In 1986, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, wrote The Cycles of American History, which included a chapter on the cycle of American politics. Schlesinger viewed America’s political cycles as alterations “between public purpose” (which as a liberal, he favored) and “private interest.” He claimed that since the late 19th century, each cycle has lasted about 40 years.
Trump astounded the political world by defeating Hillary Clinton … the political establishment of both parties, and every “right-thinking” person.
Schlesinger’s heroes were Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and later John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson — all shaped by the Progressive Era in U.S. politics. He asserted that presidential administrations that emphasized the “public purpose” were less corrupt than those who emphasized “private interests” — in reality, the opposite is true. The book was typical Schlesinger — using history to promote liberal politics.
Instead of cycles, American political history has been divided into eras that were and are shaped by political movements and political leaders. We are today living in the Trump Era. Since 2016, Donald Trump has dominated American politics whether he was winning or losing elections. Trump has led a populist revolt against the Progressive Era, which dominated American politics, except during a few brief interludes, for more than a century.
Trump did not start the political movement that seeded the revolt against progressivism, but he did embrace it as his own and lead it to political victory. Let’s see how we got here.
The Founding Era of American politics was shaped by the War of Independence and differing perspectives on federalism. The political leaders that most defined that era were George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who promoted domestic unity, foreign policy neutrality, mercantilist economics, and Manifest Destiny. That era was eclipsed by the Jacksonian era, when populism and sectionalism emerged to reshape American politics. Schlesinger, in a much better historical work, called this era the “Age of Jackson.” The Jacksonian Era lasted until the Civil War.
The next political era could be called the Capitalist Era, when the industrial revolution and the titans of American business dominated American society. The leading figures of this era were men like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. This era lasted until the early 20th century, and during this period the business of America was business (to borrow a phrase from Calvin Coolidge, who tried to revive the era in the 1920s). There was no political movement or political figure that dominated the politics of this era.
The abuses of the Capitalist Era led, however, to the next political era — the Progressive Era — which, with several bumps along the way, lasted until today’s Trump Era. The Progressive Era was shaped by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and was a movement promoted by intellectuals. In domestic politics, progressives spoke and wrote and legislated on behalf of the working man.
In foreign policy, progressives looked beyond the national interest to promote the good society abroad. The movement and the era culminated in the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency. FDR’s legacy is government activism to improve the lives of less fortunate Americans at home and to remake the rest of the world in America’s image. Nothing symbolized the hubris of progressivism better than FDR’s “four freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
The Progressive Era saw the enormous growth of the federal government to a size and for purposes that would have astounded the Founders of our country. It included the creation of the national security state as part of the growth of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.” It also included the creation of government bureaucracies that regulated businesses and increasingly intruded into the lives of American citizens. It reached a crescendo during the administration of Lyndon Johnson which engaged the government to simultaneously wage war in Southeast Asia and promote the Great Society at home. The Johnson administration was the essence of progressivism, and a colossal failure.
Even progressives revolted against Johnson’s presidency — but they did so because they viewed it as not being progressive enough. During his and Nixon’s presidencies, progressives took to the streets to attempt to transform American society into a progressive utopia, but when that failed the progressives began to infiltrate America’s key institutions — schools, universities, the media, Hollywood, scientific institutions, political parties (especially the Democratic Party).
That is why the Reagan presidency — for all of its conservative accomplishments — was only a brief interlude in the Progressive Era. By 2008, the progressives succeeded in getting one of their own in the White House — Barack Obama, who promised to fundamentally transform America.
Obama’s presidency was the triumph of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. Progressives advanced their transformational agenda during his presidency and Biden’s presidency (which in essence was Obama’s third term).
This agenda included apologizing for America’s past sins abroad; continuing endless wars started by the neoconservatives in the Bush 43 administration; promoting the LGBTQ+ agenda; institutionalizing “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” throughout federal agencies, including the Pentagon; demonizing police forces around the country; promoting illegal immigration in unprecedented numbers; subsidizing a green energy revolution; paying homage to schemes for “global governance”; decrying “white Christian nationalism”; labeling parents concerned about the oversexualized content of their children’s education “domestic terrorists”; colluding with social media platforms to censor conservative voices; and calling those who supported their political opponents “deplorables,” “garbage,” and “threats to democracy.”
Even before Obama was elected, the seedlings of the Trump Era began — first with the populist candidacies of Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan, then with the rise of the Tea Party movement and alternative media outlets. Perot and Buchanan were unconventional populist candidates who attracted a surprisingly large following. The 2010 midterm elections were a harbinger of things to come. Republicans — including Tea Party-backed candidates — gained 60 seats in the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senate.
Populist-nationalism was on the rise, and in 2015 Donald Trump recognized this and made it the overall theme of his 2016 campaign — which was even more unconventional than Perot’s or Buchanan’s. Trump astounded the political world by defeating Hillary Clinton despite being opposed by the media, the political establishment of both parties, and every “right-thinking” person.
But as Walter Russel Mead explains in a fascinating piece in Tablet, even after losing the 2020 election and being subjected to unfounded and politically-motivated investigations and prosecutions, Trump not only regained the White House in a decisive electoral victory over the Democrats on November 5th, he also “achieved a domination of the Republican Party that no previous Republican president has ever enjoyed.” Mead concludes that Trump is “a political genius, a once-in-a century talent combining an instinct for showmanship with the ability to read the frustrations and longings of potential supporters.” He is, writes Mead, a “towering figure in American politics.”
Historians, if they hew to the truth, will one day write about the Age of Trump.
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