When Trump leaves office, immediate term relations with other countries will surely improve. But the fact will remain that enough of our electorate was willing to vote for him to hand him the presidency. That electorate isn't going anywhere.
Of course, a country's political system is not solely a function of its electorate. Mediating institutions matter. But if anything, faith in our institutions has been shattered even more than faith in our electorate.
The Republican party power-brokers had plenty of power to stop someone like Trump well before he was nominated. They did nothing but enable his rise.
After he was nominated, many Republican former executive branch officials tried to sound the warning, but they were dismissed by anyone with power to change the outcome.
After he was elected, Republicans in Congress had (and still have) tremendous leverage to shape the bounds of permissible conduct for Trump. A bipartisan Congress with a veto-proof majority wields tremendous power, and the threat of this power alone could significantly limit the damage Trump could do. Yet Trump is not remotely afraid, since he knows Republicans and Congress will let him get away with anything other than vetoing a large upward redistribution of wealth. He has already literally surpassed Nixon in his actions to obstruct justice (even Nixon knew he couldn't get away with firing the FBI director investigating Watergate), and Republicans in Congress step over each other to defend him.
The failure of our electorate, and our system's mediating institutions, has been made plain for all to see. This doesn't just say something about particular voters, or particular actors in our political system. It says something about the reliability and resiliency of our system as a whole. This failure will be taken into account by all other actors long after Trump leaves.
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