The American Presidential election has all the drama and pathos of an unfolding Shakespearean tragedy. Will Donald Trump be abandoned by the very Party whose members appear to want him as their leader? And will he find himself, like King Lear, blind to the circumstances of his own fall from power? Will Hillary Clinton succumb to the whisper campaign of many devious Iagos? And will she fall, like Othello, by her own desperate hand, adding to the disgrace of her spouse’s accused infidelity? The “rise and fall of the great”—which today seems to be the rich and/or famous—is a story of unending appeal. But the quest for power in a democracy has another byline. That story is not really about personal hubris. It is about us.

Steven Colbert does a riff off the “Hunger Games,” called the “Hunger for Power Games.” What makes his humor poignant is the truth it only partially conceals. For many, power is an aphrodisiac. The adopted philosopher of the Third Reich, Frederick Nietzsche, theorized that all motivation comes from the will to power. Clearly, Adolph Hitler undertook this motivation literally. His “struggle,” as he called it, was his personal rise to power. But Nietzsche was no proto-fascist. The power he sought and sublimated was the discipline of the accomplished, the creativity of the artist, and the acquired wisdom of the philosopher. The true measure of power cannot be found in itself, but in what it attains. Conquering other nations or winning elections in order to gain power has no value, unless it serves worthwhile ends. The German people once fell under the spell of that powerful drug without foreseeing its consequences. Today, we Americans have no Hitler to capture our imagination. But we do have history’s lesson to consider. Although recent military and financial setbacks have dimmed somewhat our national self-image, America in no way exemplifies the devastation or rebuilding challenge faced by Germany after World War I. Also, we are a more diverse people with many more interests for our elected leaders to address. The campaign melodrama and its media megaphone must not divert our attention away from those general interests. The man or woman who wins this election does not gain power for him/her self. It is the voters who must take center stage, for we alone grant that power. And we must demand it be used for the benefit of all Americans and definitely not for the self-aggrandizement of a President or a Party.

Each presidential candidate must answer this simple question, “Why do you want to be President.” The answer cannot be simply to win the polls, to defeat opposing candidates, to prove personal superiority, or to enhance a political brand. Winning is not the end goal, but the means to achieving something. That something in our democracy has to relate to the common good, that is, to the benefit of Americans, their families, and their communities. And it has to be specific. The artist paints a picture; the philosopher writes a treatise; the athlete trains his body to perform at its highest level; the politician explains how he/she will conduct himself in office, not in aphorisms, but in concrete policies he/she will support. Policy positions, however, must not only withstand reasonable critique but also fair scrutiny of their proponent’s sincerity. How else can a candidate not only explain his/her rationale for seeking the Presidency but also win the trust of the electorate? Only we the voters can grant that trust and anoint a candidate. The ultimate power is in our vote. Therefore, it is our task to determine when candidates are inauthentic. For some of them it is nearly impossible to adhere to the wisdom of Edgar in “King Lear”: “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” Candidates for office often lose themselves in their stump speeches and campaign slogans. And debates can be simply zero sum games in which attacking and discrediting opponents take precedence over substance. Sometimes candidates seem to reveal more about themselves in interviews and town hall meetings where they often are less guarded and at times even candid. In any case, a critical responsibility of the electorate is the task of finding out which candidate is most trustworthy and deserving of our highest office.

Although determining the trustworthiness of presidential candidates is important, more is required of us as voters in our republican form of democracy. Our founding fathers clearly understood that the success of our democracy depended upon an informed electorate. We citizens, as a result, are tasked to decipher serious policy options, like whether “keeping America safe” involves building walls at our borders, carpet bombing possible future terrorists, restocking our nuclear arsenal, and/or building more cohesive international coalitions; like whether “preserving and growing the middle class” requires raising the minimum wage nationally, reforming the tax code, making higher education more affordable, curtailing international trade agreements, and/or rebuilding infrastructure; or like whether “cleaning up the mess in Washington” means public financing of elections, limiting lobbyists’ access to politicians, and/or replacing State gerrymandering with uniform redistricting standards for all Federal elections. These are just a few of the many issues before us. Besides the burden of trust then, each citizen has the responsibility to educate his/her self on these issues.

Hamlet speculated that “there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Roughhew them how we will.” Perhaps that “divinity” is, in part, the common sense we glean and the conscience we develop from living and learning from our mistakes. But even the most conscientious of voters cannot affect a desired outcome without a plurality, the beating heart of every democracy. The electorate must coalesce around one candidate and his/her message. Herein, it seems to me, is the crux of this election season. It is obvious that our system is built around trustworthy candidates and an informed electorate. Less obvious, perhaps, is the absolute need for an organic community that is bound by common principles. That community was presumed by our founding fathers. Its common principles are institutionalized in our form of government and in its Constitution. On the floor of the Senate it has long been understood that disagreements are expected, but not disagreeableness. The same must be true of the body politic. At this time, it is not just Washington that appears broken. This election cycle has exposed apparently unyielding rifts in our less-than-organic community. Lack of respect for our differences and mistrust of motives have rent the fabric of our electorate, just as it has between many of our presidential candidates. It is easy to blame the contention between the Parties in Congress and between the Executive and Legislative branches of our government. But we Americans seem no less divided and no less unyielding from pre-established positions. In our system there is a price to pay for intolerance of our differences. That price is stagnation, chaos, and/or failure of the system as a whole.

Our founders spent a humid summer in Philadelphia drafting the Constitution. They argued daily on every line of that document and compromised on many issues, including the issue of slavery. They knew they had not resolved all their differences, but reached complete unanimity on the result of their collaboration: the foundation of a United States of America and the principles on which it stands. Many of them also believed that in time the nation would free the slaves as it would continue to coalesce around that fundamental principle of individual freedom for all. What characterized these men (for women were still excluded at that time) were respect for their differences, trust in their ability to compromise, acceptance of majority rule, and faith in the future of the self-correcting government they had created. This last point is based upon the power placed in the hands of the American electorate. We merely have to live up to their expectations. We have the power AND the responsibility to demand our elected officials to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . .”

All Federal elections, and especially presidential elections, place a serious burden of responsibility on the electorate. Only we can choose who will wrestle with the key issues of our time. Our decision defines who we are as a people and what traditions will survive for future generations of Americans. If the presidential contest were staged like a play before a conflicted American electorate, one might be tempted to quote Hamlet out of context: “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”

(Postscript: I pray Shakespeare will forgive me from the grave. And I firmly believe America will bear a better fate than either Hamlet or his King.)