Americans are very good at parsing disaster in order to learn from it. Now, with Donald Trump’s victory, it is time to do just that. From the very beginning, this election season has been a stress test. It has revealed weaknesses, actual and potential, in the American political system. Voters have now ensured these can no longer be ignored.

Devastating as this result is, it should help us recognise contemporary pressures on the historic order which are the result of economic change, political polarisation and the new media, each of which enhances the effects of the others.



Elections are of unparalleled value as a means of letting the country know how things stand with it. Until the primary results started coming in, the press and the leadership of both parties had no notion that Trump would be a force to be reckoned with. His victory has made it very clear that they need much better means for understanding the public mind, which is, so long as we remain a democracy, the crucial factor in our national life.

All the complaining about “elites” should be considered in light of the failures of understanding this election has brought to light. People dealing with inequities are confirmed in their suspicions when no notice is taken of the day-to-day reality of their experience. And we have an industry devoted to stoking and channelling resentment and suspicion, a creature of modern media that must be taken into account.

The election itself showed us the degree to which Trump’s venting of anger and frustration resonated with Americans across the country, including those from traditional Democratic strongholds.

Trump’s win is uniquely alarming for the fact of his ignorance of law and convention. If he understands the separation and balance of powers, he has no respect for it. He has planned to undercut the first amendment to accommodate his litigious score-settling.

Freedom of expression protects all the ranters, Limbaugh, Beck and the like, and it protects Trump himself when he called Clinton “crooked”. This would likely be libel under the British law he admires, since it is meant to harm her reputation. In fact the first amendment is in part to blame, if that is the word, for the peculiar state of confusion and division that besets us. It is also among the most precious of the things put at risk by Trumpism, and the best means we have for maintaining our democracy. We must strive to protect this freedom, for it is now more important than ever.

We have a role in the world we must try to live up to. With Trump victorious, just how we do that is a big question. We like to forget that the people of other countries follow our politics day by day. If the ugliness of Donald Trump’s campaign continues into his presidency, that will do more harm to our standing than any economic or military preeminence can recover. A city on a hill cannot be hid – even with a President Trump in charge.