Modern political conventions are intended to be slick shows of partisan boosterism—weeklong infomercials in which differences are papered over and everyone smiles for the cameras. This was something quite different, something rarely seen in the age of lockstep partisanship and spin: a ramshackle, thrown-together, halfhearted spectacle, one that brutally exposed the flimsiness of a campaign that has always been little more than a man, his plane, and his Twitter account. Behind the scenes, it was a constant scramble: One convention staffer described spending the week trying to plan around a disengaged campaign, only to have the campaign repeatedly blow up the plans at the last minute. “If he can’t run a convention,” the staffer said, “how is he going to run a country?”

And so, if America is in chaos, Trump seems more a symptom than a remedy. As he and his party now veer unsteadily toward November, to an election he could still quite plausibly win, the convention and the circus surrounding it proved that there will be no rhyme or reason to this madcap process. If this election is to be fought over chaos versus order, the convention did not make a convincing case for Trump as the candidate of control.

Trump has been the chaos candidate, as Jeb Bush once described him, from the beginning—from the day 13 months ago when he descended the famous escalator at Trump Tower, chucked his script, and embarked on the first of the angry rants that would become his signature. As he prepared to speak here on Thursday, a New York delegate in the front row clutched a sign reading, “Trump Is America’s Great Ball of Fire!” It was meant as a compliment.

The mood in the arena was often glum. At one point, I ran into Eric O’Keefe, a Wisconsin conservative activist who helped lead a group of delegates’ quixotic last-minute attempt to steal the nomination from Trump. “I feel like I’m at the wake of a once-great political party,” he said. A conservative consultant, seeing Trump officially crowned the delegates’ choice, pronounced grimly, “Well, the suicide pact is complete.”

Yet there could be no avoiding it: Trump won and the haters lost. Just after the delegates voted to make him the nominee, I encountered a jubilant Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s fired-campaign-manager-turned-television-commentator, who was leading the New Hampshire delegation (and who had used the convention chaos to try to cast doubt on his replacement in the post). “It’s amazing, right?” he exulted. “You never would have predicted it!”

Lewandowski predicted that Trump would win far and wide by upending the partisan patterns of old and competing in states that have been unfriendly to Republicans for decades. “Donald Trump is a disruptive force to the system,” he said. “That’s why they’re scared to death. And I love it!”