The second act has barely begun.
A decade of the Trump phenomenon is a noteworthy milestone, worthy of commemoration and reflection. Yet in terms of this unusual bifurcated presidency, the high political drama has only just resumed after a four-year intermission. At Independence Day, Trump won’t even be six months into his four-year term. The real work is only beginning.
Not every citizen is bound to help the president succeed, but all must at least give him a chance to do so. Even those who don’t support Trump should recall Leo Strauss’s sound advice to expect less from politics and more from ourselves. Trump is trying to save republican self-government. Yet, since Americans fundamentally disagree on what a free society means, that depends just as much on us as it does on him—which is part of the challenge.
The Left attacks Trump for being a king, disregarding their undemocratic attempt to replace the doddering figurehead of Joe Biden with Queen Kamala, whose claim to the throne was that she is a black woman. The Right expects Trump to act with monarchical efficacy, forgetting that they elected him to regain control over the bureaucracy. This can’t be done in a day. Czar Alexander II took six years, acting by fiat, to free the serfs. Freeing citizens is even harder.
Trump is criticized simultaneously for disregarding conventional norms and also for not unilaterally solving the nation’s problems. But those conventions are to a very large extent the source of our problems. Because Trump sees that, he has already achieved astonishing success, for which he has not received enough credit. This includes exposing the lies and malfeasance of the establishment (for example, USAID’s grotesque cultural imperialism, including $15 million to distribute condoms to the Taliban), performing with ostentatious efficiency what had been declared impossible (illegal border crossings have been cut by more than 90%), and challenging liberal pieties that had been regarded as unquestionable (we don’t have to give vast sums of taxpayer dollars to elite universities with billion-dollar endowments?).
A Kamala Harris regency would have solidified, perhaps irreversibly, America’s absorption into a global despotism under the “rules-based order” regime headquartered in Brussels. There, European intellectuals oversee the disintegration of Western civilization, preserving only its worst elements. This threat remains potent. Trump knows that saving America must include stopping what one French thinker called “the world-homogenous state.” But before he can turn to the threat of global neoliberalism, he must get America’s domestic house not in order (that will take decades), but under some semblance of constitutional accountability.
Far more than in his first term, Trump understands the nature of the problem. Just compare the fossilized Mike Pence with JD Vance, who was, if anything, more forceful than the president himself during the Oval Office meeting with the preposterous Volodymyr Zelensky. Or consider Stephen Miller—the administration’s indispensable Cesare Borgia who is loved by many precisely because he strikes fear in the fainthearted.
In terms of personnel as well as policy, Trump 2.0 is both anti-woke and wide awake. In his previous term, Trump not only had no DOGE, but he didn’t even know why he needed one. As with Trump himself, I think DOGE has accomplished more than it is being given credit for.
Elon Musk disclosed corruption and mismanagement that astonished even cynical observers. But having picked the low-hanging fruit, Elon, along with Vivek Ramaswamy (who dropped out almost immediately), has now returned to the business world, leaving the more difficult work of structural reform to others. This might remind us that trying to make the federal government operate like a business was misconceived from the start. With its high-profile discoveries, DOGE has shown that the emperor has no clothes. This was invaluable, but only the first step. Russ Vought, the very capable director of the Office of Management and Budget, has taken over the effort, and will likely perform a more professional and meticulous job of institutional deconstruction. But even that is not enough.
Everyone in charge—Musk, Vought, and unfortunately Trump as well—seems to be missing the key point. DOGE’s audits and investigations are an opportunity to show not only that bureaucratic government is wasteful, but also something far more serious: the administrative state is a violation of consent and an assault on the sovereignty of the people. I made this point (with John Marini) in December. What DOGE should focus on, we argued,
is not “efficiency.” This is an error that businessmen like Elon and Vivek are especially prone to make. We do not want a leaner, more efficient administrative state. Tyranny is not more welcome for coming on the cheap. The bureaucratic/regulatory state must be undone because it undermines self-government and offends our natural rights.
Ideally, Trump would devote his next State of the Union Address to laying out this argument, clearly and comprehensively. His staff and speechwriters could help him go beyond mere boasting (which he can manage without any help) to articulate the tyrannical impulse at the heart of the leftist regulatory state. He may or may not be capable of that.
Trump is in many ways a superb communicator. But as my friend Tom Klingenstein likes to point out, he’s an asserter, not an explainer. Tom’s insight captures a lesson from classical political philosophy.
Aristotle taught that in decent regimes the best rulers are the kalos kagathoi—the morally excellent gentlemen who govern through reason and persuasion. Yet Aristotle also taught that all regimes eventually degenerate into something less noble. In those that have become indecent, the gentleman may be unsuited for public office. When both habits and institutions have been corrupted, the kalos kagathos may be too refined, too punctilious, to do what is necessary. His excellence in persuasion is not sufficient. In corrupt regimes, necessity sometimes demands not only force, but also harsh or punitive rhetoric. Justice or the common good then requires a different type: the aner, the “real man.” In his classroom lectures, Leo Strauss invariably got a laugh when he translated this word as hombre.
Donald Trump is an hombre. We should stop expecting him to be a gentleman, in Aristotle’s sense. That’s not who he is, and more importantly, that’s not what the circumstances demand right now. Yes, it would be helpful if Trump could, at opportune moments, morph into a political science professor leading seminars on constitutional theory. But then he would no longer be Trump the hombre, Trump the fighter.
Even the greatest statesmen can’t be all things to all people at all times. But Trump seems to have the most essential virtues, and perhaps the corresponding vices, demanded by the present crisis. Let’s indulge his vices and give his virtues a chance. I predict Trump’s most noteworthy achievements are still to come.
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