When Barack Obama jumped into the mix almost eight years ago a response of excitement shivered through the population. He was an unexpected surprise of awesome proportions preaching soaring rhetoric about how he would change America. He was an untested presidential hopeful, but he filled a vacuum of enormous angst, disappointment and rage created by President George Bush. People flocked to him as a savior, a messiah. His mantra: Hope and Change.

It’s happening again. An outsider, another unexpected personality on the horizon, an unanticipated mover and shaker has jumped into the political dance. Donald Trump is stampeding across the current political landscape like a bull in a china shop filling the vacuum of disappoint and anger created by now President Barack Obama’s promises of transparency as well as his style of his way or the highway. The other candidates don’t know how to deal with Donald Trump, the press is having trouble defining his upsurge, maybe even he himself has taken himself by surprise. And a close to hysterical public is clamoring toward him, fawning, clawing, following feverishly as he bellows his mantra: Make America Great Again.

President Obama attempted to offer something the people were starving for. A government that works for all people, a government that is not divided, a government that is for the little guy as well as those who play in the big rich boys’ sandbox. A government that would keep the country safe. A government they could trust. And now Trump trumpets large ideas without any structured plans but all his words point toward a blueprint of not dividing the country, of helping the middle class and keeping us safe.  We’ve heard it all before. What we haven’t heard before is the unscripted politically incorrect rants.

These two men are like book ends. We didn’t know who Obama was. We don’t know who Trump really is. We didn’t know what road Obama would take us down, nor do we know on which road Trump would require us to travel. But the public didn’t care then. Obama wasn’t Bush. And they apparently don’t care now. Trump is not Obama.

Suggestion: step back and take a big breath. Fear and anger are not good emotions on which to back a candidate. Take time. Listen carefully. Be very careful that we’re not caught in a loop backtracking perhaps not on the same issues but possibly resulting in similar outcomes.

Elizabeth Appell is a writer in Kentfield, CA.