Polarized Americans agree on one thing: Never again do they want a political campaign like the one they’ve just suffered.

The campaign has done more than traumatize American citizens. It has damaged the effectiveness of the United States’ ability to operate in the rest of the world.

In a quote in The New York Times, one Lebanese reporter, Hisham Melhem, illustrated the feeling: “. . . there were always pockets of people who had studied in the U.S. who still looked up to the United States . . . Now many of them have given up on the United States as a beacon of progress and enlightenment.”

One member of India’s ruling party asked, “These are the two best candidates they have to run the biggest economy and the oldest democracy in the world?”

Whether Americans seek military alliances to fight terrorism before it reaches the United States, customers to buy their products, or other underpinnings of American influence in the world, the United States requires the good will of others. Plenty of countries wait in the wings to take America’s place as a world leader.