How the 2016 election is upending party stereotypes about strength

As we look back on previous elections, we see the same argument repeated over and over: Republicans say their candidate is strong and manly while the Democrat is weak and effeminate. Then Democrats struggle to find a retort, often with awkward results. But this election, and the responses Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton gave to the massacre in Orlando, highlight the fact that "strong" can be a complicated idea.

Republicans usually start a campaign with an advantage on national security issues, irrespective of the individual they nominate. There's a default assumption that they're the party that's more concerned with external threats and more eager to march out to meet them. Only at certain moments, like the depths of the Iraq War, does the public move past that assumption and decide that Democrats are the ones they prefer on that issue.

In ordinary circumstances one might expect that a female Democrat would start with an even greater disadvantage, but Hillary Clinton is not an ordinary candidate. Not only has she long been more hawkish on national security than most in her party, after all this time even her most implacable enemies would grant that she's a pretty tough lady. And when there's a terrorist attack, she knows the notes of seriousness and resolve she's supposed to sound.

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And Donald Trump? Here's where it gets complicated. As in so many areas, Trump takes the implied and makes it literal; while other candidates find ways to express their manliness, Trump stood on a debate stage and said "I guarantee you there's no problem" with the size of his penis, after mocking his opponents as small and lacking energy.

And after the Orlando attack, Trump didn't do what most candidates (and presidents) do in that kind of situation: express sadness, pay tribute to the victims, and express hope and resolve that America would prevail. Instead, he gave a belligerent, fear-mongering speech reiterating his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States and blaming American Muslims for not knowing what every one of their co-religionists might be planning. Even his fellow Republicans were disappointed, saying that the idea of Trump in the Oval Office during a crisis was not exactly reassuring.

Trump seems to miss what Republicans have actually based their arguments about strength on. While it's true that they almost always want more money spent on the military and express a greater willingness to use force to solve international problems, there's a particular kind of strength they've sought to convey to the public. Its purest expression might be found in this ad, created by an independent group in 2004, which appeared more often on television in that election than any other:

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"He's the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is to make sure I'm safe," the girl says. This is the Republican version of strength: immense power harnessed to the service of protecting children and womenfolk. It's the president as Gary Cooper, the cowboy who's skilled in the ways of violence but only uses it reluctantly, to protect innocents when the bad guys give him no choice. And there has never been a president who better understood the potency of cowboy iconography than George W. Bush.

You could argue that that's not how Republican presidents have actually used their strength, but it is the image they work to implant in the public mind. And much of the time, the image-making works. When it doesn't, it's usually because other issues have become more important to voters than concerns about physical security.

But there's real doubt about whether Trump could actually pose as the country's protector, and not just because he skipped out on military service during Vietnam (though I do look forward to the moment when he is forced to explain how he avoided serving through a medical deferment attributed to bone spurs in his foot, a condition so debilitating that he can't actually recall which foot it was). Unlike people who are genuinely strong, Trump is a classic bully, trying to prove his manhood by mocking and victimizing those he views as weaker than him, whether it's women or racial minorities or people with disabilities.

The willingness to use violence is only part of that kind of strength; nearly as important is the idea of courage and calm in the face of danger. Little about Trump gives any reassurance that if he were to face actual danger, to himself or to the country, that he could demonstrate genuine strength (which, it should be said, sometimes can be found in restraint). There's no telling what kind of an impact issues of national security will have on the election in November, but at the moment it doesn't appear that the candidate whose insecurities about his masculinity are on such vivid display will have any advantage on that score.