When I got to college and studied grown-up political science, we were taught that the rest of the world admired the United States for its reliability and stability. You could always count on the United States to predictably do more or less the right thing. You could count on economic and monetary policy to be sane, even with fluctuations in liberal and conservative government. You could count on foreign policy that was principled and restrained without compromising its gravitas. Others could make long-term arrangements involving U.S. interests because the parameters were unlikely to change materially from administration to administration.
Baked into that assessment was the proposition that American electors would consistently elect people who would uphold those ideals. It's not enough to hope that a future administration can reverse all the damage done by the present gang of self-serving chaos agents led by an obviously unhinged narcissist. What the world fears now is that if the United States can elect such a bunch of deplorables once, they can do it again—and just might. The American people are on trial now. It's not going to be enough to be able to say there was strong opposition to the Trump regime. If it doesn't rise to the level of being able to restore faith in the American electorate, then the U.S. will have permanently lost its role as a world leader.
