If you were to walk uptown from where I now sit, happily ensconced in a cafe near the financial district, to where fifth avenue broadens into Central Park you would see a curious sight. Reporters clustered on the sidewalks, black town-cars and limousines depositing and collecting an endless stream of grandees and cognoscenti, cameras watching with voracious intensity the comings and goings to discern some hint of what the future might hold. Because by some strange alchemy sixty million American voters have transmuted Trump Tower into the American Versailles.

It may lack the architectural and artistic merit of the great French palace, or even of the dingy hunting lodge that preceded that structure. Personally I think the interior looks to have been decorated by a deranged and particularly gauche magpie, but it has all the crucial factors in common. Trump Tower is now the epicenter of the new regime, the seat of power, the venue of court and the home of he who would be king. That is why, night and day you can see the courtiers dancing and bobbing, jockeying for position and primacy. Because the question everyone is currently asking themselves right now is this: What will this new order look like?

There are three broad schools of thought on the subject right now. And each of them is strengthened by some particular appointment already announced.

The Alt-Right

I have resigned myself to having to write about what on earth the ‘alt-right’ is at some point. The fact that is necessary is frankly nauseating. Would that we could simply say they were irrelevant crazies unworthy of further discussion, but the appointment of their champion in the scruffy and belligerent personage of Steve Bannon  to a prime White-House post makes this sadly impossible.

To be brief this group is composed of hard-right, conspiratorial, traditionalist and anti-establishment movement of hardcore reactionaries often in thrall to racialised notions of American identity. White nationalism, or at least white identity-politics, anti-semitism and bigotry of sundry flavors is their stock in trade.

Already they have been disappointed by Trump’s backflip on the prosecution of Hillary Clinton, and I doubt this will be the last time their hopes are dashed on the rocks of Trump’s attempt to move towards the center. But I list them first, because they are his most ardent supporters. And I think when pressured and frustrated, this is where he will run. His home-base, if you will, where he will run if threatened.

If Trump goes along the path of an Alt-Right administration expect to see national registries of perceived undesirables, a more activist and authoritarian state and the reversal of current policies on housing desegregation and voting rights. Ethno-nationalism will be the order of the day.

The ‘Normal’ Republican

This would be the more white-bread option. Think of people like Reince Preibus, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and so on. They control congress as well as the traditional Republican organs of party support like the Club for Growth, the Chamber of Commerce and the NRA. They are also not that crazy. I would prefer if they were not even a little bit crazy, but as they say in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

If this is the route Trump goes with his administration, expect large scale tax-cuts, the changing of Medicare into a voucher system, the hollowing-out of the public education system in favor of public money going to charter schools, higher defence spending and the erosion of the social safety net.

The Pragmatist
More than any president since Eisenhower Trump is entering the white-house without a set ideological position. He is not ‘from’ any particular group, really. He sometimes sounds like a normal corporate Republican, sometimes like an old-school Union Democrat and sometimes like the running-dog of the Alt-Right. This leads some people to believe that he will govern pragmatically in a way that could unite the country, taking issues as they come and trying to solve them without being hidebound by any particular world-view.

That is possible. But unlikely. As the great British socialist Aneurin Bevan once said the problem with standing in the middle of the road is that you get hit by cars going both ways. And Bevan never had to deal with the 24 hour, hyper-charged, social-network driven circus we are currently pleased to call the media. Which could end up being somewhat tragic, as this is probably where Trump’s corporate leadership style and personal inclinations would probably lead him.

For example. Trillion dollar infrastructure package? Small-Government and libertarian leaning Republicans will have kittens. Huge tax cuts? Liberal democrats will go crazy and start painting him as an out of touch plutocrat. Go after Roe V Wade? Women’s groups will burn him in effigy. Accept marriage equality as settled law? Religious conservatives will desert him in droves. This is one of the reasons America is so neatly sorted ideologically and demographically right now.  Your failure to observe the shibboleths of a particular group will be shouted from the rooftops, irrespective of the fact that you are aligned with them 75% of the way. Just ask Hillary Clinton.

So what will it be like?

To be honest, God only knows. But it will certainly be interesting. My money is on a confused and haphazard administration without the steadying influence of any kind of keel of ideological consistency. Under pressure I think he runs to the right-wing.

But the crucial problem for him is he has no great constituency in the professional Republican party. He brought them to him because of his popularity with voters and his comparison to Clinton. But President’s are not compared to the alternative as candidates are, the are compared to the protean ideal. If his numbers start to collapse the vultures will begin to circle, tearing strips off him to protect their own political futures. That is when circus begins. ‘May you live in interesting times’ indeed.