10 Crucial Decisions That Reshaped America

That was the conclusion I arrived at, too, after dozens of interviews with senior Democrats and Republicans over the past 18 months: The outcome of the extraordinary 2016 campaign, which has left the country divided and disoriented six weeks before the Inauguration Day, came down to a succession of decision points by the candidates, their opponents—and the nation’s top cop—some of which seemed consequential at the time, many of which didn’t.

If Trump leaped, his opponent looked, and for a long time. Hillary Clinton’s choices were, characteristically, painstakingly and privately concocted, befitting a two-time presidential candidate whose defining—and perhaps fatal—characteristic was risk aversion. The omens of defeat were everywhere if she was looking for them—nagging, disquieting, try-and-forget-what-just happened whispers of looming catastrophe. But the biggest warning was one of the quietest, a razor flick of doubt at what should have been Clinton’s moment of triumph. On the night of July 28, the Bernie Sanders and Clinton supporters shouted in rare unison as their hero Barack Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention. “Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!” they chanted. This was not an option. Obama shushed them and reminded everybody—as he always did—that this was Clinton’s hour. Except, it wasn’t.

Trump, of course, couldn’t have been more different from Clinton—in process as in everything else. Improvisational and impulsive, Trump made decisions shaped by intuition, impelled by his branding genius and reality-TV showmanship, largely uninformed by research, polling, ideology or even fact. Above all, every call he made was buttressed by sense of daring that allowed him to take advantage of every mistake made by every opponent he faced. This was a candidate who decided from day one that he would win or lose on his own terms, playing the cable networks for free airtime, using his Twitter feed to communicate directly with the media and voters—as if the “Fireside Chats” were written by Don King—and eschewing traditional advertising for rowdy and rousing mass rallies like leather-lung politicians in the era before microphones.

Together, these choices, combined with lightning flashes of luck and happenstance, added up to the biggest surprise in a year of shocks. Here, then, are 10 decisions that defined the 2016 campaign—and changed the course of American history.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/2016-presidential-election-10-moments-trump-clinton-214508