Americans voted against Washington

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has reshaped American politics as never before, setting his nation into uncharted waters — a neophyte without experience in either elected office or the military with a popular victory, control of the Senate and House of Representatives at his fingertips. With a stunning and largely unpredicted win, Trump has swept to the White House on an agenda of setting his nation on the path of isolationism, shutting it off from its international allies, ripping up trade agreements, rolling back social reforms and health-care initiatives of President Barack Obama — all on a promise and false political premise of making America great again.

For those workers who fear for their jobs, Trump’s message of trade tariffs brought comfort; for those who feared rising violence in inner cities, Trump’s tough law and order policies hit home; and for those who blame America’s ills on immigrants and the undocumented, his promise to build a wall with Mexico was music to their ears.

But Trump’s victory is built on being anti-establishment. It’s a message of change — and one of accusing his opponent, Hillary Clinton, of criminal actions and corruption. He brings to Washington a message that its institutions are broken, that its parties, both Democratic and Republican, have failed a majority of Americans and that the media has a message that is out of tune with the opinions of most.

Addressing his supporters, Americans and the rest of the world watching, President-elect Trump — and that is a phrase that so few outside America ever wanted to utter — said that now “is the time to bind the wounds of division”. If the campaign has taught us anything, it is that Trump himself set out to divide and polarise Americans, setting communities and ethnicities against each other, spreading hatred and fear.

“I will be a President for all Americans,” Trump promised yesterday in his acceptance speech. In his campaign, his comments were unacceptable, singling out Muslims as second-class citizens, belittling the handicapped, disparaging women and casting vitriol on those who participate in the workings of the government or were captured as prisoners of war.

There can be little comfort to those of us beyond America’s borders, who fear his promises to roll back trade agreements. His victory has been greeted by a drop in markets around the world, while investors sought security in gold.

In his words thus far, Trump the candidate has promised to take the oil from Iraq, make Nato members pay for the US role in stabilising Europe and making the world a safer place, and to rip up the hard-earned agreement that ended Iran’s isolation and sanctions over its nuclear programme. The truth now is that it is Trump’s finger which is on the nuclear trigger.

For Americans who, for years, had no health coverage, Trump’s election now means that once more, soon, Americans without health coverage will be left to suffer — uncared and untreated.

With control of both houses, Trump’s path is now open to appoint a Supreme Court justice — and to cover its future for decades to come in a conservative cloak that will roll back the progress of the past 30 years.

There are comparisons made that Trump’s election harkens to the advent of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was no neophyte and had the experience of running California. Reagan too had the backing of his Republican Party and the reality today is that many members of the Republican Party will be swallowing hard to accept the populist interloper who did little to advance the true principles of their party.

For Democrats, this result is hard to swallow — one that was largely unpredicted. They will look to the offices of the FBI and its director James Comey, for his intervention in the campaign at a critical juncture, making and then retracting comments over Clinton’s emails.

So who is the Donald Trump that Americans elected? Is it the vitriolic and misogynistic locker-room banterer who promises to lock up a former secretary of state? Or is it the President-elect who spoke yesterday of reaching out to all Americans “to come together as one united people”.

“This political stuff is nasty and it’s tough,” Trump told his supporters. Yes, Mr President-elect, it is. It is about government of the people, by the people and for the people. It is not about dividing and spreading fear. If it’s nasty, it’s because you made it so, pitting families against other, the haves against the have nots, stupid tax payers against smart tax dodgers, angry white Americans against their neighbours of a different creed and colour.

“Working together, we will begin the urgent task of renewing and rebuilding the American dream,” Trump said yesterday. The reality is that for Democrats, women, Muslims, the underprivileged, Mexicans, the handicapped — and for the rest of the world — this is the dawn of a new American presidency, brash and assertive.