It seemed too soon, and the metaphor was too crude. In the third week of November, less than two weeks after the election, they were already erecting some new structure across the street from the White House. They had fenced off most of Pennsylvania Avenue. Visitors wanting to take pictures of the White House were impeded by a giant cage, in which the structure was going up. Dozens of construction signs decorated the fence and sent a clear message of exclusion and foreboding: Danger, Warning, Keep Out. On one of the signs, as if noting the sheer obviousness of it all, someone had written: “Is this art?”

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The workers had gone home for the day, and inside the chain-link fence the site was a mess. There were stacks of metal risers. There was a portable toilet. The construction thus far looked crooked and chaotic, and from Pennsylvania Avenue whatever was growing inside seemed taller than the White House, though that might have been a trick of perspective and light. The day, a Monday, had been sunny and warm, but when the sun set the temperature had dropped precipitously and a blue-black darkness had fallen over the city.

The White House, looking grey, stood silent, as if bracing itself.

“It feels surreal to be back,” my friend said. We were a block away from the White House, in a restaurant, looking at the frozen people rush by on the sidewalk. He had just come back from Marrakech. For weeks he’d been part of a US delegation at the annual climate change conference – Marrakesh being the first since the Paris agreement. The election had happened while he was in Morocco. There had been tears from some attendees, and condolences from others, and worry that all the work they had done would come to little or nothing.

The incoming US president had repeatedly said he did not believe in climate change. In a tweet from 2014, he had asserted that the notion was a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese government. He has promised to cancel the Clean Power Plan and pull out of the Paris agreement.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

“I’m tired,” my friend said. He had flown in the night before and he missed his kids. They were young and were worried. They were members of a minority group, and couldn’t guess at the plans the president-elect had for them. The youngest was seven years old, and was talking about the election as he would a nightmare. For him, the president-elect of the United States was a wild, mean-spirited bully who might sanction, or incite, racial violence.

But maybe not. Since the election, some days brought new revelations, new softenings from the president-elect. Perhaps there was some connectivity between global warming and human activity, he said one day. Perhaps an erstwhile rival could be secretary of state, he mused. Perhaps it was not prudent, necessary or good to pursue the criminal prosecution of his opponent now that he had vanquished her.

One day he had appeared humbled by the office he’d won, expressing amazement over how many people he needed to hire. The next day he was defending his vice-president against musical theatre. Every time we allowed ourselves to be even remotely optimistic, some new reminder arrived that we, an immature electorate, had elected a child.

Outside, the dark structure was visible in the gloaming. We couldn’t figure out what it was. It wasn’t the inaugural proscenium – that would be on the Capitol steps. Finally we realised it was the reviewing stand for the inaugural parade. But why so soon? My friend has worked for the US government for almost 20 years, but he could not remember anything like this going up so early. It seemed a predatory encroachment of territory and time.

Earlier that day, I’d spoken to a number of White House staff members, most of them members of Michelle Obama’s education team. No one seemed to know exactly what they would do after inauguration. One mentioned moving back to Ohio. The staffers spent the afternoon hosting an event, a college essay writing workshop in the old executive office. Three dozen local high school students sat with an equal number of adult tutors, and together they worked shoulder to shoulder for three hours in an effort to give the students, almost all of them African-American, some semblance of a level playing field.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest President Obama, at the 94th annual National Christmas Tree Lighting near the White House, sings carols with musicians Garth Brooks (right) and James Taylor, and actor Eva Longoria. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

I asked one of the staffers whether the first lady would ever run for office. It had been a yearning common among American liberals for years, and over the course of 2016 had grown into a full-throated invocation. During the campaign she had demonstrated, more than ever, that there was no human – least of all the candidate she was entreating her audiences to support – who connected more authentically and naturally with virtually any audience. The staff member ruled it out emphatically. “No, no,” he said. “No chance. Never.” We agreed that Michelle Obama’s refusal to run made us admire her more. A human would have to be insane to endure an 18-month campaign, that kind of madness and scrutiny.

But her husband had done so, and managed to remain both sane and dignified. It was remarkable and nearly unprecedented. In eight years in the White House there had been an uninterrupted stretch of calm and decency. In eight years there has been no scandal, not even a whiff of scandal, coming from the White House. That is a profoundly difficult thing to do, especially with the two houses of Congress in Republican hands and the president’s every move or hope met with biblical opposition.

For eight years we have been able to look to the White House and see a president who thinks and acts with cool deliberation, whose every sentence is well-considered. Anyone can disagree with President Obama’s policies but it cannot be denied that the first family acted with unerring decorum and amenity.

People of all affiliations must admit that the period of calm dignity at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is fast approaching its end. Whatever his capabilities, Donald Trump is not a man of serenity. He is loud and brash, he is not above spreading rumours and falsehoods, and controversy follows him as surely as dusk follows day. There are currently 75 lawsuits outstanding against him. They range from employees at his buildings suing him for personally sexually assaulting them to an architect who claims he was never paid for the work he completed. Trump has been married three times, and has filed for bankruptcy five times, in each case emerging unscathed while his creditors receive pennies on the dollar.

A few days after winning the electoral college, the president-elect settled a class action against him, wherein 7,000 people sued him for fraud. These 7,000 individuals had paid up to $35,000 to learn at Trump University and, according to all of the 7,000 people, none came away with any tangible knowledge or benefit. After winning the election, the president-elect paid $25m to settle their claim. It has been reported that most of the plaintiffs will receive about half of what they lost.

We are in a time of extraordinary relativism, when the incoming president was sued for fraud by 7,000 different people and this was not seen as a disqualifying fact. The president-elect was accused of defrauding thousands of their life savings, and now, across from the White House, we’re building a structure wherein he can watch a parade in his honour.

No one is sure what shape this presidency will take. Just as during the third debate he promised to keep us in suspense as to whether or not he would accept any result other than his victory, now we live in a different and more foreboding kind of suspense. Which Donald Trump will govern the country? If past is prologue, we can be sure that the Trump who shows up on 20 January for the inauguration will be awed and humbled by the office of the presidency. He will recite the oath properly and, if he employs the same writer who penned his victory speech, will probably deliver a well-worded inaugural address. But which man will show up on 21 January?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Trump has the bearing and impulses of a nine-year-old boy – a troubled nine-year-old boy. He wants most to be liked and admired, and when he isn’t, he lashes out.’ Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

We don’t know. But we do know that the days of decency are gone. We had almost 3,000 such days in a row, and it will soon come to an end. That we have traded Obama’s unshakable composure for Trump’s undivinable mayhem is not a matter of debate. We can agree that Trump was elected. We can agree that his election has sent the Dow to a new high. We can agree that he very well may rebuild the nation’s infrastructure – and if he does, he will have the backing of most of the country.

But we must also agree that this president has the bearing and impulses of a nine-year-old boy – a troubled nine-year-old boy. He wants most to be liked and admired, and when he isn’t, he lashes out with insults and aggrieved demands for apologies. He has no patience and little self-control. He cannot spell and does not read. He is our new president.

For the next four years, the highs will be high and the lows will be low, and the embarrassments to our democracy will arrive with great regularity. Remember George W Bush trying to give an impromptu massage to Angela Merkel? Remember Bill Clinton receiving oral sex in the Oval Office? Remember the totality of Richard Nixon? All were difficult to bear. Having one’s president behave worse than anyone you know is wounding to the soul. Prepare yourself for more.

In 2008 badges were made that said No more Drama, Vote Obama. This year the electorate, or a meaningful portion of it, voted for drama. Constant drama. Lawsuits. Feuds. Threats. Denials. Insults. Speaking before deliberating. Tweeting before thinking. The use of exclamation marks with unprecedented frequency.

At six o’clock, my friend had to go back to work. There was still a lot of catching up to do. In the city, the dark was absolute. We walked back along Pennsylvania Avenue, towards the White House, and hashed out a plan wherein Trump would be given a phone, and with it he would be invited to tweet to his heart’s content. But the phone would not be connected to anything. As with a child given a toy phone, the government of the US – in hope of preserving some last vestige of dignity – might give Trump a similar nonfunctional device. He could respond every day to every slight; he could repeat every last conspiracy theory floated from his alt-right sites. But the tweets would remain in his play phone, and the nation would be spared the daily and unfathomable shame of his misspelled petulance.

At Lafayette Park, we looked towards the White House one last time. Because we are an optimistic people we want to hope that the White House, with its humbling history, might tame the raging indiscretions of the candidate preparing to occupy it. But this seems unlikely. Instead, the structure growing before it, both rickety and hulking, feels more the style of the president-elect: fenced in, unwelcoming, rising quickly, not built to last.