“Let’s look at the Washington, D.C., kind of manliness,” Mr. Mansfield says. “Trump’s manliness is of a raw character, the kind you find, also, in Erdogan and Putin, who are rough and gross and discourteous.” In the Mansfield scheme, there’s a hierarchy of manliness, ranging from animalistic strength on the bottom rung, then rising gradually to gentlemanliness, and then to “the highest form, philosophic manliness: the willingness to take on dominant opinions and subvert them by questioning and argument.”

The “raw type of manliness,” Mr. Mansfield says, “coincides with a political situation of polarization.” A polarized democracy is “an invitation to the vulgar. I think what’s interesting about Trump is not so much Trump himself as the people who voted for him.” They are a reminder that democracy “wants equality, but the equality it gets tends to be at a lower level than the best.” America could, he suggests, have equality like the ancient Spartans, “requiring everyone to be courageous. But that’s too difficult for us and doesn’t answer our needs.”