ABSTRACT
Societies, like individuals, experience hypomanic and depressive periods. Think of America of the 1920s—the bubbly "New Era" of unlimited economic expansion—compared to the 1930s Great Depression. Our leaders, too, go through hypomanic and depressive phases—there was Jimmy Carter, briskly striding down Pennsylvania Avenue after pledging "fresh faith" in his 1977 inaugural, but lamenting America's "crisis in confidence" in his 1979 speech.
