Being president, former First Lady Michelle Obama has said, doesnt change who you are, it reveals who you are. In this moment, we may also need to acknowledge that presidents also reveal much about whoweare.

American presidents do not exist outside the systems or times that produced them. Great presidentslike Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and, arguably, Lyndon B. Johnsonhave emerged when the nation has risen to meet challenging circumstances. And, granted, most presidents are middlingwhich tells us something about the quotidian nature of much of political life in the US. But Americas worst presidents demonstrate something essential about what is most broken or troubling in the character of the country and the temper of the times. A dismal or dire US president is a symptom of great problems within society that weaken it or put it in peril.

In this year of a presidential election, we must account for our forty-fifth president because the real challenge before us is not simply to replace a terribly flawed leader, but to understand how to fix a system that produces, promotes, protects, and even values the dangerous toxicity we see daily from our commander-in-chief.

This article was republished from The New York Review of Books on the 3rd of July. Please read the full piece here.