Instead, Americans endured a “hide the children” reality TV campaign in which both candidates are seen as so deeply flawed the winner likely will receive less than 50 percent of the vote and emerge with the disdain of a majority of Americans.
The lack of goodwill for the winner may make it impossible for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to steer this deeply divided nation through the compromises needed to restrain out-of-control federal spending, overhaul a bloated tax code, adopt changes to immigration policy and curb the emissions of greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change.
“There is usually a sense the election turns the page to a different chapter and the chapter starts with a newly elected president of the United States who gets the benefit of the doubt,” said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington. “To me, the next page will be an addendum to the previous chapter.”
Barry Bennett, a Republican consultant and former senior adviser to Trump, said, “Typically we talk about the honeymoon. This time we talk about the nightmare.”
The country has had divisive elections before, but this one seemed to write a new book for vitriol and disgust with one or both candidates. The question now is how will the winner govern amid so much animosity.
Should Clinton win and Republicans control of the House and Senate, she will face a Republican Party seething with anger after watching their party hijacked by Trump and losing an election they likely would have won with a more traditional Republican.
Senate Republicans are almost sure to block her U.S. Supreme Court nominees and make hash of her proposed plans to raise taxes on the wealthy. GOP lawmakers are vowing a barrage of investigations into Clinton’s e-mail system and the donations collected by the Clinton Foundation, with House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah telling the Washington Post about a “a target-rich environment.”
“If Clinton becomes president, she’ll be under investigation from Day One,” said Danielle Vinson, a professor of political science at Furman University in South Carolina.
If Trump wins and Democrats seize control of the Senate, his call of steep tax cuts will have no chance of approval. And his penchant for lashing out against opponents in starkly personal terms is almost certain to deepen divisions among Americans into a broad chasm that may be impossible to bridge.
“It is going to make for a tremendous challenge in trying to govern,” said Bob Stevenson, a onetime adviser to the late Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H. “And if you try to govern from a partisan standpoint, that is a prescription for failure. Not only is the country divided, but both parties are seriously divided.”
Although most analysts say the winner will be unable to effectively govern, others such as former Democratic Gov. James Blanchard of Michigan are more optimistic, predicting Clinton “will work well with the Senate. She worked very well with Republicans when she was” a senator from New York from 2001 through the end of 2008.
“It’s going to put a lot of Republicans on the spot,” Blanchard said. “Will they acknowledge the victory and at least appear to be working with her or will they stonewall her? It’s one of those things where they will have to put country over party.”
The election campaign, which Republican strategist Ron Bonjean complained has been “a race to the bottom,” has featured insults rather than inspiration. For the first time in modern presidential politics, Americans heard talk about male and female genitals. Trump has denounced Clinton as “Crooked Hillary,” while Clinton in Ohio last month warned Trump’s election could lead to a thermonuclear war.
It is the type of grubby rhetoric not seen in America for more than a century, more similar to the tone of the 1884 presidential election when Republicans attacked Democrat Grover Cleveland for having an illegitimate child, using the slogan, “Ma, ma, where’s my Pa?”
“I think voters are stuck with the equivalent of a ‘eat your peas’ election,” said David Niven, a professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. “Most people feel this is something they must tolerate, but there’s no joy in it and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”
To critics, Clinton and Trump are the inevitable product of a nominating process snatched away from the party officials who want to win elections and handed to voters in early primaries and caucuses who are more determined to support more ideological candidates.
Trump relied on mass appearances on cable TV to connect with conservative white working class voters while Clinton collected hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy donors as a way to discourage other less controversial Democrats, such as Vice President Joe Biden, from mounting a challenge.
“We have so much democracy in our elections that our political leaders are emasculated,” Rothenberg said, adding “now the election is being driven by” TV commentators such as Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly along with powerful progressive organizations such as the Service Employees International Union and conservative tea party voters.
“Any electoral system that produces the two most unpopular nominees in history has some problems,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who backed the presidential primary campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
American politics has traditionally been a brutal take no-prisoners fight. But with few exceptions, a newly elected or re-elected president has been able to count on a brief respite from criticism.
The rare exception was after President Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972. Just two weeks after he delivered his inaugural address, Senate Democrats pushed through a resolution to create a special committee to investigate the break-in and attempted wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington.
That led to a tumultuous year and one-half before Nixon resigned in August of 1974 to avoid certain impeachment by the U.S. House. Today’s House Republicans appear to be leaning toward the 1973 Democratic playbook.
“Whoever wins will start with a strong headwind,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College in California. “It reminds me of the line from Annie Hall — life is divided up between the horrible and the miserable. Trump is horrible and Clinton is miserable.”
Staff Writer Laura A. Bischoff contributed to this report.