If quality people don’t agree to serve, that opens the door for the unqualified yes-men of the world, which would make things even worse. So a request to serve your country, with the knowledge that someone worse than you would be picked if you said no, is a pretty powerful pull.

But still, my answer would be no. The simple fact is that Trump poses unique dangers. It’s not just that he’s sounding increasingly nuts or that he invited a foreign country to commit espionage to undercut his political rival or that his foreign policy pronouncements border on loathsome (though it is those things).

It boils down to two factors particular to Trump. First, I have yet to see evidence that he is interested in anything beyond himself. He has no higher purpose or ideal that interests him. There is not a lot that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) or Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) have in common, but all of them believe in something larger than themselves, and that higher sense of purpose helps to shape that worldview. If any of them asked me to serve, I would at least have to consider it seriously. Trump has demonstrated nothing remotely like that during this campaign.