President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Press Association. All rights reserved.Last week one quarter of American voters lit the world on fire. By voting in Donald Trump as their forty-fifth president and leader of the free world, they've set in motion the most wrenching shift in global order since the end of the Cold War.
His election also signals a break with the post-Second World War liberal consensus that has reigned for the past seventy years. Team Trump´s arrival could prove fatal for liberal democracy, free trade, and peace and security on the home front and across the planet. So what’s to be done? It will surely go down as among the greatest political miscalculations in American political history.
Before apportioning blame or issuing recommendations, give credit where credit’s due. Trump’s campaign was grimly impressive. He won the nomination of his party and the presidency in the face of opposition from the Democratic and Republican leadership, most editorial boards around the world, the entertainment industry and in spite – or perhaps because – of his misogynistic, bigoted and short-fused temperament. Without any real campaign organization, he roundly defeated two of the most formidable political machines of the modern era. There are lessons to be learned from the ascent of America´s first post-modern President.
