EDITORIAL: President Donald Trump

As Tuesday night progressed, it became increasingly clear that political scientists must rewrite the textbooks. Pundits and campaign consultants will have to tear up the playbooks.

In the most improbable presidential election in the nation’s history, Donald Trump defied virtually all prognostications and won the presidency.

The results drive home the depth of discontent and frustration permeating wide swaths of the nation over the backscratching and logrolling inside the Beltway, a place where elected officials and the well-connected go to get rich at the expense of average Americans.

Mr. Trump promised to “drain the swamp.” Hillary Clinton stood for more of the same. The voters have expressed their preference.

The great satirist P.J. O’Rourke wrote a fabulous essay back in the day about the aftermath of Nicaragua’s 1990 elections in which the communist sympathizer Daniel Ortega of Sandinista fame was thrown out of office. Polls prior to the voting had shown him winning handily. Mr. O’Rourke wryly noted that residents of an authoritarian state might not be eager to publicly oppose the ruling regime, potentially skewing such surveys.

His analysis proves prescient. Polls showed Mrs. Clinton with a consistent lead. But how many American voters leaning toward Mr. Trump were cowed into silence by the progressive shaming machine, intent on tarring those with whom they disagree as racist, misogynist, bigoted, ignorant homophobes?

Mr. Trump now faces the formidable challenge of turning his rebellious message into a coherent governing philosophy. He has been handed a mandate to transform America’s political culture. That will entail mending fences with congressional Republicans and making it a priority to repair the wide fissures and volatile faults that now scar the political landscape. His predecessor entered office preaching unity but went out of his way to minimize and discredit his political adversaries. Mr. Trump must reject that approach in favor of grace and respect.

He should also surround himself with able and competent advisers to temper his more impulsive instincts.

Meanwhile, Democratic partisans so confident of an easy victory will no doubt ask themselves why they held a coronation for a bland, uninspiring candidate whose quest for the White House was based on entitlement and privilege. A candidate who for decades has dragged around a cloud of scandal and invited questions about her honor and integrity.

We have heard for months from “experts” that the Trump phenomenon signaled a fundamental failure of GOP process and principle, while the Democrat machine’s unified embrace of Mrs. Clinton was a sign of strength and supremacy.

Perhaps it was the other way around.