Voters Knew What They Were Getting With Trump

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on December 6, 2016 Vir­tu­ally every day, Pres­id­ent-elect Don­ald Trump says or does something that many in the Wash­ing­ton es­tab­lish­ment find hor­ri­fy­ing. Most, though cer­tainly not all, of his de­cisions and ac­tions run against the grain of people who, like my­self, look at polit­ics and policy through pretty tra­di­tion­al lenses. A key ques­tion is wheth­er these ob­jec­tions are more of an in­stinct­ive hos­tile re­ac­tion to all things Trump, or if there is a sub­stant­ive basis for the cri­ti­cism that would ap­ply to any pres­id­ent-elect. Quite a few things Trump has said and done in the last month, and even dur­ing the cam­paign, have caused me con­sid­er­able anxi­ety. But it is worth re­mem­ber­ing that Trump’s nom­in­a­tion and elec­tion were not ran­dom events. On one level, his im­prob­able rise can be seen as the cul­min­a­tion of a mood in this coun­try that has been dark­en­ing for a long time. Al­most every month for dec­ades, poll­sters for NBC News and The Wall Street Journ­al have asked re­spond­ents wheth­er they be­lieve the coun­try is headed in the