A Ceremonial Key to the White House / Trumanlibrary.gov

Prof. Allan Lichtman has developed a set of 13 keys that have correctly predicted the past 9 out of 10 presidential elections. The prediction system consists of thirteen true/false statements. If six or more are false, the incumbent party is predicted to lose.

Prof. Lichtman lists the thirteen keys as:

KEY 1 (Party Mandate): After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.

KEY 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.

KEY 3 (Incumbency): The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.

KEY 4 (Third party): There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.

KEY 5 (Short-term economy): The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

KEY 6 (Long-term economy): Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.

KEY 7 (Policy change): The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

KEY 8 (Social unrest): There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

KEY 9 (Scandal): The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

KEY 10 (Foreign/military failure): The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.

KEY 11 (Foreign/military success): The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.

KEY 12 (Incumbent charisma): The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.

KEY 13 (Challenger charisma): The challenging party

This article is suggesting that the societal level of emotional excellence may be the 14th key which will influence the predictability of the 13 keys.

To explain, human beings are endowed with three mental attributes denoted by the acronyms S, R and T.

The S component includes honesty, truthfulness, steadfastness, and equanimity.
The R component encompasses bravery, ambition, ego, greed, and a desire to live.
The T component includes lying, cheating, causing injury in words and deed and sleep.

The S, R, T components cannot be measured but emotions can, and this is important as the two are linked.

Human beings are endowed with two types of emotions. Positive emotions include love, kindness, empathy, compassion. Negative emotions encompass anger, hatred, hostility resentment, frustration, jealousy, fear, sorrow and the like.

The S component is strongly and positively correlated with positive emotions while R and T components are strongly and positively correlated with negative emotions.

Emotional excellence indicates the capacity of an individual to remain centered in the presence of extenuating circumstances that are part of life, and this in turn translates into whether an individual is endowed with abundant positive emotions at the exclusion of negative emotions.

All civilizations rise and decline as a natural course over thousands of years. During the period of rise, the S component increases, but the S component cannot increase indefinitely and when it reaches its peak, the T component takes over and the society begins to decline. The T component cannot rise indefinitely either and so when it reaches its peak, the S component takes over and the society beings to rise again.

The transformation of the three components of the mindset induces repeated rise and decline of civilizations over thousands of years. Equivalently, rising and declining levels of emotional excellence induce rise and decline of civilizations. Why such a transformation of the S, R, and T components, or equivalently, emotional excellence should occur is not known but we can be certain it does.

This is the wisdom from the Bhagvad Geeta.

The hypothesis of this article is that a stable or rising level of emotional excellence means the 13 keys will correctly predict the outcome of presidential elections whereas a declining level of emotional excellence will negatively influence the predictability of the 13 keys to correctly predict the outcome of the presidential election.

So, can society do anything to reverse the declining level of emotional excellence? Yes, it can, but the cultivation of positive emotions at the exclusion of negative emotions is not an intellectual exercise. The required positive changes have to come about from within.

Yogic processes can raise the level of emotional excellence and since emotions can be measured, progress can be audited.

So, the question is whether the societal level of emotional excellence in the United States has taken a hit in recent years.

We will know the answer soon enough.

The author is Professor Emeritus in and former Chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Louisville.

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of New India Abroad)