THE IMPORTANT LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED FROM TRUMP’S CHAOTIC RUN:

1) No experience required . . . In the matchup of neophyte Sen. Barack Obama against the polymorphously experienced Sen. John McCain in 2008, Obama’s thin résumé was shrugged off by the voters, thanks in part to a complicit media that preferred to cast Obama as refreshing rather than underqualified. In 2016, though, a businessman with no political or military experience whatsoever has a shot at being elected president. Trump would be the first person never to have been either a military leader or a political officeholder ever to attain the presidency — and he turned this startling lack of engagement with the political system into an asset in a year when voters felt alienated from Washington. The idea that a true outsider could capture the White House no longer looks at all far-fetched. Some other business leader or celebrity could be a viable candidate in 2020.

2). . . but character still matters. One huge advantage held by professional politicians is that they’ve already been vetted, faced opposition research. Trump, despite having been a public figure for more than 30 years, never faced the same scrutiny, as we learned in the dizzying final weeks of the campaign. Why? Because it was never in anyone’s direct interest to take him on. If he had run for any significant lower office, the resources of a political party would have been focused on destroying him by digging up dirt from his past. Any public figure with skeletons in his closet should assume they will be not only found but fetishized.

But only if he’s a Republican.