In early 1882, Theodore Roosevelt told his friends and family he wanted to pursue a career in politics; their reaction was that politics was for “saloon-keepers, the lower rung of society.” After nearly a decade of the Gilded Age, where politics were dominated by corrupt bosses like Tammany Hall and lackadaisical presidents, this was an appropriate but exaggerated reaction. However, now in 2016, somewhere there is an Ivy-League-educated-white-elitist telling their friends and family they want to go into a career in politics, and their reaction is “Politics is for reality television stars.”

Donald Trump’s ascendance to the head of the pack is not of his own volition or brilliance, but a product of timing, much like George Wallace in 1968. Except this time, it’s not aimed at hippies or anti-establishment culture, but the establishment themselves.

There is a mass undercurrent of frustration aimed at the sensitive political establishment that has not improved our national prestige since the Berlin wall fell down in 1991. This is also possibly the worst selection of presidential candidates since I don’t know when. Combine those two elements, and you create the perfect atmosphere for a Donald Trump presidential campaign to congeal and thrive in.

When I first read the headline “Donald Trump announces candidacy for President” I kept swiping and didn’t think twice about it. I honestly thought it was an article from The Onion. To my surprise, I woke up the next day realizing my mistake.

I soon found out he used his debut speech as a platform for obliterating Mexican immigrants. I couldn’t wait to see his candidacy go up in flames. Ten months later and my jaw has left a dent in the floor. In that time, he has promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, ban all Muslims from America, he re-tweeted a quote from Mussolini, got into a Twitter spat with a Saudi-Arabian prince, said blood was coming out of Megyn Kelly’s “wherever,” and said that thousands of Muslims were seen celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey, bragged about the size of his Johnson, has promised to abolish ObamaCare, destroy ISIS and fix the economy with a snap of his stubby fingers.

Factoring all this information into the common sense equation of politics should equal a disastrous and embarrassing campaign, not the undisputed front-runner in America's second oldest political party for the world's most powerful office. His statements read like a Mad Lib. Donald Trump will do this, Donald Trump will do that. He is the leading GOP candidate by far and he hasn’t outlined one policy. So why is Trump the front-runner and how is he still the front-runner?

Let’s take a few steps back to see where all this anger and distrust with the government came from. Every president since Truman has had a scandal or an operational failure damaging America’s prestige. Truman dropped the bomb, Eisenhower lied about the U2 spy plane, Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs, Johnson escalated Vietnam, Nixon had Watergate, Ford pardoned Nixon, Carter had the oil crisis, Reagan had the Iran-Contra Deal, Clinton had Monica, George W. Bush had the weapons of mass destruction and Obama had Benghazi. The only president that didn’t have an outstanding failure was George H. W. Bush, which teaches us, in fact, that the apple does fall far from the tree.

Each failure has made the American public lose trust and faith in their government. With this ever steeper slope of failure dooming us to a second rate country, we’re slowly waking up to the fact that one day we might not be the "greatest country in the world", and our leaders should be to blame. That’s where Donald Trump comes in at the right time at the right moment; there was untapped potential with millions of voters that anyone, not only Donald Trump, could resonate with.

While the embittered, uneducated masses found their voice this year, the choice of candidates is not the cream of the crop. Much like Donald Trump, dissecting the four remaining candidates to find their flaws doesn’t take much thought. Hillary Clinton is seen as the cause of the Benghazi affair and the quintessential career politician who lies for a living. Ted Cruz is like a Canadian Richard Nixon, a pale skinned, big nosed, hawkish Republican, and there is an uneasy feeling about his character that you can’t quite place, but can sense nonetheless; as senior senator Lindsey Graham put it, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you." Then there’s Sanders, the one-issue (wealth disparity) candidate who, if he was elected four years ago, would still be the oldest president ever elected. Tailing everyone’s coattails is Kasich. But like a republican Jimmy Carter, he seems really nice and innocent while not projecting competence. The weak pick of the litter that lays before us helped reserve Trump a spot as a serious contender for the world’s most powerful office. If there was one strong uncontested candidate, Trump’s support base would be significantly fractured.

History always has a way of making fact stranger than fiction. There is one lesson I want you to walk away with: the disconcerting escapade of Trump’s unshakable support is not founded on Trump’s genius. Trump did not create the anti-establishment movement. Trump’s unrivaled success as an outsider can be seen as an element of his master plan, but this is false. If it wasn’t Trump, it would be someone else crying havoc and gaining the hearts of the unemployed and uneducated.

This age, when millions blame their unemployment on immigrants, the failures of Bush and Obama have become too promulgated, paranoia of terrorism makes us seek any umbrella of safety and cautious politicians seem too weak to handle even the slightest of problems, is calling for someone to take charge with a strong, uncensored voice contrary to the politics of the last two decades. Donald was at the right point in history when he descended down that escalator on June 16, 2015.