Cass R. Sunstein, Columnist

Appeals to Fear Don't Work in Presidential Elections. Usually.

Forget Nixon. Trump is trying something untested.

July 22, 2016 at 3:46 PM UTC

Cass R. Sunstein is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the author of “The Cost-Benefit Revolution” and a co-author of “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness.”

Scary.
Photographer: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

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Donald Trump last night offered a funhouse mirror version of one of the greatest speeches in American history: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, in 1933. In the midst of a genuine crisis, the Great Depression, FDR began by emphasizing his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.”

Trump sought to foster exactly that. For Trump, “America is a more dangerous environment for everyone than frankly I have ever seen and anybody in this room has ever watched or seen."