The basic impulse of democracy is the desire for change – to throw the rascals out of power. This is what Hillary Clinton, the loser in the race to be the next US president, failed to understand. To be the first woman president would have been a personal achievement, but it was not a sufficient reason to elect her. Nor was it a strong enough argument to overcome her status as the establishment candidate backed by the super-rich.
The Republican Party also failed to understand this basic fact of the desire for change, which enabled Donald Trump, the rank outsider, to win. The hubris of the Clinton campaign was demonstrated by its choice of the Javits Convention Centre in New York – a huge glass fortress – as the venue for her presumed victory celebration, where she would symbolically smash the “glass ceiling” preventing women reaching the top.
No such sense of entitlement was on display from the Trump camp. Even in his victory speech, Mr Trump was playing the non-politician who comes to clean up Washington where Clintons and Bushes have ruled for 20 of the past 28 years. He said: “This political stuff is nasty and it’s tough”. He gave the impression that politics was closed, and now it was just a question of business management.
Could these be the most troubling words ever said by a president-elect? There are whole areas of politics which Mr Trump has never ventured into. He won with the techniques of reality television and social media, where provocation is all, and nothing lasts. He is an untested politician who manipulated the media to convince America that Mrs Clinton, a real politician but a poor campaigner, was a fake and a fraud.
The American people have voted for change. Even the Hispanic population, so viciously attacked by Mr Trump, wanted change. More of them voted Trump than for Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in the 2012.
In 2016 change is not what it used to be. It is now synonymous with disruption, the favoured word of Silicon Valley where change-makers do not nibble at the edges but sweep whole industries – or political parties – into the dustbin of history.
A Trump presidency is a slap in the face for the whole foreign security and economic policy establishment in Washington, which believes in free trade and the benefit to America of strong international alliances. It overturns the acceptance that the huge expense of policing the world’s sea lanes and confronting rogue states is in America’s interest.
Mr Trump, to judge by his campaign statements, believes that free trade is bad for American jobs, that allies in Europe and Japan should pay for their protection and that America has no interest in stopping Russia dominating its neighbours or challenging China’s hegemony over the South China Sea.
In a word, the charge sheet against the businessman-president is that he understands the price of everything and the value of nothing. His picks for top jobs are likely to be rejects of the “old regime” – notably Lt Gen Michael Flynn, who was appointed director of the Defence Intelligence Agency in 2012 but left in 2014 amid disputes over his management style and vision.
Not surprisingly liberal commentators are holding their heads in their hands. Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist for The New York Times, asks: “Is America a failed state and a failed society?”
Anne Applebaum, an authority on Russia and Central Europe, says Mr Trump’s election means the end of the concept of the western world.
Normally such fears are tempered by the reality of the US constitution which puts strict limits on the powers of the president. But those limits are likely to be quite loose in his case. The Republicans will control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, freeing the new president from the constrictions of a hostile Congress that hamstrung Mr Obama.
The Republicans are not all Trumpists. But they may have to revise their views.
The Trump factor seems to have reversed a predicted congressional setback for the Republicans into a glorious victory.
Even more significant is the fact that Mr Trump will be able to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court, re-establishing a conservative majority among the judges. Given the advanced age of the sitting judges he could get to nominate up to three more, thus change the complexion of the court for a generation. This is the opportunity for change that presents itself to Mr Trump.
Whether you like it or not, the Trump phenomenon is understandable. American society is going through several painful transformations at the same time – from majority white to majority non-white, from manufacturing economy to service economy, which empowers women at the expense of men, and from a closely moderated political debate to digital free for all. These factors alone, leaving aside America’s now-contested position as the world’s dominant power, are enough to provoke a backlash.
Mr Trump has ridden that backlash, and given it a voice – the chants of “lock her up” at mentions of Mrs Clinton eerily recall the daily Two Minutes Hate which kept Big Brother in power in George Orwell’s 1984. Those who feel that America has lost its soul in the rush to globalisation now have a political outsider – “a blue-collar worker with a better bank balance” – with an extravagantly blond-haired family in the White House.
Is this the way things are always going to be – nativist, isolationist and protectionist? Not necessarily. At this stage it looks as if Mrs Clinton and the Democratic Party lost the race as much as Mr Trump won it. The logic of “Hillary’s turn” was political poison at such a time, given that her gargantuan campaign efforts were hobbled by her desire for secrecy and privacy.
It is the American establishment which has lost.
It will be up to Mr Trump to conjure up a new reality for America and the world – a task more easily achieved on TV than in real life.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter @aphilps
