Evaluating a presidency soon after it ends is a difficult task. The full legacy of a president and their impact on the institution can take years, if not decades, to assess. This is especially true with an occupant of the office like President Trump, who brought to the White House a distinctive (to say the least) governing philosophy, style, and set of policies. Despite the complexity of the enterprise, this volume, made up of 14 short essays on different aspects of the Trump presidency, provides readers with incisive theoretical grounding and empirical insights on which they might draw to begin thinking about the Trump presidency and Trump’s legacy for the institution and American politics generally.
Throughout the volume, the contributors identify areas where the Trump presidency represented continuations of preexisting trends or behavior consistent with historical practice, as well as places where there appeared to be substantial breaks with the past. This provides a great service to readers and scholars trying to identify how the Trump presidency fits into existing frameworks, as well as developments that we are less able to understand and explain through existing theoretical constructs.
The volume is divided into three sections. In the first section, Chapman Rockaway, Wayne Steger, Russell Booker, Tyler J. Hughes, and Lawrence A. Becker track Trump’s rise and ultimate win in the 2016 election; they also examine the 2018 midterm elections that resulted in Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives. The contributors offer important insights into the partisan, ideological, and racial attitudes that led to support for Trump in the election, as well as the context in which the election occurred—eight years after the election of the country’s first Black president and as the US population was increasingly diversifying. The authors helpfully offer important scholarly context for Trump’s approach to the electorate and rhetoric through the frame of right-wing populism in the United States and around the world.
The second part of the book features essays from Paul E. Rutledge, Rebecca M. Eissler, Jonathan Lewallen, JoBeth Surface Shafran, Heather T. Rimes, and Thomas Rogers Hunter examining President Trump’s interactions with Congress, the courts, and the broader administrative state. Here the contributors provide vital data and insights into President Trump’s behavior, again noting the areas of continuity with past presidential practice and aberrations during Trump’s term. Notably, Trump was never able to overcome initial opposition to some of his legislative agenda and faced significant challenges from Congress during divided government. He entered office skeptical of the bureaucracy and sought to exert influence over the agencies to advance his unilateral and administrative agendas. These are familiar patterns to scholars of the presidency. Divergence from past practice emerges when we consider other aspects of President Trump’s term—for example, his seeming lack of interest in advancing a coherent legislative agenda; his overt criticisms of individual judges and their decisions; widespread administrative vacancies that were slowly or never filled; and his use of Twitter to announce major policy proposals, which were often uncoordinated with the rest of the administration.
The final section of the volume examines policy-making during the Trump administration. Essays from Burdett Loomis, Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, Joshua P. Montgomery, Roy T. Meyers, Christopher Olds, and Jeffrey S. Peake examine the administration’s approach to lobbying, the media and communications, budgeting, and foreign policy. Here, again, we see some indications of stability and a string of broken norms (and possibly laws in some cases). President Trump presided over increased deficits and executed military conflicts in ways that were reminiscent of other presidents. But he also shattered traditions about the norms of diplomacy, abrogated international agreements, and at the very least pushed boundaries on laws about the obligation of appropriated funds, which in part led to his first impeachment.
It is impossible to do justice to all the insights, arguments, and analysis in this volume’s chapters in such a short review. However, several themes emerge that will be useful to scholars trying to better understand the Trump presidency and the institution more generally. First, the essays highlight that Trump faced familiar political and institutional constraints throughout his term that prevented him from changing politics and policy too rapidly. His legislative proposals that did not have preexisting support from Congress foundered. His rhetorical calls to “drain the swamp” were ineffective in curbing the influence industry (and some of his actions seemed to encourage its growth).
Second, Trump was as much an avatar for extant impulses in American politics as he was an agent of change. One of Trump’s largest accomplishments was the confirmation of substantial numbers of judges, but it is clear this was driven as much by Trump as the conservative legal movement on whom Trump relied to recommend candidates. Trump’s rhetoric capitalized on existing opinion in his campaign, emphasizing issues like economic nationalism, racial conservatism, economic dislocation, and disenchantment with elites. These views were widely held in the electorate but not activated in combination by existing political figures to a substantial degree before Trump.
Finally, an undoubted legacy of President Trump was his breaking down traditional ways that presidents interacted with the media and the American people. Through his Twitter account and rallies, President Trump eschewed the traditional media to unprecedented degrees and presented a less-filtered, less-polished president to the American public than many were accustomed to. The broader impact of this approach on public expectations surrounding the presidency and political culture remains to be seen, but the approach was clearly one some politicians will seek to emulate.
These are important insights. Questions remain about what President Trump’s ultimate legacy will be. How will his successors behave? Will they continue in his style? Will they follow his example in areas where he shattered previous expectations and practices? Or will the four years of the Trump presidency be an aberration? Moreover, scholars will be interested in Trump’s impact on issues not addressed in this volume. What will be the continuing impact of Trump’s behavior in questioning the results of the 2020 election and spurring the political violence that occurred on January 6 (which happened after the completion of this volume)? How will Trump’s brand of right-wing populism affect the political culture of an increasingly diverse democracy? What are the impacts of Trump’s unilateral approach for the future of separation-of-powers politics? Will future presidents pursue Trump’s aberrational appointment strategies?
These questions will take decades of perspective to truly address, but this volume offers a fascinating initial assessment of the Trump presidency. It will certainly not be the last word as scholars attempt to better understand the impact that Donald Trump had on the institution of the presidency and American (and global) politics. As an insightful first step in this broader intellectual project, however, the book will be of great interest to students of the American presidency, interbranch relations, and presidential elections. All the contributions are clear and well written and would be at home on related syllabi as well.
