During this presidential race, I’ve tried in most of my articles to stay slightly removed from my own feelings about it. In part, that’s because self-indulgence can get in the way of saying something useful (although, I’ll admit, it’s sometimes precisely what’s useful). In part, it’s because I was never in the same place twice. Never have I felt such mixed emotions about a presidential candidate as I have with Donald Trump. With other politicians, my dial has usually been at a consistent setting: admiration, hatred, indifference, and so on. With Trump, I’ve been left alternately amused, infuriated, impressed, disgusted, hopeful, disappointed, and ultimately depressed.

I loved how he pied the pompous and sanctimonious. I hated his indiscriminate cruelty. I was awed by his boldness in tossing out G.O.P. orthodoxy. I was disgusted by his hateful and cynical pronouncements on banning Muslims from the United States. I was made hopeful by his tact on the question of how to broker a peace deal in the Middle East. I was disappointed when he said something completely different weeks later. I admired his indifference to ever-shifting rules of what we can say and can’t. I was stunned by his attack on the wife—the wife!—of Ted Cruz. I was impressed by his defiance toward the donor class and its desire for ever-cheaper labor. I was repelled by his insults of Mexican-Americans. I was impressed by his hints of foreign-policy restraint. I was horrified by his promise to commit war crimes. I could keep going with this for hours.

Illustration by Barry Blitt.

But I finally settled on bereft. Many Washingtonians sneer a bit at making “character” a high-ranking consideration of whom to elect. Policy is supposed to matter more, and character is something that’s packaged for the rubes. But character is huge in a president. It’s what assures you that the most powerful person in the land is losing sleep over his or her decisions and at least behaving with some sense of restraint and decency, no matter how much you disagree with the policy. Barack Obama always left me with that sense of uprightness. So did Bill Clinton (despite his trashy side) and, on the opposite side, Ronald Reagan. Trump just doesn’t. He’s a man who crushes people. As much as I liked some of the populism he was selling, I felt I was kidding myself if I thought it would end in anything other than tears. The choice had to be Hillary Clinton, flaws and all.

Voters disagreed, and they have elected—we have elected—a bold but cruel man who’s almost certainly a charlatan. I for one think Trump’s supporters are kidding themselves, and I’m fearful—well, terrified—of what’s coming. But my roller-coaster of shifting feelings toward Trump over the course of the year makes me less shocked by what has happened, especially because some of his heresies were my heresies. I used to think border control was a fringe issue highlighted by buffoons like Bill O’Reilly, but research and reporting later caused me see uncontrolled immigration as a genuinely serious social problem. I used to think trade agreements basically worked out on balance, and one job I had took me to lots of factories in China to see our toys being made. But now I think they might help and hurt the wrong Americans. I’ve spoken to many African-Americans about their mistreatment at the hands of police and am convinced that policing reforms are necessary, but when rioters set Baltimore and Ferguson on fire and cops were shot in Dallas, I also seethed. I generally used to have some faith in the judgment of our establishment on matters of war or economy. I don’t anymore. That’s why the enthusiasm for Donald Trump always made some sense to me, even if I couldn’t get there myself.