The secret to Trump’s campaign is his relentless optimism. It doesn’t matter than he has a deficit of real plans, genuine programs and identifiable advisers. Quite the opposite: These shortcoming are actually strengths. If he were better anchored to reality like some of the other candidates, all that accountability would weigh his balloon down. The ad hoc quality of his politics, the endless winging and self-contradiction, allow Trump access to all the tools we associate with a salesman or a con artist. Trump need only tell his supporters what he thinks they want to hear—that everyday will bring three extra hours of sunshine—and package it in the braggadocio that has served in so well in real estate, TV and the merchandising of this name.

No presidential candidate in memory has been less interested in process; no Republican candidate has made more extraordinary promises of what he can deliver. But the lack of specificity to his proposals is what really distinguishes Trump. He provides emotional placeholders where messy political ideas belong. Trump’s short-form answer to most policy questions is to invoke the word “best,” a neat trick that both identifies his position and tags his opponents with “worst.” Health care? His administration will produce “the best health care you’ve ever, ever had.” His cabinet? “I want the best people.” Military leadership? Noting that picking talent is “something I’m so good at,” he said he’d get “the best person to represent us militarily.” Invocation of “the best” is an ancient Trump trope—a word that is as filled with aspiration as it is empty of meaning. Likewise the word “great,” which is the key word in his campaign slogan and regular modifier when he’s on the stump: “I have the greatest business people in the world dying to come and help me out with China and Japan.” See also “win” and its mirror image, “lose,” perhaps Trump’s favorite words.