Article

Leadership
2018, Vol. 14(5) 513–523
Donald Trump, perceptions ! The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1742715018793741
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George R Goethals
Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, VA, USA

Abstract
The populism of Donald Trump and his supporters can be viewed as rooted in feelings of relative
deprivation, whereby people feel that they are getting less than they deserve in exchanges with
other groups, and perceptions of unfair procedures, whereby elites are seen to allocate out-
comes in an unethical, biased, and/or disrespectful manner. Populist leaders can boost people’s
self-esteem and hence their sense of what they deserve and how they should be treated by
establishment decision makers. Populist leaders make intergroup comparisons salient and thereby
exacerbate intergroup hostility. In the United States, populist politics has shifted from emphasiz-
ing unfair economic outcomes to exploiting racist and nativist sentiments as well as cultural
antagonisms. Donald Trump’s populism can be traced most directly to George Wallace’s racist
populist campaigns in the 1960s. Trump has also focused on unfair decisions made about political
allies. His presidency is arguably the first to ride these elements in American politics to the
White House.

Keywords
Populism, social identity, social comparison, relative deprivation, procedural justice

Donald Trump’s 2016 election as president of the United States was surprising and unusual
in a number of respects. First, it was marked by the greatest popular vote versus electoral
vote mismatch in US history. While Trump clearly won the electoral vote and thereby
became president, he equally clearly lost the popular vote. Second, he won the electoral
vote by winning a very unusual pattern of states, dominating in the south, in farm and
mountain states, and in Great Lakes “rust belt” states. He held the reliably Republican

Corresponding author:
George R Goethals, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, VA, USA.
Email: ggoethal@richmond.edu
514 Leadership 14(5)

south while winning the northern states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa,
states that had generally been Democratic strongholds since 1992. His base was attracted to
Trump’s populist, nativist, nationalist, and racially charged rhetoric. None of the themes in
his campaign were new in American politics, but they had never before been combined in a
successful race for the nation’s highest office. The varied elements of his appeal had in
common the implicit or explicit claim that his base of rural white working-class
Americans were the real Americans who had made our country great. Furthermore, he
argued that they were disrespected and unfairly treated by the highly educated, urban,
suburban, and coastal elites who were overly sympathetic to immigrants and minorities,
and who distained enduring American cultural traditions. The high regard in which he held
his base, and the low regard in which his opponent, Hillary Clinton, held them, was crys-
tallized in the latter’s claim that half of Trump supporters could be put into a “basket of
deplorables.”
The populist elements that are central to Trumpism can usefully be understood in terms
of two bodies of social psychological research on perceptions of justice—the psychology of
relative deprivation and the psychology of procedural justice. Relative deprivation refers to
individuals or groups believing that their outcomes, or what they are getting in any inter-
actional system, are not what they deserve given their inputs, that is, the value of what they
bring to those interactions (Smith et al., 2012). Procedural justice refers to people’s beliefs
that authorities are or are not making decisions fairly about the distribution of outcomes
(Tyler and Lind, 1992). Relative deprivation can be felt by individuals or groups, while
perceptions of procedural justice generally concern individuals. In the case of populism,
relative deprivation and procedural justice perceptions manifest themselves in persons who
think of themselves as the “common people,” believing that they are not getting what they
fairly should be getting. They believe that one or more entrenched and powerful elites, or the
establishment, controls society’s outcomes and distributes them unfairly, using unfair pro-
cedures, relative to what they and other groups deserve. They feel deprived, not because
their outcomes are unequal, but because they are perceived as inequitable, or unfair, given
their inputs.
People’s beliefs about what they deserve, or rightfully have coming to them, are in turn
affected by the psychology of self-evaluation, particularly people’s tendency to judge their
inputs in self-enhancing ways. The average person believes himself or herself to be better
than average in many respects, including that what they bring to interactions with others
are superior. There is also a bias toward individuals perceiving that authorities often make
decisions unfairly, even when they do not feel that they have been dealt with unfairly personally.
Important to appreciating perceptions of relative deprivation and procedural justice is
understanding how people’s beliefs about what they deserve, that is, about what they are
getting relative to others, and their beliefs about how decisions about the distribution of
such outcomes are actually made by those in power, can be influenced by what they are told
by other people, particularly leaders. Populist leaders can persuade their followers that they
deserve more and that the elites making decisions about what they and other groups are
getting are using unfair procedures. Donald Trump generated support in his political base in
large part by declaring that they were being given the short end by elites. He conveyed a
message that fit nicely with their self-enhancing self-evaluations, which were in turn influ-
enced by him.
We will develop these ideas as follows. First, we will review some basic principles of
relative deprivation and closely related research on procedural justice. These phenomena are
Goethals 515

rooted in social comparison, on an individual level and on a group level. We consider how
social comparison figures into both self-evaluation and perceptions of justice. Included in
this discussion will be a consideration of the ways perceptions of both ingroups and out-
groups can enhance self-evaluation. Third, considering James MacGregor Burns’s assertion
that leaders “arouse, engage and satisfy” the needs of followers, we will focus on the ways
leaders address followers’ needs for self-esteem (Burns, 1978: 19). Finally, we will consider
highlights of past versions of populism in the United States, and then Donald Trump’s
rendition of same in leading significant segments of the population to see themselves as
not only unfairly deprived but also unfairly distained or disrespected.

Relative deprivation and procedural justice

As noted above, relative deprivation is a psychological state (Olson et al., 1986). People feel
that they are unfairly deprived, or short-changed, relative to what they deserve, or should
have coming to them. They may feel that they work harder, earn less, have less fun or are
less loved or appreciated than other salient individuals or groups. Perceptions of poorer
outcomes may or may not be veridical. Regardless, relative deprivation is based on per-
ceived differences that are unfavorable for oneself or one’s group, and on the belief that
getting less than the comparison person or group is somehow unfair or undeserved. People
may feel that they are getting less than they deserve, or that others are getting more than
they deserve, or both, and that those others are somehow unfairly privileged. They may feel
that the rules of the relevant game are rigged against them, that their contributions are
undervalued or overlooked or that the comparison other’s contributions are overvalued.
In short, relative deprivation is produced by feeling that one or one’s group is getting less
than a comparison person or group and that the difference is not fair.
Some degree of widespread relative deprivation is probably inevitable given people’s
tendencies to view themselves, and what they do and what they contribute, positively, rel-
ative to their perceptions of the contributions of other people. Furthermore, to the extent
that people are aware that others do not view their inputs as positively as they do them-
selves, they will feel not only deprived but distained and disrespected (Brown, 1986).
As noted, another closely related body of justice research concerns procedural justice,
and its relevance to people’s feelings of being valued, or not, by authorities. A model of
procedural justice by Tyler and Lind (1992) rests on data showing that people care more
about whether an authority’s decisions are based on fair procedures than whether a partic-
ular decision produces fair distributions of outcomes. That is, they are more attuned to
whether the decision is made fairly than whether it gives them what they think they have
coming to them.
There are a number of reasons for people’s greater concern for procedures than distri-
butions. First, procedures are likely to be used repeatedly, so that they are more important
in the long run than whether or not a specific decision is either favorable or fair. Second, it is
sometimes difficult to know whether a decision is really fair, but if people can see that it is
based on fair procedures, then that is a signal or cue that the outcome is probably fair. Most
importantly, when an authority shows that he or she is using fair procedures—by behaving
ethically, treating people with dignity and respect and being even-handed—then they feel
valued by the authority. Furthermore, since the authority represents the group, when the
authority signals that he or she values us, we feel that we have value within in the group.
Combing considerations of relative deprivation and procedural justice, we see that people
516 Leadership 14(5)

can feel treated unfairly both because they perceive that they are getting less than they
deserve relative to other individuals or groups, and because authorities, in many cases
elites, use unfair procedures in making decisions about their outcomes.

The dynamics of social comparison

Since relative deprivation derives in the first instance from a comparison of outcomes, it is
crucial to note that what comparisons people make at any particular time is not a given.
People have some choice about whom they compare to. There is an extensive literature on
the way people select comparison others (Suls et al., 2002). They may opt to compare with
others who are similar, with people who are worse off than they are, with people who set the
standards, and so on. Regardless of comparison preferences, circumstances or situations
may make particular comparisons more or less salient, like it or not. When we go to a high
school reunion, we may make comparisons with better off others whom we would just as
soon not ever think about. Such comparisons may damage our self-esteem, or make us
experience relative deprivation. We may have some capacity to stop making comparisons
that make us unhappy in one way or another, but to the extent that comparisons happen
automatically, that is, outside our control, that capacity is limited.
Furthermore, the comparisons we make may be influenced by other people, especially
leaders, who make salient comparisons we would not make on our own. A friend may point
out how we compare with someone we wouldn’t ordinarily compare with and would prefer
not to. A leader may argue that we are not getting as good outcomes in comparison to
people in some other group or groups and that this is unfair. We may not have made that
comparison on our own. We have some choice as to whether we make the comparisons
others suggest that we should make, but it is often hard to ignore such influence attempts.
This may be especially true in the case of leaders. In order to understand this, we need to
consider some of the workings of the self-concept and how leaders can shape the compar-
isons we make, and therefore our self-esteem and identity.

Social identity theory, identity salience, and leadership

Here are extensive literatures on the self-concept and self-esteem. Most relevant for under-
standing leadership and relative deprivation is what is known as social identity theory
(Hogg, 2001; Tajfel and Turner, 1979). Social identity theory focuses on self-esteem.
It holds that our self-esteem is based on some combination of our evaluation of ourselves
as an individual, that is, our personal identity, and our perceptions of what groups we
belong to, and our evaluation of those groups in comparison to other groups, that is, our
social identity. Like relative deprivation, self-evaluation on both individual and group levels
is deeply rooted in social comparison (Festinger, 1954). Social identity theory assumes that
individual identity is largely, but not totally, based on social comparisons, and that our
social identity is very largely shaped by comparisons with other groups. Two related notions
are crucial to social identity theory. One is the idea that we belong to many groups and that
different group memberships can be salient at different times. For example, depending on
the situation, our identity as a man or woman, or professor or mechanic, or Democrat or
Republican, may be salient. A second important concept is that the salient social identity,
let’s say mechanic rather than Democrat, can be compared to any of several possible com-
parison groups, raising or lowering our self-esteem accordingly. For example, as a mechanic,
Goethals 517

we might compare ourselves with electricians or the wealthy people whose boats we main-
tain. Similarly, when my identity as a Democrat is salient, I might compare myself with
Republicans, or with some segment of my party that does not include me.
All of these ideas have their origins in very early discussions of the self by William James
(1890, 1892). James wrote that we have “many different social selves,” each one dependent
on others whose opinion we care about (James, 1892: 179.) Furthermore, we can decide, at
least to some degree, which of our many selves or identities to focus on in making an overall
self-evaluation, and more or less suppress others. James notes that this “is as strong an
example as there is of . . . selective industry of the mind” (186). From a leadership perspec-
tive, James may be overstating here the control we have over our own self-evaluations, and
understating the way that the comparisons and self-evaluations we make are influenced both
by circumstance and social influence. Relevant here is the fact that Donald Trump made
particular comparison groups salient to his base, leading them to feel relative deprivation.
These notions have found their way into modern social identity theory in the ideas that
different categorizations of ourselves and others are salient in different situations, and that
we make the categorizations that “evaluate self relatively favorably” (Hogg, 2001: 188).
The theory also holds that leadership consists, among other things, of defining identity.
Leaders can influence identity in a number of ways, including making different categoriza-
tions and comparisons salient.

Leadership as meaning making and identity making

The idea that a crucial leadership dynamic is that of leaders shaping follower identity is
central to Howard Gardner’s approach in Leading Minds (1995). Gardner argues that
leaders influence people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior through the stories they tell
and that their most influential stories are narratives about identity—where a group is
coming from, where it is going and what obstacles it is facing. These identity stories are
implicitly comparative in that Gardner emphasizes that they can be inclusive or exclusive.
Inclusive stories emphasize commonality among groups, while exclusive ones divide groups
from each other, and assert ingroup superiority. Gardner’s discussion of exclusive leaders
corresponds well to Hogg’s (2001) assertion that often leaders try to maintain their positions
by demonizing outgroups, and trying to show that they best represent the ingroup in conflict
with outgroups.
One important dynamic that leaders sometimes use in portraying the ingroup as
good and the outgroup as bad is to play on the notion that “they are all alike.”
Perceiving the ingroup as diverse and the outgroup as homogeneous is one way people
raise their self-esteem. By aggregating the outgroup, and disaggregating the ingroup,
people can perceive all or most members of the outgroup but not the ingroup as sharing
some negative quality (Goethals et al., 1979; Park and Rothbart, 1982). Leaders sometimes
implicitly or explicitly make these self-enhancing group differences salient.
For us the question now is how populism in the United States has shaped social catego-
rization, creating perceptions of ingroups and outgroups, and how it has also shaped peo-
ple’s beliefs about whether the outcomes they receive compared to other groups are fair, and
whether the procedures elites and other authorities use to allocate outcomes are also fair.
These issues of perceived justice can be seen in the long history of American populism.
518 Leadership 14(5)

Evolving populism in presidential politics

As noted, elements of populism constitute a significant source of support for Donald
Trump. This may seem odd given that his policies arguably make his supporters worse
off than they would be otherwise. But, as we shall see, this incongruity reveals a great
deal about the complex psychologies of relative deprivation and procedural justice, the
importance of different human motives and their relationship to today’s populism.
Of course, Donald Trump is not the first American populist. In the election of 1800, members
of Thomas Jefferson’s Republican Party argued that farmers and other common peoples,
especially in the southern states, were exploited by elite financial interests in Federalist New
England. Similarly, in 1828 Andrew Jackson campaigned against the incumbent President John
Quincy Adams by claiming that he was deprived of the presidency in the 1824 election, when he
had the most popular and most electoral votes, through a “corrupt bargain” between Adams
and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Henry Clay of Kentucky. He portrayed Adams
and Clay as aligned with the Bank of the United States, an institution controlled by Eastern
elites. Jackson became the first president elected from a state, Tennessee, outside the Eastern
seaboard, and was the first president not affiliated with the elites from Virginia and
Massachusetts who were leaders during the Revolutionary War and the shaping of the US
Constitution and Bill of Rights during the first years of the American republic. He made salient
his own nonelite identity and how the elites’ policies had been unfair to nonelites, especially
those in the west. (There is an irony here in that Jackson was actually a few months older than
John Quincy Adams, and, as a teenager, was a British prisoner during the American
Revolution, the only US president to have been a PO).
A relevant precedent for the nativism in Donald Trump’s populism appeared in the
1850s, the American Party, or Know Nothings. The Know Nothings had their own
complex blend of northern and southern branches, with differing views on slavery, but
they were united in their opposition to immigrants, especially Catholics from Ireland and
Germany. It was an article of faith that party members would only vote for Protestants. It is
difficult to cast 1850s Know Nothings as populists, since many party members were well-
educated and even elite. Trump managed to appeal to both populist and nativist strains in
American society.
The most explicitly populist major party candidate for US president was the Democrat
William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was a young congressman from Nebraska during the 1892
presidential election when the Populist Party candidate, James Weaver, won 8.5% of the
popular vote and carried five western states. Weaver’s policies were much the same as
Bryan’s, and in 1896 those policies and Bryan’s eloquence captured the Democratic nom-
ination for president. Known as the “Boy Orator of the Platte,” the 36-year-old Bryan
rallied the party convention with his famous Cross of Gold speech, railing against
eastern moneyed interests seeking to protect the “gold standard” for US currency. His
famous peroration led first to stunned silence, and then an eruption of support for his
candidacy: “Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported
by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we shall
answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: ‘You shall not press down
upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross
of gold’.”
Theodore Roosevelt at times articulated populist sentiments, referring to “malefactors of
great wealth” in a 1907 speech, and advocating populist policies in his unsuccessful run for
Goethals 519

the presidency as leader of the Progressive Party in 1912. In that same election, Eugene Debs
ran as a socialist advocating populist policies and garnered 6% of the vote. The Progressive
Party made its largest mark in presidential elections in 1924 when liberal Republican Robert
La Follette ran as a populist and captured 17% of the national popular vote and won his
home state of Wisconsin. Later, Franklin Roosevelt at times struck populist chords by
repeating his cousin Theodore’s “malefactors . . .” phrase and referring to “money changers”
in the temple in his first inaugural address.
In 1968, George Wallace focused US populism more on racial and cultural conflict.
Economic issues didn’t go away, but the rhetoric shifted. In many ways, as we shall see,
the dynamics of his campaign rallies created a playbook for Donald Trump. During his run
for the presidency that year on the American Party ticket, the Alabama governor criticized
“pointy-headed intellectuals” who couldn’t park a bicycle straight. He railed against hippies
protesting the war in Vietnam. Although attacks on intellectual and cultural elites were a
central element in Wallace’s populism, his main targets were African Americans and the
federal government’s support for racial integration. Wallace had burst onto the national
scene when he was inaugurated as governor of Alabama in January 1963. He had first run
for governor in 1958, supported by African Americans, but losing that contest convinced
him that he had to be more anti-black and pro-segregation than competing candidates if he
was ever to win in his native state. So in 1962, he ran hard against racial integration and won
in a landslide. In his inaugural address in Montgomery, he spoke of following in the foot-
steps of Jefferson Davis, who had been inaugurated as president of the Confederate States of
America just over 100 years earlier in “this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the
great Anglo-Saxon Southland.” Most memorably he declared, “In the name of the greatest
people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before
the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
A few months later, he “stood in the schoolhouse door” to try to prevent African American
students from enrolling in the University of Alabama. His actions prompted then President
John F. Kennedy to go on national television, and declare that “We are confronted pri-
marily with a moral issue,” and propose strong civil rights legislation. Wallace then decided
to compete with Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1964.
After Kennedy was assassinated and the new president, Lyndon Johnson, moved to pass
the civil rights bill in 1964, Wallace ran in several primaries in northern states, including
Wisconsin and Indiana. His opponents were stand-ins for Johnson, who won easily. Still,
Wallace reliably attracted roughly one-third of the votes cast. He appealed to working
people who did not like the Democratic Party’s support for civil rights legislation and
opposed the rapid cultural change of the early 1960s. He was encouraged enough by his
showings to run as a third-party candidate in 1968. His rhetoric that year emphasized “law
and order,” but his appeal was clearly to white supremacists and others who opposed the
civil rights and voting rights legislation that had been enacted in 1964 and 1965. He carried
five deep south states, essentially those that had been captured by Strom Thurmond running
as a States Rights Democrat in 1948, and by Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Many of Wallace’s campaign appearances unleashed a crowd or mob dynamic aptly
described by Freud’s (1921) treatment of leadership. Borrowing from Gustave LeBon,
Freud described the emergence of hostility, especially directed toward members of out-
groups, that is often released when a deindividuated crowd abandons individual restraints.
People lose their sense of individual responsibility and enjoy their momentary release from
520 Leadership 14(5)

every day limits on their worst instincts. In at least one instance, Wallace was alarmed at the
anger his rhetoric had released and changed gears in order to calm the crowd.
Until recently, subsequent presidential campaigning in the United States largely steered
clear of arousing Wallace-type populism and intergroup hostility. But those did not disap-
pear entirely. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ran campaigns that at times played to
white working class feelings of relative deprivation and disrespect. Their rhetoric connected
to some people’s sense that the powerful liberal elite that dominated the federal government
had given too much to undeserving minorities at the expense of whites who were unjustly
short-changed. Nixon explicitly adopted a “Southern strategy” in 1968 that competed with
Wallace for support from whites who thought that blacks had gotten too much. Similarly,
George H. W. Bush’s “Willy Horton” campaign ads in the 1988 campaign stirred racial
antagonisms. But there has been more focus on cultural resentments. For example, in a 1988
debate, Bush reflected Republicans’ increasing appeals to “average Americans” as opposed
to cultural and intellectual elites. He chided Democrat Michael Dukakis, governor of
Massachusetts, for supposedly using the word “phony, or one of those marvelous Boston
adjectives.” When people booed, Bush said, “The people of Massachusetts may not like it,
but the rest of the country will understand,” clearly defining himself and his supporters as
different from Eastern elites. (Strange, perhaps, from a man with inherited wealth, born in
Boston, and educated at Andover and Yale).

Trump’s nationalistic, nativistic populism

Much Republican anti-elite campaign rhetoric faded into the background after 1988, though
Sarah Palin revived it briefly in 2008. However, Donald Trump’s campaign, and his pres-
idency into 2018, make much of it and also create a crowd dynamic reminiscent of George
Wallace’s 1964 and 1968 rallies. Trump’s brand of populism shares some of the critique of
economic elites that marked the rhetoric and policies of Jackson, Bryan, La Follette, and the
two Roosevelts. Like populist Socialist Bernie Sanders, who contested Hillary Clinton for
the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Trump criticized Clinton for her highly paid
speeches to Goldman Sachs. But for the most part, Trump’s rally rhetoric is Wallace-like.
The similarity of Wallace’s “Stand Up for America” campaign slogan and Trump’s
“Make America Great Again” hats and signs are notable. Both signal an America that is
under siege and that has gone downhill. The people who have attacked and undermined it
are implied in the rest of their rhetoric. For Wallace, it was intellectual elites, liberals,
Vietnam war protesters, and, always, blacks. He also attacked the two major parties, claim-
ing that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them.
Trump also railed and still rails against intellectual and cultural elites, especially the
media. Some of his comments about black American ghettoes are not explicitly racist,
but they do activate widespread stereotypes about the African American community.
Rather, his ethnic attacks are against immigrants, especially those from Latin America,
particularly Mexico. His claim that a judge with Mexican heritage couldn’t fairly preside
over law suits brought against Trump University qualified as “a textbook definition of a
racist comment,” according to Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. (Ryan seems to
have grown more comfortable with Trump’s rhetoric.) He also attacks people of the Muslim
religion. During the campaign, he falsely claimed that people in parts of New Jersey with
large Arab populations cheered as the World Trade Center buildings came down on 9/11.
Thus, Wallace’s white ethnocentric appeals focus on African Americans, Trump’s on
Goethals 521

nonwhite immigrants and Muslims. Interestingly, in his later campaigns, Wallace moved
back toward his more traditional economic populist roots. Columnist Jack Newfield noted
in 1971 that Wallace was beginning to sound more like William Jennings Bryan. In contrast,
Trump’s focus has consistently been on immigrants. He rose to political prominence with
his repeated assertions that Barack Obama was not a true American, and therefore not
a legitimate US president, because he was born in Africa and/or that he had become an
Indonesian citizen during his childhood. In a masterstroke, he blew racist, anti-immigrant,
and anti-Muslim dog whistles.
In addition to assimilating some of the rhetorical populism of George Wallace, Trump’s
concoction of populism has emphasized issues of procedural justice, and how unfair deci-
sions by authorities have created relative deprivation for Americans. He has attacked
NAFTA, the Iran Nuclear agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and
the Paris Climate Accord as rip-offs for the United States. In every instance, American
elites, especially President Obama and his administration, have been outmaneuvered by
foreigners. The villains in these portrayals are both liberals and people from other countries
who have used unfair procedures to disadvantage the United States. Similarly, countries in
the NATO alliance are routinely accused of “ripping off” the United States by not paying
their fair share of their own defense.
Issues of procedural justice are even more prominent in some of Trump’s treatment of
groups within the United States. The terms “unfair” or “unfairly” loom large. In May 2017,
Trump spoke to New York City policemen and told them that they had been treated
unfairly by the Black Lives Matter movement and its liberal supporters. In August
of that year, he pardoned Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, implying that the justice system
had treated him disrespectfully. In April 2018, he pardoned Scooter Libby, former Vice
President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, saying that while he didn’t know Libby, “for years,
I have heard that he has been treated unfairly.” The next month Trump pardoned the
conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza, and considered extending clemency to former
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and lifestyle author and commentator Martha
Stewart. Trump said that D’Souza “was very unfairly treated,” that Blagojevich’s conviction
was “really unfair,” and that Martha Stewart was “harshly and unfairly treated”
(Baker, 2018). And Trump and his supporters repeatedly assert that Trump himself is
treated unfairly by the non-Fox News media.

Populism from Jefferson to Trump

Populism in America reflects feelings of unfair treatments by elites regarding both the dis-
tribution of outcomes in society and the procedures for making those distributions. It is
fueled by the perceptions of persons who feel that they are common rather than elite, or
those who are endeavoring to speak for those common people. In the early days of the
American republic, members of Thomas Jefferson’s Republican Party felt that northern
elites had instituted policies that were unfair to their economic interests. In addition, they
felt that they (the Republicans) represented the real values of the American Revolution, or
“the spirit of 76.” Perceptions of relative deprivation on economic dimensions were similarly
central to populist elements in Andrew Jackson’s presidency, in the Democratic Party
campaigns of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, 1900, and 1908, and the Progressive Party
campaign of Robert LaFollette in 1924. While racism and nativist sentiment has been a
constant in US politics, until the last half-century, populism focused on economics.
522 Leadership 14(5)

The populism of George Wallace, some elements of the late twentieth century Republican
Party (not to be confused with the earlier Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson, or the quite
different Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt), and the politics of
Donald Trump have shifted the discourse from a largely economic one to predominantly
nativist, racial, and cultural themes. Accordingly, added to Jeffersonian–Jacksonian rhetoric
of economic domination and exploitation, is a narrative of unfairly made decisions that favor
various minorities. Similar to the way Jeffersonians felt that they better represented the “spirit
of 76,” and were thus in some ways truer Americans, the Wallace-Trump slogans of “Stand
Up for America” and “Make America Great Again” imply that their supporters embody the
best of American exceptionalism. Their populism makes a certain kind of ingroup identity
salient. Their rhetoric validates that ingroup identity and its associated beliefs. Democratic
Party rhetoric that characterizes Trump supporters as half composed of a basket of deplor-
ables makes that rhetorical validation powerful and likely enduring.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

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Goethals 523

Author biography
George R Goethals holds the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professorship in
Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. Previously at Williams College he
served as chair of the Department of Psychology, Acting Dean of the Faculty, Provost,
and with the encouragement and guidance of his long-time colleague and mentor, James
MacGregor Burns, founding chair of the Program in Leadership Studies. With Georgia
Sorenson and Burns, he edited the Encyclopedia of Leadership (2004). Goethals’ recent
scholarship includes Heroic Leadership: An Influence Taxonomy of 100 Exceptional
Individuals (2013, with Scott T. Allison), Presidential Leadership and African Americans:
“An American Dilemma” from Slavery to the White House (2015), and Realignment,
Region and Race: Presidential Leadership and Social Identity (2018).