Three weeks into President Trump’s second term, it is clear that the political idea animating his agenda is a deep desire to shake up American life and our assumptions about the role of government, and to loudly tell the rest of the world that the U.S. is back.
Whether it’s attempting to lay off significant numbers of federal workers, reassuming control over the Panama Canal, annexing both Canada and Greenland, and now the “takeover” of Gaza, Trump has surprised the nation and the world.
Yet underlying his decisions is a palpable desire to disrupt traditional assumptions about the role of the U.S.
Trump has made it clear that American power and assertiveness are not relics from the past, but rather emblems of the future. In that way, it is very similar to what animated President Ronald Reagan when he made his “shining city on a hill” declaration on the eve of his 1980 victory over then-President Jimmy Carter.
Reagan’s election kicked off a period of American assertiveness that ultimately resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and an ensuing decade of unchallenged American hegemony.
To be clear, I am not predicting a similarly dramatic outcome from Trump’s term, as the world is markedly different now than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. But I am suggesting that Trump plainly believes the traditional ways of approaching America’s problems no longer work, and he intends to upend those ways.
This is apparent both domestically, where Trump is attempting to radically reshape — or eliminate — federal agencies such as the Department of Education — and internationally, whereby questioning long-held assumptions of foreign policy, Trump is saying all bets are off.
Unquestionably, there is a degree of realism in how Trump wields the power of the presidency.
He kicked off the shortest “trade war” in history by announcing tariffs on Mexico and Canada, only to reverse himself just hours later after wrangling concessions on the border and the flow of drugs.
Similarly, he has chosen to negotiate with the Maduro government in Venezuela, prioritizing the uninterrupted flow of their oil and willingness to accept deported migrants over pushing back against a dictator upon whom the U.S. officially has a $25 million bounty.
Or, as Brett Stephens aptly described it, Trump is a “sovereigntist” who believes the U.S. can “do what it wants to do within only the limits of what it can do.” Stephens continued, “It means an indifference to the behavior of other states…so long as it doesn’t impinge on us.”
At its most basic level, Trump’s political belief is that there are no sacred cows. Whether it be the economy, education, immigration, or foreign policy, Trump is telling the world that America will not do what it has always done, or behave the way it has always behaved.
While this can feel uncomfortable for many, it does have its benefits.
America’s adversaries know they cannot afford to become complacent — meaning they cannot be confident in their assumptions of how the U.S. will react to their provocations — as they were during the Biden administration.
Indeed, throughout Biden’s presidency, and especially following the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our enemies knew how Biden would react when they crossed his “red lines.” Russia and Iran in particular knew Biden would issue statements that were couched in diplomatic condemnation and little else.
Make no mistake, I say this not to endorse what Trump is doing. As a lifelong Democrat, I would have certainly approached many of these policy initiatives differently. But it is hard not to look at the first few weeks of Trump’s presidency and not recognize a genuine desire to reshape our domestic and foreign policy.
Further, thus far, it seems that the American people at least believe Trump is on the right track. His approval rating after his first full week in office sat at 46 percent, a full 10 points higher than at this point in his first term, according to Quinnipiac polling.
In that same vein, the share of Americans saying the country is “on the wrong track” — 52 percent — is the lowest since June 2021, per RealClearPolitics polling tracker.
Ultimately, the degree to which Trump’s desire to do away with traditional norms and shake things up succeeds remains to be seen. As does the impact of such a shift on how Americans — and the rest of the world — relate to and perceive our government.
Nevertheless, whatever one feels about the merits of his policies or the rashness of the decision-making process, it can confidently be said that Trump’s second term appears destined to be transformative for the United States, as well as America’s role in the world.
Pollster Douglas E. Schoen is a partner with the public opinion company Schoen Cooperman Research based in New York and co-author of the book, “America: Unite or Die.”
