President Donald Trump’s political comeback success is now cemented in history. What is not a settled fact, however, is the legacy of his second term, only months into its administration.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trump’s presidential actions thus far, especially domestic ones, have gone generally well — despite his opponents’ dire warnings of imminent societal and economic disaster. His international efforts, meanwhile, many of which are still underway, have also shown positive results. He has specifically brokered a half-dozen peace deals and brought the combatants in the Russia-Ukraine war to the negotiating table – progress seemingly unimaginable only a few months ago.
Is there some essential underlying reason for these early successes?
Much has been written about the skills Mr. Trump brought to the presidency, including his background as a show business impresario, his experience with public relations and self-promotion, and brashly facing down hostile media and other critics.
He certainly has brought a unique set of these skills to the Oval Office, but other presidents with their own sets of impressive personal skills have also been able to dominate the news and inspire adulation from voters.
Going down the list of the 44 other men who have held the nation’s highest office, one sees that the largest number were previously lawyers, followed by farmers and ranchers, career military officers, and a few academics. One was a movie actor (Ronald Reagan). One was a journalist (Warren Harding). One was a mining engineer (Herbert Hoover). A few had some business experience. Almost all held some public office before becoming president.
But Donald Trump also brought one new significant experience, which no one else had — he was a full-blown successful entrepreneurial capitalist. He had held no office, appointed or elected, before becoming president. To understand why this is so significant, it is important to first understand the historical economic and political context that enabled his rise to power.
The United States of America is the oldest and most successful full-scale democratic capitalist nation in the world. In spite of the idealism expressed in its Declaration of Independence, its beginnings were flawed. But the abolition of slavery, ending segregation, enacting women’s suffrage, and full civil rights came later — enabled by a uniquely American Constitution and democratic institutions.
The birth and early years of the U.S. Republic also coincided with the occurrence of the global Industrial Revolution. With its growing population, expanding cities, and immense natural resources, entrepreneurship and innovation flourished. The challenges, achievements, and sacrifices made in economic depressions and two world wars made the U.S. the most powerful nation on earth.
Which brings us to the present day.
Almost from its beginning, the U.S. had two major political parties. Although their names have changed over the decades, one has always been more liberal, while one has always been more conservative.
The older party, the Democrats, was initially more conservative in some respects. They supported or tolerated slavery, opposed women’s suffrage, and generally opposed societal change. The Republican Party, which was born out of the collapse of the Whig Party and amid the rise of the anti-slavery movement in the 1850s, was initially viewed as more radical for the time. Republicans opposed slavery and later became the driving force behind early civil rights legislation and women’s suffrage.
Over the years, and especially after 1933, Democrats moved to the left, and Republicans moved to the right. But both major parties supported and celebrated America’s underlying history and traditions.
Recently, however, a part of the Democrat Party has moved rhetorically beyond the boundaries of the shared American democratic capitalist experience and begun arguing for a neo-Marxist political regime in the U.S. — one that will replace free enterprise and entrepreneurship with government-run and controlled commercial and industrial institutions and policies.
Early signs of an assault on the traditional American model began with the administration of President Barack Obama in 2009. Most notably, he unilaterally tried to backtrack the U.S. role in the world, explicitly apologizing for America abroad.
Donald Trump won an upset victory in 2016 in a voter reaction to the Obama years and rejection of an anticipated Hillary Clinton administration. Despite a number of noteworthy and historic economic successes, the unexpected global pandemic led to a disputed defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.
Although he had run as a moderate and traditional liberal, Joe Biden, as president in 2021, began enabling the radical wing of his party to begin a more comprehensive dismantling of the democratic capitalist model.
A period of inflation, education decline, unsettled urban life, woke culture uncertainty, and exceptionally divisive politics followed.
The traditional Republican Party and its leaders had been unable to halt the national drift to the left following Obama’s election in 2008. Nor did there seem to be any GOP lawyer/elected official capable of moving the electorate to reverse this trend.
But what is now emerging is a new Republican Party, becoming a working-class, rural, and small-town party with increasing numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and young persons who formerly were part of the old Democrat Party base.
This party is led not by an establishment lawyer or career politician, but by a now familiar capitalist entrepreneur whom the radical left had previously defeated and then tried to destroy.
Donald Trump rose from unprecedented defeat and attempted “cancellation” to restore the traditional and still vibrant U.S. model. As probably no lawyer, farmer, military officer, or academic could, he understood how American democratic capitalism really worked and could be employed for national recovery. He knew the rough-and-tumble world of negotiating and how to play political hardball. He also knew how U.S. power could be used to peaceably restore U.S. interests in the world — and he had the will to use that power.
And so, the U.S. is now led for the first time by one of its own democratic capitalists. His colorful and provocative showmanship appeals to his political base and enrages his opponents, but his underlying entrepreneurial spirit and skills are on a course of a much broader and potentially unifying historical quest.
Herald Boas is a contributor to AMAC Newsline.
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