Joe Klein's Blog

In addition to a loaded slogan–“America First”–and a questionable demeanor, it is now apparent that President Donald J. Trump actually has a governing ideology. His Inaugural Address, the strongest and most coherent speech he’s ever delivered, was a clear statement of that philosophy. It may change the shape of domestic politics. It may overturn the international order that has existed for 70 years. It certainly deserves more than the “divisive” dismissal it received from liberals–and more than the puerile crowd-size diversion that its perpetrator stumbled into during the days after he delivered it.

Here’s the crucial paragraph: “For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries, while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military. We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.”

The amazing thing about this litany is that most of the policies Trump criticizes had been peripheral to our recent political battles, at least until he came along. Indeed, the only one that had raised any heat–the “depletion” of the military–is a political fiction. The others, though, have been core assumptions of the leadership in both parties. And Trump is right. It may be time to test them and see if they still apply.

The two most important ones are subsidizing foreign industry and protecting other nations’ borders. The first is about free trade; the second, about overseas alliances. Both are more complicated questions than they’ve been made to appear by those of us in the establishment commentariat.

The traditional argument against free trade is myopic and simple: American jobs are going to Mexico and China. The traditional counterargument is more abstract: the price of children’s clothing at Walmart is much lower now that shirts are made in south China instead of South Carolina. Free trade, it is convincingly argued, has been a financial net plus for the U.S. But there has been a spiritual cost in a demoralized middle class, which leads to an existential question: Is the self-esteem inherent in manufacturing jobs long considered obsolete–think of those grand old steel mills–more important than the lower prices that the global market provides? Have we tilted too far toward market efficiency and too far away from social cohesion? Is there a middle ground? Trump’s insistence on changing the equation brings a long-neglected issue to the center of our political debate. He may be wrong, but the alienation that seems like a by-product of globalization needs to be addressed. A happier people may be worth the cost of higher prices.

The second policy question, on overseas alliances, also rests on shaky ground. No one can gainsay the brilliance of the international architecture that Harry Truman and his Wise Men created, but it rested on two assumptions that may be out of date: the threat of communism and the scourge of European nationalism that created the carnage of the 20th century. There was a real fear of German militarism; even the Germans seemed to fear it. That the U.S. would protect Germany and the rest of Europe seemed an elegant solution–and it was, so long as the threat came from Russia. But the threat now is the tide of immigrants coming from the Middle East. It is fair to ask: Shouldn’t the Europeans spend more on their own defense? Shouldn’t they take a more active role in solving the Syrian crisis? Shouldn’t their militaries be protecting their borders? America’s inability to conduct land wars against militant Islam is manifest. (And perhaps the Europeans should do more to protect themselves against Russian jingoism as well.)

These are crucial questions, without clear answers. It is good that Trump has raised them. It is unfortunate, however, that he is such a defective messenger. His deficiencies were never more apparent than in his grotesque performance at the CIA on the day after the Inauguration. If his vision is to repair the country and stop trying to police the world, what are we to make of this ridiculous statement: “We should have kept the [Iraqi] oil. But, O.K., maybe you’ll have another chance”? And how many American brigades will you need to protect those oil fields, Mr. President?

There is a chance for a badly needed conversation about American priorities now, but only if we’re led by a President who understands what his own priorities should be.

On Oct. 7, at the height of the presidential campaign, a tape appeared of Donald Trump saying vile things about women to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. We, the media, went berserk. For the next two weeks, as various women came forward accusing Trump of sexual assault, the coverage was wall to wall. Hillary Clinton’s campaign snapped at the bait and made Trump’s misogyny the centerpiece of its strategy.

Also on Oct. 7 came the mind-blowing news that the U.S. intelligence community, including all 17 agencies, believed the Russians were behind the hacking of internal Clinton and Democratic Party email accounts. This news was accompanied by candidate Trump’s strange affinity for Vladimir Putin. It was also accompanied by Trump’s unwillingness to release his tax returns, which made it impossible to find out whether the developer was in financial cahoots with Russian oligarchs, how much he might owe them, how much they could have invested in him. Any one of these stories would have been an outrage. Taken together, they pointed to an unthinkable conclusion that the CIA had privately reached: the Russians were trying to tilt the election to Trump.

The unprecedented meddling was the most important scandal of the 2016 election, but it seemed to get lost in the Trumpian clutter. It just seemed too crazy — too Manchurian candidate, too Hollywood — to be real. It wasn’t as, well, sexy as Trump’s trash talk and groping, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone, given his crude track record. In the end, it’s possible that the Access Hollywood fiasco might have even helped Trump, confirming his machismo for a certain puerile sector of the male electorate (and confirming that boys will be boys for the women who voted for him). And speaking of “locker room” talk, Trump has now gone on to pick a Cabinet that looks like the locker room at Trump National Golf Course.

I am not saying the Access Hollywood story wasn’t newsworthy; it surely was. Nor am I saying the Russian hacks caused Clinton to lose the election; she did that all on her own. But the Russian interference in the ceremony that stands at the center of our democracy was nothing less than a foreign act of cyberwarfare, or as former CIA executive Mike Morell put it, “the political equivalent of 9/11.” And it wasn’t treated with sufficient heft by the media, especially cable television.

But now it must be. The President-elect must release his tax returns. The Russian connection must be fully explored. The relationship between Secretary of State–designate Rex Tillerson and the Russians must be vetted. The media pressure to make this happen must be focused and relentless.

There is a larger lesson here for the media, going forward: there is a method to Trump’s mouthiness. He is, without question, the most expert news manipulator in American history. He can even exploit embarrassments like Access Hollywood. He throws chum into the water — a tweet here about election fraud, a tweet there about flag burning — and cable news goes crazy for a news cycle, which only reinforces Trump’s credibility with his constituency. In the meantime, more serious stuff is being ignored. There needs to be a very strict and sober sense of priorities, especially on the cable news channels where a horse race and showbiz usually prevail. This is a sensitive and perhaps dangerous moment for the media. Journalists will have contradictory functions: the relentless pursuit of the truth in serious matters like the Russian affair will have to be matched with an open-minded willingness to give credit where it is due.

Trump hasn’t actually done anything yet, and his opponents are acting as if the sky has fallen. They are playing into his hands: if you begin with constant outrage, there’s no place to go when something truly outrageous happens. And what if this turns out to be a popular presidency? It is entirely possible that a rapprochement with the Russians, based on common commercial interests, will be good for the peace of the world. It is possible that Trump’s ideological appointees will clean out the cobwebs in departments and agencies like Health and Human Services, Labor, Education and the EPA. It is possible that Trump’s public shaming of manufacturers like Carrier will make American corporations think twice before going elsewhere. It is even possible that Trump’s massive and continuing conflicts of interest will be a good thing — the more hotels and golf courses and oil deals he and his cronies have around the world, the less likely they’ll be to blow it up. Nothing is unthinkable anymore.

On Oct. 7, at the height of the presidential campaign, a tape appeared of Donald Trump saying vile things about women to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. We, the media, went berserk. For the next two weeks, as various women came forward accusing Trump of sexual assault, the coverage was wall to wall. Hillary Clinton’s campaign snapped at the bait and made Trump’s misogyny the centerpiece of its strategy.

Also on Oct. 7 came the mind-blowing news that the U.S. intelligence community, including all 17 agencies, believed the Russians were behind the hacking of internal Clinton and Democratic Party email accounts. This news was accompanied by candidate Trump’s strange affinity for Vladimir Putin. It was also accompanied by Trump’s unwillingness to release his tax returns, which made it impossible to find out whether the developer was in financial cahoots with Russian oligarchs, how much he might owe them, how much they could have invested in him. Any one of these stories would have been an outrage. Taken together, they pointed to an unthinkable conclusion that the CIA had privately reached: the Russians were trying to tilt the election to Trump.

The unprecedented meddling was the most important scandal of the 2016 election, but it seemed to get lost in the Trumpian clutter. It just seemed too crazy–too Manchurian Candidate, too Hollywood–to be real. It wasn’t as, well, sexy as Trump’s trash talk and groping, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone, given his crude track record. In the end, it’s possible that the Access Hollywood fiasco might have even helped Trump, confirming his machismo for a certain puerile sector of the male electorate (and confirming that boys will be boys for the women who voted for him). And speaking of “locker room” talk, Trump has now gone on to pick a Cabinet that looks like the locker room at Trump National Golf Course.

I am not saying the Access Hollywood story wasn’t newsworthy; it surely was. Nor am I saying the Russian hacks caused Clinton to lose the election; she did that all on her own. But the Russian interference in the ceremony that stands at the center of our democracy was nothing less than a foreign act of cyberwarfare, or as former CIA executive Mike Morell put it, “the political equivalent of 9/11.” And it wasn’t treated with sufficient heft by the media, especially cable television.

But now it must be. The President-elect must release his tax returns. The Russian connection must be fully explored. The relationship between Secretary of State–designate Rex Tillerson and the Russians must be vetted. The media pressure to make this happen must be focused and relentless.

There is a larger lesson here for the media, going forward: there is a method to Trump’s mouthiness. He is, without question, the most expert news manipulator in American history. He can even exploit embarrassments like Access Hollywood. He throws chum into the water–a tweet here about election fraud, a tweet there about flag burning–and cable news goes crazy for a news cycle, which only reinforces Trump’s credibility with his constituency. In the meantime, more serious stuff is being ignored. There needs to be a very strict and sober sense of priorities, especially on the cable-news channels where a horse race and showbiz usually prevail. This is a sensitive and perhaps dangerous moment for the media. Journalists will have contradictory functions: the relentless pursuit of the truth in serious matters like the Russian affair will have to be matched with an open-minded willingness to give credit where it is due.

Trump hasn’t actually done anything yet, and his opponents are acting as if the sky has fallen. They are playing into his hands: if you begin with constant outrage, there’s no place to go when something truly outrageous happens. And what if this turns out to be a popular presidency? It is entirely possible that a rapprochement with the Russians, based on common commercial interests, will be good for the peace of the world. It is possible that Trump’s ideological appointees will clean out the cobwebs in departments and agencies like Health and Human Services, Labor, Education and the EPA. It is possible that Trump’s public shaming of manufacturers like Carrier will make American corporations think twice before going elsewhere. It is even possible that Trump’s massive and continuing conflicts of interest will be a good thing–the more hotels and golf courses and oil deals he and his cronies have around the world, the less likely they’ll be to blow it up. Nothing is unthinkable anymore.

Eight years ago, toward the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, Michelle Obama asked me, “Klein, are you going to write a book like Primary Colors about us?” referring to my satirical novel about the 1992 campaign. I spluttered a bit; the thought had never occurred to me. Her husband started to laugh. “Klein can’t write a book like that about us,” he said. “We’re too boring.”

That was nonsense, of course. The first African-American President of the United States was never going to be boring. But Obama was right too. There would be little melodrama and absolutely no hint of scandal during his time in office. The conservative fever swamps would be no less pustulent than they were during the Clinton presidency–indeed, the level of race-based hatemongering was frightening–but somehow the Obamas never let it get to them. They radiated a sense of militant normality, a mother-knows-best family on the world’s brightest stage. The First Lady let the White House staff know that Sasha and Malia would make their own beds. The President went up to the residence for family dinner most nights. The First Lady planted a vegetable garden. She gave her husband grief when he got too full of himself.

When the President received the Nobel Peace Prize, he was asked to sign his name and leave a brief message in the same book that previous recipients, like Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King Jr., had signed. Obama sat before the book and, in his precise, architectural left-handed script, began to write and write … and write. Finally, Michelle intervened: “Honey, are you writing a book?”

Their physical, emotional and intellectual grace was daunting. They never lost their cool in public. He controlled a supersharp sense of irony; he was never harsh. He made plenty of mistakes, as all Presidents do. He declared a “red line” in Syria and did nothing when it was crossed. He did not pretend to like the social ceremonies of politics; he despised flattery. I once asked a top aide why the President didn’t invite his opponents over to the White House for a drink or a movie more often and was told, “He believes they’d see right through it.” True enough, but there isn’t a soul in Washington who isn’t thrilled by an invitation to the White House.

The impact of the Obamas on American culture was subtle but substantial. In the Klein household these days, Dad is reading a book (Sapiens, by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari) that the President included in his list of 10 essential books, while the kids are watching the First Lady’s epic Carpool Karaoke and the whole family dances together to the President’s daytime playlist. The Obamas demonstrated that you can get down without losing your dignity. Their tastes were an eclectic combination of high and low: her sophisticated and never-errant fashion sense; his unabashed love of ESPN and late-adopted passion for golf.

He will be remembered for his eulogies, the terrible skein of laments over the bodies of American citizens murdered. He could convey a cathartic sadness, and the potential for uplift, in the face of tragedy. His most perfect moment came at the funeral of the Charleston, S.C., churchgoers who had been killed by a sick white man. The families of the dead had already forgiven the shooter–a stupendous act, but not uncommon in the black church and the African-American experience. How to respond to that? Words couldn’t cover it … so he sang “Amazing Grace,” a moment of bravado, humility and passion entwined.

Boring? Not for a moment. Thank you, Mr. President and First Lady, for leading us so elegantly.

It isn’t easy to bestow awards for political courage in an election year–and it’s near impossible after a campaign like the one we’ve just experienced, which set a sad new standard for ugliness and mendacity. But as an eternal optimist, I proceed with my annual chore and will even say something nice about Donald Trump, who ran the most disgraceful presidential campaign that I can remember–but, in the course of which, took several positions athwart the traditions of the Republican Party. He supported gay rights and admitted that the war in Iraq was a mistake. Granted, these were positions that had long been obvious to a majority of Americans, but not to the GOP. He defied evangelicals on the gay-rights issue (and also in his support for Planned Parenthood) and still won their votes.

I wish I could say that Hillary Clinton had similar moments of courage, moments when she defied her party’s entrenched base, but she didn’t. She must receive credit, however, for her seriousness, for the honorable detail of her policy papers–roundly ignored in a year when the size of hands loomed larger than the size of budgets. There are still important things she can do for our country. I hope she finds a new role in the arena, after a suitable time to rest, reflect and wipe off the blood and dust.

I’ll have more to say about Barack Obama elsewhere in these pages, but there are two important achievements of the President’s time in office that need to be acknowledged. One is the stimulus plan he fought for and passed in 2009, which prevented a depression and responsibly laid the groundwork for the economic recovery we’re now experiencing. (Those Democrats who believe that the 2016 election was lost only because of economics are deluding themselves; it was lost because of tribalism.) And overseas, Obama made some mistakes, but he got the big things right: he was not arrogant, he was not bellicose, he reached out to enemies in Cuba and Iran–gestures that will eventually pay off, I believe–and most important, he was confident that our ways will prevail over Islamic extremism (just ask any man or woman in Mosul how they felt about ISIS rule).

Some other political Teddys: to Jeb Bush for running the Republican equivalent of the Clinton campaign, stuffed with great policy ideas … to John Kasich, for running with his heart on his sleeve … to Bernie Sanders, for giving young people something to care about and, postelection, for speaking out against identity politics. And in a major break with tradition, I’d like to bestow a prospective pair of Teddys to Senators Chuck Schumer and Lamar Alexander, who will have the difficult task of reforming–the Republicans will call it “replacing”–Obamacare. Both are good men, members of the Senate’s sanity caucus, and I predict they’ll find a way to get this difficult job done.

And Teddys go to another unlikely pair: William Kristol and William Galston, who have disagreed about many things over the years but now agree that there is a need for a new center movement, mindful of tradition, stability and accountability, free from the excesses of left and right. Along those same lines, courageous work was done this year by the conservative writers who boldly opposed Trump, for all the right reasons, and will now pay the consequences of being shut off from a Republican Administration: Pete Wehner and David Brooks of the New York Times, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal and Mike Gerson of the Washington Post, among others.

I’ve covered 11 presidential campaigns, which is more than enough. This one was my last. I’d like to thank my editors–Nancy Gibbs, Michael Duffy and Michael Scherer–for giving me the freedom to speak my mind, and you, dear readers, for your tolerance of my oft-cranky centrism. It has been a privilege to serve you.

I met Fidel Castro 40 years ago, and he was really, really cool. I was part of an American delegation to Cuba led by Senator George McGovern; we met Castro at his brother Raúl’s farm. He showed up in an open Jeep, in a cloud of dust, wearing his famous combat fatigues. He took us to a nearby town, which he worked like a Boston ward heeler, smiling and shaking hands. People called him by his first name. “Hey, Fidel,” a woman said. “Last time you were here, you promised us a bus. What happened?” Castro told an aide to make a note of that and bought the woman an ice cream cone.

This was the Fidel whom the American left shamelessly romanticized. The style was fabulous and the substance … well, best not to linger on that. It was Fidel and Che Guevara–before the Beatles–who reinvented long hair and beards; it was Fidel and Che who invented dress-down chic. (There was a point, back in the 1950s, when only farmers and mechanics wore dungarees.) As the 1960s progressed, the sartorial style of protest moved from basic middle class–check out the crowd at Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Lincoln Memorial speech–to guerrilla. It was a generational thing. Fidel was saying, “Screw you” to the shirt-and-tie crowd, also known as our parents. When he came to New York for a U.N. meeting, he stayed at a hotel in Harlem. How cool was that?

The emphasis on style over substance has been a distinguishing feature of the left for the past 50 years. Yes, of course, there was plenty of substance, but it mostly related to social issues. Abortion rights has been without question the most powerful and passionate issue when it comes to driving votes for Democrats. There has been a greater audience for civil liberties on the left than kitchen-table issues–and these have been fetishized over time. Gay rights became transgender bathrooms, the quest for racial equality became the easy, racialist out of affirmative action; the “right” of the cast of Hamilton to speak their version of truth to Mike Pence sits uneasily with left-wing support for stifling political correctness on campus. If you listen to “progressives” talk about poverty, small business, public education and improving government services like the VA or the post office, they have nothing of interest to say. They have postures, not positions. They reflexively support colorful “activists” who feed on anger and often don’t represent the constituencies they claim–those activists inevitably act and look more like Fidel than Nelson Mandela on cable TV. Castro was the avatar of the flash left, the showbiz left–think of Sean Penn in Iraq–of gestures rather than results, of ice cream cones rather than buses.

And now the left’s romance with stylized Oedipal anger has been adopted across the American spectrum, especially by the media. There has never been a presidential candidate more caught up with style over substance than Donald Trump. His diversionary tweets about voting fraud and flag burning are all about populist class warfare. His search for a Secretary of State has become a reality-TV show: The Policy Bachelor. So I was heartened and rather astonished when Trump issued an utterly lucid statement on the death of Fidel Castro: “Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.” More of that, please.

Back in 1975, I strayed from the official tour and went to a Catholic church in Havana looking for dissidents. I found a man who had been imprisoned and tortured by both the right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista and the Castro regime. I asked him what he thought American policy toward Cuba should be. “End the embargo!” he said. “Recognize us!” The Castros needed the American Satan and its embargo as an excuse for their socialism-induced poverty and martial law. They would never be able to withstand the tide of freedom–and commerce–that would wash over the island. Motown and bell-bottoms and color televisions were incredibly powerful weapons against totalitarianism. (Castro’s first words when he met our group was, “Where’s Barbara?” He was looking for Barbara Walters of the Today show, his favorite program.)

I think the 1960s ended for me that day in Havana. Revolutionary style was a fraud. The left’s mantra of “social justice” really meant “equality of poverty,” as a young Muscovite whispered to me in 1989. There has to be a balance between freedom and equality, but freedom is always more important.

“It is the job of editorial writers,” the late, great Murray Kempton once observed, “to come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.” I’ve been thinking about that as publication after publication has come forward to endorse Hillary Clinton for President–including some that have never made an endorsement before and others that have never endorsed a Democrat. Well, sure: Donald Trump is unendorsable. There hasn’t been a major-party candidate less fit for the presidency in American history.

I’ve never actually endorsed a candidate. It’s not my job. Endorsements are official. They are the prerogative of ownership. But I want to be clear in this crucial year: I will be voting for Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8.

Not happily, even though I’ve known her for a long time, known her to be hardworking, intelligent, moral and sane. Not happily, because I sense that she has been too severely damaged in the course of the 30-year battering she’s received at the hands of extremists and the media. She may be too defensive now to be courageous in office. Her reignited email scandal reminds us that the Clintons come fully equipped with a menagerie, a clown show of paranoid retainers, some of whom should be allowed nowhere near the Oval Office. Clinton is a reminder, too, of the reflexive entitlement that comes with dynastic politics. The Democrats, in general, seem stale. They represent a boundless faith in government that doesn’t acknowledge the corroded inefficiencies of our current system. They practice a form of identity politics–special treatment for special groups–that can be easily perverted, a vulnerability Trump has been exploiting all year.

After all, how far is Trump’s sense of systemic ethnic depredation–Mexicans as rapists, Muslims as terrorists–from Clinton’s view of systemic prejudice, with blacks, Latinos, women, as the victims? They exist on the same spectrum: group identity as more definitive than individual character. Trump’s use of the word the is implicitly vile: “the blacks,” “the Hispanics,” “the Muslims,” “the women” and, yes, even “the veterans.” His stereotypes deny the fabulous array of opportunities that America provides. I’m not sure how real his pessimism–or much else about him–is, but it is ugly and dark in a way this country shouldn’t be.

There is one part of Trump that is indisputably real: his ego. He is personal freedom gone off the rails, a peculiarly American disease. When I think of Trump as a businessman, I think of my father, also a businessman, who would sooner forgo a family vacation than stiff a contractor. When I think of Trump as a celebrity, I think of my daughter forcing me to watch an episode of Jersey Shore some years ago because “you can’t believe how awful they are.” Trump doesn’t live in the same universe as Harry Truman. He belongs to the same universe as Snooki. And his supporters know it: They take vengeful pleasure in his profound lack of seriousness. They protest complexity. Why can’t we take Mosul in three days? Why can’t we have manufacturing jobs and cheap goods at Walmart at the same time? Why can’t we just have immigrants from Europe?

Trump, then, is about all that has gone wrong in our society, and nothing of what has gone right. He is about putting his name on buildings he doesn’t own, about not paying his taxes, about a charitable foundation that spends its money on self-aggrandizement, about beauty pageants where he can invade dressing rooms and ogle nude teenagers. He has even debased the notion of luxury, with his gilt parody of the good life. He does not read. He doesn’t have the patience to be briefed–or, worse, to discern between reality and crazy conspiracy theories, between propaganda and truth. His acceptance of Russia’s attacks on our electoral system is unprecedented and outrageous. He upends stability because he doesn’t know enough to value it. Those who would put Clinton’s failings in the same league as Trump’s depravities are delusional.

From the start, people have said to me, Well, O.K., Trump is about as honest as his hair, but he’s touching a very real nerve out there. True. He is the avatar of easy answers, a leader for those fearful of the unfamiliar. He embodies the notion that engaged citizenship is just too hard for average folks, that compromise is just too complex. He runs, weirdly, against the art of the deal. And he is all ours. He could only happen here. We will have to deal with that, win or lose, after the election.

There haven’t been many exhilarating moments in Hillary Clinton’s long slog to the presidency, but this may have been one of them: a gorgeous late-October afternoon in New Hampshire, an outdoor rally amid the falling leaves, a stage full of female candidates–two for Congress, one for the Senate, one for President plus Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, leaving only one lonely guy (the candidate for governor). The women wore interesting colors–a perfect firehouse red for Warren; a lush violet for New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan; a cool, crisp sky blue for Clinton.

This was a perfect reversal of fortune from the days when five of the six speakers would be men in blue suits with red ties, joined by a lone woman–a candidate for state treasurer, perhaps–also dressed in a navy blue suit. The tone was set by the incendiary Warren, who responded to Donald Trump’s calling Clinton a “nasty woman” in the third debate: “Get this, Donald–nasty women are tough. Nasty women are smart. And nasty women vote. And on Nov. 8, we nasty women are going to march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes to get you out of our lives forever.”

This is a matter of some significance. We are about to experience a radical change in American politics: a woman may well be our next President. It’s a transformation that’s been lost in the roil of the campaign. Clinton is so familiar a character that she has been disaggregated from her gender. She is the experienced candidate, the status quo candidate, the Establishment candidate; she is the awkward, slippery, morally challenged candidate. All true, but she is also a woman–and women are different from men. “I do have a lot of plans, I do. And I get criticized for having so many plans,” Clinton said, following Warren in New Hampshire. “Maybe it’s a bit of a women’s thing because we make lists. We do, we make lists, and we try to write down what we’re supposed to do and then cross them off as we go through the day.”

It is difficult to imagine Donald Trump making a list–or doing many of the things Clinton would if she becomes President: listening to a complicated argument without interrupting, negotiating patiently with her opponents, looking before she leaps. These are not qualities exclusive to women, but they are more common to humans who do not suffer from testosterone poisoning. And given the profusion of masculine bluster in our politics, the unseemly leap into silly wars and overambitious programs, these are qualities that may nudge us toward a less hypercaffeinated politics.

But wait a minute, you say: Didn’t Hillary Clinton leap into silly wars in Iraq and Libya; didn’t she try to push an ill-conceived, unnegotiated health care plan through an unwilling Congress in 1994? Doesn’t she say blustery things like “basket of deplorables” and “vast right-wing conspiracy”? Yes, and she’s gotten her head handed to her every time, which is where her other significant quality as a candidate comes in: experience. The fact that she’s been around for 30 years is derided as “more of the same,” but it isn’t–in fact, it’s a radical departure from the past three Presidents. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama came to Washington as newbies, and suffered as a result. Hillary Clinton had a ringside seat as her husband struggled to pass a budget plan with exclusively Democratic votes in 1993, and she saw what happened when she tried to pass a health plan without negotiating with her opponents. She has grown more seasoned, more willing to compromise, over time, as a Senator and Secretary of State.

This has been a presidential election about deficiencies rather than strengths. Trump’s deficiencies are overwhelming; Clinton’s are not inconsiderable. We’ve learned more about her awkward secrecy than about her lists of proposals. Some of those proposals are Democratic boilerplate; many of them depend on a faith in government that most Americans no longer share. It remains an open question how much of her imprudent overseas activism remains.

This is also said to be an election about “change,” with Trump the superficial agent of disruption. People are said to be sick of politics as usual. But when you think about it, having an intellectually mature and experienced President would be a seismic shift away from the long run of “outsiders” in the Oval Office.

And guys, if you don’t believe that having a female President would be a dramatic rupture from male governance, well, your wives probably have a list of reasons why it would.

Donald Trump will probably lose this election, which is good news. Here’s the bad news: that loss may be just the beginning of Trump’s toxic presence in American political life. Nightmare scenarios are floating through Republican circles. The best cases posit a bitter and continuing Republican civil war between the Trump and “Establishment” factions of the party. The worst cases involve a clean break, a new right-wing populist party, anchored by a Trump-Breitbart-Ailes media empire. The mud generated by this new faction, fed by WikiLeaks and the Russians, could splash across the political spectrum, creating a perpetual fever swamp of conspiracy theories and calls for special prosecutors, crippling a Hillary Clinton presidency. Goth politics may be the new normal.

But: whoa, Joe. American politics is supple and enduring; a two-party system is our natural way. A century ago, populists and progressives threatened to upend the natural order, but their best ideas were assimilated into the existing structure. There were Dixiecrats and Henry Wallace leftists threatening the Democrats in 1948, but Harry Truman prevailed. Cooler heads usually do. Compromises are made. Tectonic transformations may occur, but they happen slowly–the last major one, beginning in the 1960s, moved Southern conservatives out of the Democratic Party. It’s probable that Trumpism will be sorted out and sanded down, just like other populist movements. We are not a cataclysmic people. Too much prosperity and stability is at stake.

Or maybe not. We live in the golden age of marketing. We are a society of postmodern tribes, organized by cable networks: Fox, ESPN, QVC, MTV–you name it. Fortunes are made by the discovery of a new niche. All you need are 10 million devoted viewers and you can make a lot of money. So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Trump wins 50 million votes on Election Day–a losing total, and probably the low end of his expectations. Let’s also stipulate that at least half of those voters are reflexive Republicans who will hold their noses and vote for their party’s nominee. That leaves up to 25 million hardcore Trumpists as the potential market for a new network. There are reports that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is trying to find investors. Trump’s campaign orbit–a ridiculous political operation–looks far more plausible as a communications company: Steve Bannon of Breitbart, Roger Ailes and Roger Stone. Even Newt Gingrich is more plausible these days as a performer than as a politician.

And then you have the impending post-Ailes shake-up at Fox News. The Murdoch brothers, Rupert’s sons, reportedly want to take the network into a newsier realm, featuring less polarizing stars like Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Shepard Smith. That would leave a superhighway of market possibilities for a new Trump news, lifestyle, celebrity and reality network, featuring the likes of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and who knows who else? The Duck Dynasty crowd? Ultimate fighting? Billy Bush? We’ve been heading this way for a long time: a fusion of politics and entertainment, a political party that’s also a network that’s also a reality-TV show.

But what about politics for the rest of us? Is there a potential home for those who take the complexities of democracy seriously? One thing you can safely predict is that the Republican Party’s leaders will try to establish their bona fides, and hold on to the Trump crowd, by stomping on Clinton from the moment she declares victory. There is talk of blocking all Supreme Court nominees until the court withers down to a seven-person bench with a conservative majority. There will be tremendous pressure on Paul Ryan not to cooperate with Clinton, even though very real progress can be made on economic and foreign policy. (You can bet that Clinton will be tough on the Russians, and perhaps the Chinese.) There will also be tremendous pressure on Clinton not to cooperate with Ryan. If nothing else, the WikiLeaks emails have exposed Clinton as a natural moderate, which will not please the growing number of socialists in Democratic ranks.

Moderates in both parties are at a disadvantage in this new political landscape. The extremists have already won the first round of the marketing battle: moderates are routinely called the Establishment and elitists and globalists rather than sane or reasonable people. A willingness to compromise is seen as a moral deficiency. So yes, Donald Trump may well lose this election, but the forces of political sanity–Democrats and Republicans alike–could find themselves on the defensive when it’s over.

Some thoughts about the third Presidential debate:

1. Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency because he doesn’t believe in the will of the American people. Every news outlet said that his refusal to accept the results of the election was the headline tonight—and a very dangerous moment in American history—and I think there needs to be unanimity on this. The man is a demagogue playing to the worst paranoid fears of a minority of the electorate blinded by anger. Both Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his running mate, Mike Pence, publicly disagree with him. Leave aside all the other trash and nonsense and lies that he has promulgated during the campaign, this statement alone disqualifies him. Given the lives lost and the sacrifices made to build this democracy over 240 years, the man is an utter disgrace.

2. Hillary Clinton had a pretty good night and her best moment was her response to Trump’s refusal to accept the election results. She repeated a litany of things Trump had said were “rigged,” including the Emmy that his TV show didn’t win. She was smart, sharp and funny—but a bit too harsh for my taste and a bit too contentious, engaging too often in cross-talk gutter-fighting. That’s Trump’s game, Clinton, not yours. But her performance overall had the effect of solidifying her base as well as her non-base of Bernie supporters—note the shout-out to the LGBT community—proving, as always, well-versed on policy and, for the most part, unflappable (with the exception mentioned above).

3. Trump had his best performance, too, but it wasn’t very good. No specifics (he has none). A plethora of baloney and lies (up to his eyeballs in bull-pucky). But he did reassure his base on issues like Supreme Court and immigration and taxes. (It remains amazing to me that Republicans are still peddling the idea that lower taxes will close deficits while ignoring the overactive regulatory state that is, indeed, smothering small businesses).

4. Trump’s ignorance, and his willingness to tell lies off it, is bottomless. He was totally wrong about Mosul—the leadership of ISIS was never there (they’re in Raqqa, in Syria). Iran won’t take over, although there will be a battle for control between the Arab Sunnis and the Kurds. Iran isn’t taking over Iraq, period—the last time it tried to do so, in the 1980s, it took more than a million casualties. Persians and Arabs hate each other, always have. It would have been nice if Clinton had parried, “We’re not going into Mosul to find the leaders of ISIS. We’re going in to liberate 2 million people who hate living under the tyranny of ISIS.” But we pundits are so much smarter than the candidates after the battle is over. …Although I must say that Mosul is yet another example of a basic truth, as the liberation of Anbar province was ten years ago: Muslims hate living under these reactionary religious fanatics. That is great news for the world.

5. If it weren’t for Trump’s denunciation of American democracy, the headline of the debate would be his weird inability to credit the 17 US intelligence agencies that believe the Russians are behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails. His reticence truly is a mystery, a dangerous one. Is Trump colluding with Putin? The more his strange behavior continues, the more thinkable the unthinkable becomes. It should also be pointed out that Trump had more good things to say about Putin and Assad—they’re tough, they’re playing us for suckers—than he did about any American politician, dead or alive, including Ronald Reagan.

6. I’m still not inspired by Clinton. She’s selling the same old Democratic stuff, old wine in old bottles. Some of it works, some of it has been proven defective. None of it matters, given the enormity of Trump’s outrages. But it would be nice to say: Wow! That’s an interesting new idea.

7. Chris Wallace won the debate, as Fox anchors have staged the best, most substantive debates all year. One quibble: Obama’s stimulus package did not “cause” the slow growth that followed. The stimulus was an immediate blood transfusion that prevented the collapse of the economy and another Great Depression. It was a brilliant success.

So that’s it for debates this year. I can’t say I’m sorry they’re over. Trump has been poison to our system. No good has or can come from his candidacy. Happily, we don’t have to see him again until election night when he concedes, or refuses to do so. What an embarrassment he is. How sad for our country.