9. See Massimo Gaggi, “Le Promesse di Trump Sulla Sanita Americana,” Corriera della Sera, March 18, 2016, http://www.corriere.it/opinioni/16_marzo_18/usa-promesse-trump-sanita-eb8088ca-ec58-11e5-b4bb-fbc47dd8e9c6.shtml; Laurent Joffrin, “Edito,” Liberation, August 26, 2015, http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2015/08/26/baudruche_1370089; “Trump is Pushing U.S. Politics in an Ugly Direction,” Toronto Star, August 21, 3015, https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2015/08/31/trump-is-pushing-us-politics-in-an-ugly-direction-editorial.html; Enrique Krauze; “Fascista Americano,” Letras Libres, November 22, 2016, http://www.letraslibres.com/mexico/politica/fascista-americano; Markus Feldenkirchen, “American Agitator: Donald Trump is the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” Spiegel Online, February 1, 2016, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-is-the-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world-a-1075060.html.
10. Here I understand by image a “set of beliefs, ideas, and impressions a person [or a country] hold regarding an object.” Philip Kotler, Marketing Management (New Jersey Prentice Hall, 2003), 566.
11. The analysis here is inspired by Fernand Braudel’s conception of historical time. On Braudel’s conception of longée durée see Fernand Braudel, On History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 25–54.
12. Michael H. Hunt, The American Ascendency: How the United States Gained & Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
13. Hubert Vedrine, “Que Reste-t-il de L’hyperpuissance,” http://www.hubertvedrine.net/article-626.html.
14. Prableen Bajpai, “The World’s Top 10 Economies,” http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022415/worlds-top-10-economies.asp.
15. “World Military Spending: Increases in the USA and Europe, Decreases in Oil Exporting Countries,” https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2017/world-military-spending-increases-usa-and-europe.
16. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, America Abroad: The United States Global Role in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
17. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 4.
18. Matthias Maass, ed., The World Views of the U.S. Presidential Election, 2008 (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009), 3.
19. Holger Stark, “America’s Trumper-Tantrum,” Der Spiegel, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/opinion-why-donald-trump-stands-a-good-chance-of-winning-a-1081434.html.
20. On the idea of the American Dream see David Kamp, “Rethinking the American Dream,” Vanity Fair, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/04/american-dream200904.
21. Maass, The World Views, 260.
22. Michael W. Kraus and Jacinth J.X. Tan, “Americans Overestimate Social Class Mobility,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58 (May 2015): 101.
23. Anu Partanen, The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of Better Life (New York: Harpers Collins Publishers, 2016), 269–270.
24. Ed Miliband, “Social Mobility,” Speech at the Sutton Trust’s Social Mobility Summit in London,” Politics.co.uk, http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2012/05/21/ed-miliband-social-mobility-speech-in-full.
25. Fred I. Greenstein, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton (New York: The Free Press, 2000), 3 and 4.
26. Lynn Vavreck, “Why this Election was not about the Issues,” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/upshot/this-election-was-not-about-the-issues-blame-the-candidates.html.
27. Paul J. Quirk, “Donald Trump and the Question of Fitness,” in The Elections of 2016, ed. Michael Nelson (Washington, DC: Sage Publications/CQ Press, 2017), 193–194.
28. Cited in James P. Pfiffner, The Character Factor: How we Judge America’s Presidents (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2004), 3.
29. James David Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972).
30. For an excellent critique of Barber’s work see Alexander L. George, “Review of The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House,” World Politics 26, no. 2 (January 1974): 234–282. George writes, “In my judgment … Barber’s theory is insufficiently developed and insufficiently validated to carry the burden of prediction,” 280.