Why Donald Trump Might Be the Most Dangerous Presidential Candidate in History

Gautam Mukunda
Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School, Author, Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter



Unless Donald Trump announces in the next few weeks that he is secretly a Muslim, gay, undocumented Mexican immigrant (and let's be honest, less likely things have happened in this election cycle), he's almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee for the presidency.

If he won, how much impact would President Trump likely have? Pretty much everyone watching this election is probably asking themselves that question right now, and it's exactly the sort of question my research answers. I studied every Presidential election in American history to better understand which leaders have outsized impact -- for good or ill.

In the course of my research, I concluded that presidents ultimately fall into one of two categories: "Filtered" -- the ones who gain power normally, by rising through the ranks of the political system, and "Unfiltered" -- those who gain power with little national political experience or over the opposition of political elites. "Unfiltered" presidents tend to have huge effects and end up remembered as either the best (e.g., Lincoln, FDR) or worse (e.g., Harding, Pierce). Trump, without a single day of experience as an elected official and actively opposed by the Republican establishment, would be the most unfiltered president in American history.