This is the tip of the iceberg. If you are “out here” — outside Washington, outside of the coastal elites — you are overwhelmed by the incompetency; if you are “inside” those, you don’t understand folks’ skepticism about everything related to government, including cutting a deal with Iran.

When CBS News reporter Major Garrett pressed President Obama at a news conference last week, asking why American hostages in Iran weren’t addressed in the nuclear arms “deal,” the president was insulted that someone would interrupt his victory lap. Garrett’s peers, supposedly all balanced, hard-nosed journalists paid to ask tough questions, retreated predictably; they failed to practice good journalism by pressing the president on that point, perhaps because they are cloistered in their polarized world.

Donald Trump is going nowhere in this election cycle; neither is Bernie Sanders. But there is nothing wrong about the nomination races being a spectacle right now, because it demonstrates the volume of unrest among people looking for leadership.

Populism is lightning in a bottle. It is always bottom-up and always about people looking for a leader, not a circus barker leading a parade of tigers and jugglers on a small-town promenade.