Is American democracy broken?

There are precedents around the world for the kind of political jolt the United States experienced in November. They usually include a political firebrand who promises to sweep away a system rigged to serve the powerful rather than the interests of ordinary people. They usually end badly, when the popular champion decides to read electoral victory as an invitation to bend the institutions of democracy to the force of his will.

Most Americans, I’m sure, never expected to worry about that sort of thing in the United States. And yet concern is decidedly in the air. Did a combination of globalization, demographic change, cultural revolutions and whatever else just upend America’s consensus in support of liberal market democracy? Did American democracy just succumb to the strongman’s promise?

I’m skeptical that the United States is about to careen down the path taken by, say, Venezuela, governed by the whim of President Nicolás Maduro — the handpicked successor of the populist champion Hugo Chávez, who was elected in the late 1990s on a promise to sweep away an entrenched ruling class and proceeded to battle any democratic institution that stood in his way.

Still, the embrace by millions of American voters of a billionaire authoritarian who argues that the “system” has been rigged to serve a cosmopolitan ruling class against the interests of ordinary people does suggest that American democracy has a unique credibility problem.