Donald Trump prides himself on destruction. He smashes conceptions and breaks traditions. In doing so without suffering any significant consequences, he has made it more difficult for Americans to continue to delude ourselves with fairy tales about our collective values and to indulge in comforting fictions about the fundamental decency of our politics.

We should have grappled with the worst in ourselves all along, but now it is not an option: The president has forced us to finally look in the mirror. Perhaps he has done us a favor.

Before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, it was easy to believe, if you were inclined to do so, that the people who represented us generally had to be better than us. David Vitter, Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner are just a few of the pre-Trump-era “family men” to throw themselves at the mercy of the public’s judgment when it was revealed that they were not.

Sure, the apologies often seemed staged and insincere. And sure, it was easy to spot hypocrisy in the people we put on pedestals. “With all the power that a president has, the most important thing to bear in mind is this: You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character,” said Richard Nixon, of all people, in a 1964 campaign commercial for the civil-rights opponent Barry Goldwater, no less. “Character is the most important qualification the president of the United States can have.” However, it was reasonable to think certain types of behavior were automatic, self-enforced game-enders for elected officials.