So That Which Could Never Be will be. Shortly after 11 a.m. Central time Friday, Donald John Trump, 70, will be president of the United States.

He couldn't possibly win the Republican primaries. Then he couldn't possibly win the general. He couldn't win because he was a tax-evading business tycoon with a dodgy past, because he said awful things, because he was a reality-TV star so clearly out of his depth.

Yet here he is. There is great trepidation, including within his own party, about what sort of president Trump will be. For America's sake, the only acceptable outcome must be that he defies the worst expectations and does good for the country. Since Election Day, he has offered only the slimmest of hopes on that front, which is why the trepidation persists.

He will take office with the lowest approval ratings for a new president ever measured. A product of the anachronism that is the Electoral College, he received 2.87 million fewer votes than Democrat Hillary Clinton in an election that U.S. intelligence agencies believe was tainted by Russian government hacking.

He does not care, nor do his most ardent followers. They were unhappy with Washington and wanted things shaken up, even if it took a bull in the china shop. The shakeup already has begun.

Parliamentary governments use the phrase "the loyal opposition" to describe those who oppose the party in charge of the government while still respecting the institutions of the government. As the peaceful transition of power occurs on Inauguration Day, citizens who are appalled by the thought of the Trump presidency must still respect the office and insist that it protect the institutions of the American republic.

Trump himself seems to have limited understanding of how government works. During the campaign, he spoke of replacing House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as if the president had a vote. He thought the presidency came with a permanent West Wing staff. He repeatedly stated, with no evidence whatsoever, that elections, polls and the press were rigged, as if democracy doesn't rely on trust in its institutions.

He has expressed scorn for the ethical norms that guide government service, refusing to release his own tax returns; refusing to make a clean break from his private business concerns; appointing his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a top adviser in violation of federal nepotism laws; and stacking his Cabinet with many appointees whose own conflicts of interest are deep and troubling. With money pouring into the Trump Organization from foreign sources, he may be in violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause as soon as he says "so help me God."

Trump has picked a fight with intelligence agencies that tell him things with which he disagrees. He has gone so far as to compare them with "Nazis." He wants complex foreign intelligence briefings boiled down to bullet points. His confidence in his own instincts is absolute, but his intellectual capacity is limited by a painful lack of curiosity and desire to process hard information.

Normally a president's advisers act as a sounding board and a brake on his worst instincts. Trump's chief of staff is Reince Priebus, a conciliator by nature. On Trump's other shoulder is Steve Bannon, a rabble-rouser by nature and a man with deep ties to the alt-right white supremacist movement.

They lead the team that will guide him as he attempts to fulfill his grandiose campaign promises of building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and making Mexico pay for it; of replacing Obamacare with "something terrific" that provides "insurance for everybody"; of restoring the U.S. manufacturing sector even if it means a job-sapping trade war; of making U.S. allies pay more for their own defense; of stamping out the Islamic State; of rebuilding a U.S. military that already spends one-sixth of the federal budget; of rebuilding the U.S. infrastructure system, all the while cutting everyone's tax burden.

Trump seems to neither know nor care how inherently contradictory some of these pledges are. The appealing thing about him is his absolute confidence. The shocking thing is how little reason there is for that confidence.

He is volatile, thin-skinned and desperately shallow. Asked in an interview this week what books he was reading, he said, "Look over there. There are some books." Asked which of them he might recommend, Trump couldn't come up with a single title.

All presidencies reflect the different personalities of the office-holder, from John Kennedy's cool cerebralism to Ronald Reagan's self-confident bonhomie to Barack Obama's introverted intellectualism. Trump filters every event through his own self-regard. Everything will be personal. Objective reality will give way to subjective interpretation.

Consider Vladimir Putin. For whatever reason, Trump admires the Russian president. Never mind that objectively, he is a former KGB agent and Russian nationalist who uses every means, legal and illegal, to bend the institutions of the state to his own purposes. Objectively, he is hostile to U.S. interests. But Trump's gut tells him Putin is OK. We shall see.

As the Trump era begins, Americans whose loyalties are to the institutions of American governance must double down on objective reality. With the fealty of the loyal opposition, separation of powers, rule of law and a free and independent press will endure.

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