Before the US presidential election, pundits proclaimed the outcome would be ``historic''. What they meant, invariably, was they expected Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to shatter precedent by becoming the country's first woman president. Instead, Washington DC now prepares for the inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump.
But the New York businessman's victory was also historic. While his candidacy and impending presidency call to mind some features of the Republican party's recent history, they also represent a significant departure from the country's past political patterns.
Mr Trump's win was one of the greatest upsets in American political history. But it was far from the landslide he claimed and marked only the fifth time a presidential candidate won the electoral college while losing the popular vote. Mr Trump also will enter the presidency with the lowest favourability ratings in modern history.
The controversies of recent weeks, have vaporised the ``honeymoon'' that incoming presidents traditionally enjoy.
Mr Trump may yet become a popular leader. George W Bush won an even closer and more contentious election in 2000, faced similar ``not my president'' opposition from the left and still won a second term. But Mr Bush's message of ``compassionate conservatism'' appealed to a much broader constituency than Mr Trump's hard-edged culture warfare and the Republican party united behind him for most of his presidency.
Mr Trump by contrast, won the party's presidential nomination by staging something like a coup against its leadership. In that sense, he resembles Barry Goldwater, the right-wing Arizona senator who was the Republican presidential candidate in 1964. Like Mr Trump, Mr Goldwater was an anti-establishment firebrand with a habit of making extreme statements on sensitive subjects. The Republican organisation opposed his candidacy on the grounds his conservative beliefs were too far removed from the party's mainstream, but he seized the nomination by mobilising an army of impassioned grassroots activists.
After presiding over a divided party convention, the prickly and headstrong Mr Goldwater refused to pivot towards a more measured, level-headed ``presidential'' posture. Like Mr Trump he had no interest in reaching out to groups sceptical of his candidacy, such as minorities and college graduates. He did, however, appeal to many less-educated voters in the white working class who hadn't previously taken much interest in politics.
Mr Goldwater lost the presidential election in a wipeout and dragged down Republican congressional candidates with him. But, in 1964 as in 2016, many Republican candidates disavowed their party's presidential nominee, or at least distanced themselves from his candidacy.
In the wake of Mr Trump's unexpected victory, it has suited both him and his erstwhile intraparty critics to reconcile. The Republican leadership has insisted party members in Congress and the White House will be singing from the same hymn sheet. Republicans have exercised control of both the legislative and executive branches for only six of the past 80 years, so they're anxious to make the most of this opportunity.
But this Republican unity is more apparent than real. Unlike Ronald Reagan in 1980 or Barack Obama in 2008, Mr Trump didn't have much of a ``coat-tail effect'' on down-ballot candidates. Few Republicans in Congress feel they owe their elections to Mr Trump. In fact, in many traditionally Republican suburban districts, Mr Trump performed significantly less well than Mitt Romney did in 2012.
More importantly, Mr Trump and the Republican party stand for very different things. Ever since the election of Reagan in 1980, the party has been dominated by ideological conservatism. Mr Trump is not in any meaningful sense a conservative; he is, rather, a populist.
Populism has a long and durable tradition in American politics. Much of Mr Trump's campaign rhetoric unconsciously echoes the 1892 platform of the People's party (better known as the Populists), from its denunciations of biased media and ``imported pauperised labour'' to its insistence the nation had been ``brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin''.
Populism is in many ways an appealing doctrine. Mr Trump won the presidency because he sensed, as no other candidate did, that many of the ``plain people'' (to borrow another phrase from the Populists' 1892 platform) feel ignored and even despised by the elites of both parties. His candidacy, like that of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders on the left, resonated because increasing numbers of citizens believe the economic and political systems of the country are rigged against them. Mr Trump has complicated the traditional calculus of left and right in interesting ways, winning over many union members who feel threatened by free trade and globalisation.
Most successful American presidents, from Franklin D Roosevelt to Reagan to Bill Clinton, have been populists to some extent. But leaders of both parties also have been wary of populism's tendency to slide into demagoguery.
Mr Trump in many ways resembles previous populists who ran for the presidency, such as Patrick Buchanan (who also campaigned on the slogan ``America First'') and Alabama governor George Wallace. But there has there never been a full-blooded populist in the White House, with the arguable exception of Andrew Jackson.
Mr Trump's populism conflicts at many points with the beliefs most Republicans have supported for the past century. His call for a trillion-dollar upgrade to the nation's infrastructure suggests an affinity with Dwight Eisenhower's construction of the national highway system, but Mr Trump doesn't appear to share Ike's budget-balancing fiscal conservatism or his internationalism. His indifference to hot-button social issues such as gay marriage puts him at odds with religious conservatives. His willingness to spend federal funds in pursuit of American greatness, as, for example, by building a wall on the Mexican border, offends minimal-government libertarians. His divisive rhetoric undermines a half century of effort by Republican activists to build a broader and more inclusive party.
Trump's populism makes him an outsider in the party that he nominally leads. So, too, does the fact he is the first president in US history to enter office without political or military experience. But Trump's distance from traditional politics raises hopes that he may be able to break through some of the nation's seemingly intractable problems, such as tax reform and economic growth.
Future historians may see the Republicans under Mr Trump as a return to the party's now-forgotten traditions of the pre-conservative era, from the 1860s to the 1920s. In those days, when the party saw itself as the champion of the white working class, it was distinguished by protectionism, anti-internationalism, acceptance of powerful government and an emphasis on social order over individual freedom, all elements that some day may be known as Trumpism.
The president-elect, who made much of his money from casinos, represents a huge, historic gamble for both the Republican party and the country. Whether he succeeds or fails, he is likely to reshape America's political system in far-reaching ways.
Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party.
