The Economist never used the exact phrase “P.T. Barnum phenomenon.” What they did do, in the Lexington column published immediately after the 2016 election, was lay out this logic:
Trump is a Barnum‑style showman
Politics is spectacle rather than governance
There is a public susceptible to Barnum’s core maxim (“there’s a sucker born every minute”)
And - most crucially - the idea that once someone has been conned, they will not admit it, makes the con self‑sealing and politically durable.
The key arguments of that Lexington piece were:
Trump’s victory was not an ideological triumph but a showman’s triumph, rooted in the same psychological mechanics that made Barnum successful.
Barnum’s genius was not merely attracting crowds — it was making the crowds complicit.
Once someone buys the ticket, they defend the show, because admitting they were fooled is more painful than doubling down.
Lexington warned that this dynamic would make Trump’s support uniquely resilient, even in the face of failure, scandal, or contradiction.
Lexington’s warning was unusually blunt for the Economist:
The Barnum mechanism would outlast the campaign,
It would survive governing failures,
And it would harden into identity, making persuasion nearly impossible.
So a frightening corollary is that once the phenomenon has been released into a healthy democracy there is no way to get out of the inevitable catastrophe that ensues.
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