David Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

America, tell me a story.

An American political campaign is a mashup of slogans, advertisements, speeches, exaggerations, outright lies, balloons, bunting, brass bands and the occasional discussion about an important issue.

But an actual American election is different from a campaign. It is a story.

The 1860 election that sent Abraham Lincoln to the White House is a story about civil war and civil rights. The 1920 election that propelled Warren G. Harding to prominence is a story about a country yearning for “normalcy.” The 1932 election that catapulted Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House is a story about a nation hoping for hope. The 1960 election that made John F. Kennedy a spokesman for idealism is a story about a new generation of leadership.

Every election, even one returning a president to the White House, is a story. It’s clear that the 1904 election, which gave Theodore Roosevelt four more years, is an election about reform. You cannot speak of the 1984 election, which reelected Ronald Reagan, without considering it a story about confidence and contentment.

And so, what is the story of 2024? Answer that question, and you’ll know the outcome.

Here are some possibilities:

• It’s a story about anger. If that’s the storyline, then Donald Trump and JD Vance are the perfect narrators. They have channeled the anger of those who are out of work or in work circumstances that are unsatisfactory; of Americans tired of the ascendancy of minorities; of voters who have had enough with the new politics of gender; of parents who believe the lessons their children are being taught in the classroom conflict with the verities they share at the dinner table.
• It’s a story about joy. It’s possible that the Kamala Harris campaign has put too much emphasis on the word “joy” at a time of warfare in the Middle East and Ukraine, political violence at home, economic distress in some corners of the country and skepticism about immigration. But the joy that matters could be the joy that comes with relief — relief that the strife and contention of the Trump ascendancy may be coming to an end, and hope that Generation Z, whose members agree on the issues that divide their elders (especially abortion and immigration), will bring an end to the discord in our civic life.
• It’s a story about retribution. Nobody reads Walter Scott’s 205-year-old “Ivanhoe” anymore, but if they did, they would encounter the remark of Brian de Bois-Guilbert, the commander of the Order of Knights-Templar, who said that “revenge is a feast for the gods.” Revenge, or retribution, also is one of the animating ideas of the Trump campaign: retribution against those who prosecuted legal action against the former president; against those who have foisted their social and cultural ideas upon those who do not welcome them; and against environmentalists who have made war against fracking and coal mining.
• It’s a story about national tolerance. “Tolerance” is a word that used to be employed as a synonym for the absence of racism. Then it became a word whose meaning is quite a bit short of that — the reluctant acceptance of individual differences. For the purposes of this potential 2024 story, let’s combine the two: the openness to accept as a president (1) a woman who is (2) Black and who (3) has South Asian roots. Now add (4) the reluctant support of Harris because of revulsion toward Trump.
• It’s a story about men. When political analysts talked about the gender gap in the past, they concentrated on the great advantage that Democrats had over Republicans among women. That remains, of course. But there’s a new gender gap, or at least a widening one: the advantage Republicans have among men. The past several decades have brought a focus to a crisis of men and boys, outlined in several studies (undertaken by, among many others, the Men’s Coping Project at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts) and a spate of books (the title of one of the more recent volumes, published two years ago, is instructive: “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It,” by Richard V. Reeves). The Trump team is targeting what it calls the “bro vote,” and the strategy is working. In the vital state of Pennsylvania, for example, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll of likely voters this month showed Trump leading Harris by 12 percentage points among men.
• It’s a story about women. The gender gap first attracted broad attention in 1980, when, among other reasons, the Republicans’ reluctance to embrace the Equal Rights Amendment prompted women to favor the Democrat, President Jimmy Carter, over the Republican, Reagan. The result: an 8-point advantage for Carter among women — a gap that yawned to its greatest breach four years ago, when the advantage among women for Joe Biden over Trump hit 12 percentage points, slightly bigger than the gap in favor of the first female presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton (11 percentage points). This time, Harris holds a 17-point advantage among women in Pennsylvania, according to the USA Today/Suffolk survey. This gap is related to the next storyline.
• It’s a story about the Supreme Court. This can be played to either of the candidates’ advantages. If it’s a story about rebellion against the high court, then Harris is the beneficiary. This could come in two flavors: women’s outrage over the court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, or minorities’ outrage over the court’s attack on minority admissions at colleges and universities. But if it’s a story about appreciation for Trump’s appointment of three justices who helped overturn Roe and struck down minority preferences in admissions, then the advantage goes to Trump.

For two seasons, Americans watched a television psychological thriller called “Tell Me a Story.” Like that series, this campaign surely is a psychological thriller. For more than six decades, readers have encountered a different set of problems in Tillie Olsen’s classic 1961 short-story collection titled “Tell Me a Riddle.” The last month has been a riddle.

For the next five weeks, Americans will be living in further installments in “Tell Me a Riddle.” For the next five decades, the theme will be “Tell Me a Story.” The answer to the former will shape the latter.