This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In the delightful coinage of the most recent Republican president, the next Republican president has been "misunderestimated" all along.

There was no way, the smart people said, that Donald Trump would win the nomination, not in a large field of much more established and better funded rivals. And there was no chance, said the pols and the polls, that an increasingly diverse and educated electorate would vote for a man whose platform was one of division, derision and delusion.

Now Trump has been elected president of the United States. He lost the popular vote but won enough electoral votes in the formerly Democratic strongholds of the Rust Belt Midwest to prevail.

Now, every logical thought points to the conclusion that Trump's luck is about to run out, and that his failure will be a national one. It is not so much that he will make things worse — though he might — but that he does not have the power to make things better in the way that he said he would.

And the result of that threatens to be an ever grumpier population, even more willing to blame its troubles on people who look different, talk different, dress different.

The global economy, unlike the American public and media, is not susceptible to Trump's braggadocio and magical thinking. Thus Trump is powerless to fulfill the promises he made to the older, whiter blue-collar voters who put him over the top in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

He will not Make America Great Again. Not if what that means is restoring to the nation its former status as the industrial colossus of the world. He will not restore the white, male factory worker to his once-secure position of economic and cultural supremacy, any more than he or anyone else will bring back the rotary-dial telephone or the mens-only country club.

And if Trump really tries to do all that — with his promised trade wars, immigration bans and mass deportations — the resulting catastrophic damage to the economy will, as in every other depression, hurt the poor and the working classes the most, while he and his fellow millionaires remain, as always, afloat.

But perhaps we misunderestimate him still. Perhaps, having achieved the prize no one thought him capable of winning, Trump will indeed become, as he said Wednesday, the president of all the people.

Perhaps he will stick to his true calling, that of being a brass showman, uninterested in fine details. Perhaps he can shepherd our futile Republican Congress — which now owns government and will be held accountable for its failures — toward overdue action. Perhaps we will have real immigration reform, tax and entitlement reform, term limits and campaign finance reform, and a health care plan that won't abandon 20 million Americans.

If Trump once again shocks everyone and actually becomes a reasonable, successful, inclusive president, then his unlikely march to the top will be to the benefit of all. If not, his failure will bring all of us down with him.

We thus have no choice to but to hope that he succeeds, not just by his own lights but as measured by gains for all of us. And that is unlikely to happen unless all of us are loud and clear about what success looks like, not for him but for the nation.