator from South Dakota and former Methodist seminary student, George McGovern.

That was not to be. Election night was a gut punch that left me reeling for days — well, actually, months.

I couldn’t bring myself to believe that we Americans chose a serial prevaricator over someone as manifestly good, decent and honest as McGovern.

Among his other shortcomings, Nixon had promised a “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam, a plan, it turned out, that entailed expanding that cursed war into Cambodia and Laos. 

I’m sure I took some grim satisfaction as the Watergate scandal unfolded, and “I’m not a crook” Nixon waved goodbye at the door of the helicopter that whirred him into political exile. My judgment was correct, after all, and surely the American people now recognized the error of their ways.

In light of the past decade or so of American politics, including 30,573 false or misleading statements in the span of four years, Nixon is beginning to look positively saintly.

Somehow, against all odds, hope and optimism rebound.

As a Christian, I believe that hope is a mandate. It’s the only one of the three theological virtues — faith, hope and love — that is volitional. As Anne Lamott says, “Grace bats last.”

That’s not to say there haven’t been other disappointments along the way.

I was reconciled to Ronald Reagan’s win early on election night in 1980. Still, when the Senate started to fall — lions like Birch Bayh of Indiana, Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, John Culver of Iowa, Frank Church of Idaho and McGovern of South Dakota — I succumbed to another bout of depression.

George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore in 2000 was decided by a single vote in the Supreme Court, and 2004 was another tough one. But nothing was as devastating as 2016. That is, until last week.

We could (and we did) tell ourselves the 2016 election was an aberration. True, Hillary Clinton ran an indifferent campaign and someone as smart as she did some really stupid things, including the use of private email accounts and condescending comments about “deplorables.”

Besides, the Russians almost certainly had meddled in the election, so we could take some small comfort in the ruse that the Trump election of 2016 was a fluke.

And surely, after four years of mayhem during the Trump presidency, such as the mishandling of the COVID crisis, the economic downturn, the false statements, and the fraying foreign alliances, Americans would see the evil demagogue for what he was.

(And where, I wonder, is that check from Mexico to pay for his “big, beautiful wall”? Has it cleared yet?)

We rejected Trump in 2020, but he came roaring back four years later with a vengeance.

Now, we must come to terms with the fact that Donald Trump is who we are. In the immortal words of the Pogo comic strip, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Shortly after the results were in, I posted to Facebook, imploring someone to persuade me that I did not live in a racist, misogynistic, xenophobic society. 

So far, no one has accepted the challenge.