Who might this leader be? President Donald J. Trump. Say what you will about Trump, six months in he’s gotten it done. He’s done most of what – during the interregnum (between his first and second terms) and the 2024 presidential campaign – he said he would do.
In this limited but not unimportant sense we can say first that he is a man of his word; and second that his political skills are astonishing. They are that effective.
Trump has managed to keep most of his followers following in lockstep behind him, including his base, virtually every elected and appointed Republican official, and the Supreme Court. Moreover, in just a half year he and his administration have bent somewhat to their will a long list of American institutions including the media and academia; medicine and the military; business and finance; political culture and popular culture.
Trump leaves his thumbprint on everything that engages him or even briefly catches his eye. Will the Washington Commanders change their name back to the Washington Redskins? I have no idea. The point is that because of a message Trump posted (yesterday) on Truth Social – “The Washington ‘Whatevers’ Should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team” – this morning people are talking about it. Trump does not just shape the nation’s legislation he shapes the nation’s conversation.
One of the first books I wrote was titled, The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership.* The question I sought to answer was how presidents got things done given that power in the American political system is divided.
America’s political culture has, traditionally, been anti-authority, anti-leadership. At the nation’s inception was a revolution which, by definition, was anti-establishment. In any revolution anything that smacks of the old order is intended to be torn down and replaced by something entirely new. In this case instead of an all-powerful distant king, a resident president, George Washington, himself a revolutionary, providing the original template.
Historically virtually every president has found that getting stuff done in the nation’s capital is difficult. Of course, the separation of powers, checks and balances were put in place for just this reason: to serve as a restraint, as a constraint, on the executive.
It is also accurate to say that over the two and a half centuries of American history executive power has waxed and waned. In 1973, when Richard Nixon was president, prominent historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. came out with a book titled The Imperial Presidency. As its title suggests, even then Schlesinger thought the executive had become too powerful, at the expense of both the legislature and the judiciary.
The Political Presidency sought to answer the question of which skills were important for presidents to have in a political system such as ours? One in which leadership is famously difficult. How many times did we hear over the years that Congress was “gridlocked”? Well, no such problem now. During the first half year of Trump’s second term what he wanted from Congress – and for that matter from the Supreme Court – he got from Congress. Moreover, most of the nation’s legislators seem to consider the idea that they have a constitutional role to play in, for example, appropriations, antiquated.
So, what does Trump have that none of his predecessors did? What wand has he waved to get what he wants when he wants it, notwithstanding the constraints that stifled or at least stumped nearly all his predecessors? To these all-important questions here I provide just three necessarily brief answers.
The first is personal. Trump is a buccaneer and an entertainer. He looks like both and acts like both. He has a strong, sometimes even magnetic effect on those disposed to be in his orbit.
The second is systemic. It is impossible to understand what Trump accomplished by fixating on him and him alone. In addition, it’s essential to understand the changing nature of the American people and of the America within which we are situated. Neither is what it was even a generation ago.
The third answer to what Trump has that none of his predecessors did, at least not to this extent, is power. The word “power” has many meanings, and it is used in many ways. Here it implies fear. Trump has the power to instill fear in people, power that he freely uses. Exactly what are his followers afraid of? To this question the obvious reply applies especially to members of Congress: they are afraid that come the next election they will primaried by an unflaggingly loyal Trump supporter, and that therefore they will lose.
Anything else? Any other reason to be afraid of the American president?
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Oxford University Press, 1984.