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Will believes that leadership is only for, “certain people”. Those who have been instructed in and around rarefied air, who drink hot tea with an extended pinkie, and most important, understand the highest of the elite always wear a bowtie.

Not really. Will, the son of a philosophy professor, is intelligent, well-educated, and deeply attached to conservative principles. He also intuitively yearns for good men and women to be their advocates in politics. That kind of thinking has an honorable pedigree that can be traced from the ancient world through to today and broadly reflects the division of life and politics into aristocratic and popular sentiments and factions.

Many conservatives recoil from Trump due to his often vulgar manner and crude remarks. To win the general election, Trump will have to put these people at ease and draw them back into the Republican coalition even as he keeps the appeal generated by his maverick populism. Trump will have a chance to do that when he speaks to the Republican convention. If he fails in that task, Trump is likely to lose the general election, with a decisive slice of the electorate rejecting his as dangerously ill-tempered and erratic.