Trump’s legacy: shattering 200 years of American politics

Republican-Democratic duopoly

The abstract principles of American democracy first took form at the end of the 18th century. In response to the Federalist Party's vision of a powerful, centralised state, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison engineered the Democratic-Republican Party as the republic's first organised opposition. It championed states' rights, demanded a strict construction of the Constitution, and idealised an agrarian economic model.

The party's ascendancy was secured in the election of 1800. This brought Jefferson to the presidency and proved the young nation's capacity for a peaceful transfer of power from a ruling faction to its rival. The Federalist Party subsequently collapsed, ushering in a period of single-party rule under the Democratic-Republicans. Yet the party's sprawling coalition of interests would later prove too unwieldy, resulting in a fracture during the presidential election of 1824.

This led to four formidable candidates—all nominally from the same party—vying for the presidency. As no single contender secured an outright electoral majority, the decision was thrown to the House of Representatives. In a famously acrimonious resolution, the House installed John Quincy Adams as president—an outcome that shattered the old party consensus and set the stage for a new political schism.

The decisive victory of Andrew Jackson in the 1828 election irrevocably shattered the old political order. In its aftermath, the opposition—a loose coalition known as 'Adams' Men' or 'Anti-Jacksonians'—coalesced into a more formal entity that, by 1830, adopted the name National Republicans. Jackson's faction thus became the Democratic Party.

The Jacksonian Democrats were agrarian radicals who disliked centralised banking, while the Republicans wanted a more active federal government in economic development. Over the next 150 years, their ideological poles would dramatically invert. The Democrats evolved to embrace a more expansive federal role, while the Republican Party gradually became the home of American conservatism.

With the consolidation of this two-party duopoly, the presidential election cycle transformed into a quadrennial national ritual, defined by its combative character. Alongside that, the political establishment and the media industry developed a symbiotic relationship, with each helping the other. Election campaigns became lucrative, with media outlets covering every speech, debate, and poll. Fighting for voters and for audiences, the political process was repackaged as dramatic content and high-stakes narrative.

This self-reinforcing system puts up a formidable barrier that limits the ability of third-party challengers to contest in elections, as they lack the vast financial resources and media amplification enjoyed by the two incumbents. Such oligopolies are seen in other sectors of the American economy. Think Coca-Cola and Pepsi, McDonald's and Burger King, Microsoft and Apple. Challengers simply cannot match the incumbent giants' economies of scale in fundraising, media exposure, and institutional infrastructure.

This duopoly facilitated the rise of a self-perpetuating political class that monopolised the corridors of power. This establishment systematically reproduced its authority at both the state and federal levels by establishing a de facto set of credentials for high office. Viable candidates were expected to emerge from governmental, legal, or military careers, so any aspiring leader without the requisite background struggled to mount a credible challenge for national leadership.

Modern precedent confirms this established political archetype. Barack Obama (2009–17) had a background in constitutional law and the US Senate. His predecessor, George W. Bush (2001–09) was a two-term governor who served in the military. Bill Clinton (1993–2001) was a state attorney general and governor, and Joe Biden (2021-25) was a former vice-president who spent a lifetime in the Senate. Within that, Donald Trump is a profound aberration, an anomaly whose very background constituted a direct challenge to the established rules of American political succession.

Enter the outsider

From the late 1980s, the well-known New York real estate developer publicly flirted with the idea of seeking the nation's highest office. His interest was visible but non-partisan (he gave money to candidates from both major parties). In 1999, he formed an exploratory committee for a potential bid under the Reform Party banner—a campaign he ultimately abandoned. A similar pattern of serious consideration followed by a strategic withdrawal repeated itself in the lead-up to the 2012 election. His eventual candidacy was less an impulsive act than the deliberate pursuit of a long-held objective.

Trump's engagement with the party system was always instrumental, not ideological, as his financial contributions flowed freely across the aisle. He was motivated less by a coherent political philosophy than by a deeply personal and populist conviction: that both parties constituted an indistinguishable political elite, a cartel that had monopolised power, deaf to the will of the people. The Republican Party was no ideological sanctuary, just the most viable vehicle for a hostile takeover of a corrupt system.

In a November 1999 TV interview, while exploring a presidential run with the Reform Party, Trump revealed that his core objective was, in fact, the total disruption of the existing order. "It's not about the Reform Party as much as it is about the fact that I'd want to make it possible to really win, and to defeat the Democrat-Republican system if I ran and spent a lot of money." His use of the singular phrase "the Democrat-Republican system" is telling. He saw it as a monolithic political establishment.

Seizing the nomination of a major party would allow him to harness its formidable institutional machinery while remaining ideologically unbound, free to govern according to a personal mandate derived directly from his electorate—a mandate that might only incidentally overlap with the traditional party platform. So, in June 2015, under the potent and nostalgic banner 'Make America Great Again,' Trump launched his bid.

His inaugural address was not a conventional policy announcement but a calculated act of political transgression. He constructed a rhetorical battlefield populated by a series of antagonists: undocumented immigrants (who he branded as criminals), the political establishment (corrupt and incompetent), and minorities, whose place in the American project was implicitly questioned. His main aim was to declare a national crisis: "the American dream is dead." It was a radical diagnosis requiring a radical prescription—chiefly, a vast border wall and the mass deportation of immigrants.

Deliberately confrontational, the rhetoric was immediately understood by many as a strategy of polarisation—one that would deepen the nation's social and political fissures. The 2016 Republican primary was therefore not merely a contest among peers, but a social conflict among Americans—a populist insurgency vs the established order.

Establishment backlash

His candidacy provoked a fierce and widespread response from virtually every faction of the Republican establishment, from dynastic scions like Jeb Bush and rising stars like Marco Rubio to ideological stalwarts like Ted Cruz and moderate governors like John Kasich, this was a chorus of conservative intellectuals and party elders united in their condemnation, levelling critiques that were not merely political but existential, targeting both his ideological heresies and fundamental character.

This establishment resistance soon crystallised into the formal 'Never Trump' movement. Its standard-bearers included the party's 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the influential columnist George Will. They accused Trump of being an ideological apostate to conservative principles and temperamentally unfit to govern. Yet this tack did not resonate with the party's electoral base. In a decisive and historic rebuke, Republican voters overwhelmingly sided with the populist insurgency.

The 2016 presidential election marks a watershed moment in American political history. The contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton rapidly descended from political debate into agonistic spectacle, with unmatched hostility and deeply personal invective, each weaponising scandalous narratives against the other. This alienated the electorate, who were driven more by negative polarisation than by affirmative support. Voters were more likely to vote against a candidate than to vote for one.

The campaign's toxicity metastasised into the broader social fabric, with social media a powerful accelerant for disinformation, deepening the chasms between political tribes. Race—once consigned to the fringes—became a conspicuous feature of mainstream political rallies, widening the fractures and undermining democratic cohesion.

Trump treated the traditional, if sometimes adversarial, relationship between the US presidency and the press more like warfare. Major media outlets responded, abandoning the customary deference to the office and assuming a posture of constant vigilance, with fact-checking revealing a stream of presidential statements that were shown as false or misleading. Trump's response was to delegitimise the press, branding it "fake news" and "enemies of the people".

Symbiotic antagonism

Donald Trump's first term was defined by the complete collapse of the traditional, if often adversarial, relationship between the presidency and the press. This was not merely a conflict but a state of perpetual, reciprocal warfare. Major media outlets, abandoning the customary deference afforded to the office, assumed a posture of constant vigilance, with fact-checking organisations meticulously documenting a deluge of statements they deemed false or misleading. Trump's response was not a conventional defence but a systematic campaign to delegitimise the institution of the press itself, branding news organisations as purveyors of "fake news" and "enemies of the people."

This created a symbiotic antagonism—a feedback loop wherein each side's hostility served to justify that of the other. In the media, the epithet 'fascist' entered the lexicon of mainstream commentary—a once unthinkable breach of political norms. For the first time, cultural-media apparatus began subjecting the presidency not merely to scrutiny, but to a relentless campaign of caricature and delegitimisation.

This had a profound cultural effect: it normalised a rhetoric of demonisation to such an extent that it bled from the press and entertainment into officialdom and even education, rendering Trump a legitimate object of public contempt. Institutional antipathy toward Trump reached its zenith during the 2020 election cycle.

In a strategic move to restore a sense of political normalcy, the Democratic Party nominated Joe Biden—a figure whose very career as a senator and vice president embodied the establishment ethos that Trump had overthrown. The Democrats criticised Trump's character and fused this with the national trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively holding him responsible for the staggering toll of the crisis.

This political offensive was dramatically reinforced when Republican elder statesmen like former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Senator Jeff Flake endorsed Biden, and when John Kasich, a former Republican governor, was granted a speaking role at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. It showed how the institutional order had unified against the populist challenger. The aim was to surgically target wavering Republicans and right-leaning independents.

Through sophisticated advertising campaigns, they deployed testimonials from former Trump voters, framing the election as a moment of profound political conscience. For them, the argument was not about policy but about Trump's perceived assault on democratic norms and his contempt for institutional guardrails, a threat deemed so fundamental that it demanded the suspension of ordinary political loyalties.

Though they disagreed with Biden in some big way, they argued that he represented a necessary restoration of a stable, traditional model of governance—a custodian of the very system they believed Trump sought to dismantle. When Biden won, the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters appeared to Democrats and others as an assault on democratic norms and institutional guardrails that Trump had, until then, only threatened.

When power did finally transfer, however, it failed to deliver the decisive restoration of political normalcy that its proponents had promised. While a largely sympathetic media tried to build a narrative of restored competence, the president's own performances suggested otherwise, with public gaffes and apparent lapses in vitality.

Before long, Biden was also being relentlessly mocked and ridiculed. And while Trump had been caricatured as a transgressive and malevolent populist with a thirst for power, Biden was portrayed as a man whose cognitive and physical frailty invited a kind of sympathetic contempt. This stark contrast provided the ideal political theatre for Trump to once again play the charismatic saviour rescuing America from the 'deep state' and the political elite.

His 2024 campaign savagely critiqued Biden's perceived geopolitical impotence. Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Gaza were Trump's central exhibits for a counterfactual history in which his strength would have prevented these wars, deaths, and retreats (nine months into his second term, Ukraine and Gaza are still being bombed).

Sharp intuition

Trump has an intuitive grasp of popular sentiment, and he has proved exceptionally adept at exploiting this. His return to the presidency was predicated on a decisive electoral mandate that swept his party into a position of unified governmental control, securing a trifecta with majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

This consolidation of power has fundamentally altered the political landscape of his second term. It has given Trump considerable legislative latitude to pursue his agenda without significant institutional obstruction. Crucially, it has also neutralised the threat of impeachment that had loomed over his first term, allowing him to govern with a degree of political impunity. 

The character of his second administration was immediately signalled by his choice of vice president. No party stalwart, JD Vance has a conspicuously thin political resume. His ascent from first-term senator elected in 2022 to vice presidential nominee was itself a political phenomenon, and a powerful testament to Trump's belief in the self-sufficiency of his own political authority and his preference for subordinates who function as executors of his agenda rather than as independent power brokers.

This calculus stands in stark relief to his 2016 selection of Mike Pence—a strategic concession to the Republican establishment, chosen precisely for his deep credentials within the conservative movement and his ability to reassure a sceptical party base. Choosing Vance was therefore symbolic. If Trump felt compelled to court the party establishment in 2016, by 2024, he believed he had become the party establishment, acting with the conviction that his personal mandate is the only one that matters.

The authoritative posture of Donald Trump's second term is rooted in a profound sense of personal and political vindication. He believes he possesses an unmediated bond with a large segment of the electorate. In his view, this insulates him from institutional critique and grants him the license to transcend conventional political norms.

As evidence, he can point to the unwavering loyalty of his core constituency, a base that functions as a permanent source of validation. This sense of political impunity and freedom to pursue his agenda with a degree of unilateral decisiveness has most clearly manifested in his reliance on executive action, a governance by fiat that sidesteps the processes of the legislative branch.

The book is far from closed on the Trump era, so concluding on it would be pre-emptive. The sheer velocity of its political and normative disruptions—both in domestic and foreign policy—has been so profound that it defies stable, immediate categorisation. A definitive assessment is therefore a task for future historians, as the full consequences of this political rupture are still unfolding.

Whatever final judgment history renders, President Trump's legacy is shaping up to be one of a genuinely transformative and polarising consequence, owing to his systematic dismantling of established political norms and, most crucially, his complete ideological remaking of the Republican Party. He has reforged a vessel of traditional conservatism into a populist-nationalist movement—one that demands fealty to his leadership above any fixed party doctrine.

In becoming the first president since Grover Cleveland (1885-89 and 1893-97) to reclaim the office after an intervening term, 'Trumpism' has been cemented as a durable and disruptive force in American politics. His administration is characterised by a reliance on executive authority and a systematic reshaping of the federal judiciary, which together provide the leverage for a substantive policy agenda, including significant economic deregulation and comprehensive tax reform.

On the world stage, his 'America First' doctrine has disrupted longstanding alliances and enabled the brokering of landmark diplomatic agreements in the Middle East. He has mastered direct communication, leveraging social media to bypass institutional gatekeepers and energise his supporters with a deliberately confrontational and polarising rhetorical style. The synthesis of these elements—a unique governing apparatus, a disruptive policy agenda, and a revolutionary political style—ensures that Trump will be remembered as a consequential, if deeply divisive, president.

The ultimate question is the durability of the political model Trump has created. The long-term viability of 'Trumpism' hinges on the classic problem of charismatic succession. A prospective 2028 presidential bid by JD Vance would be the definitive test case. Lacking an independent political base, Vance's entire political existence is derived from Trump's authority.

His only path to power, therefore, lies in becoming the institutional vessel for his predecessor's legacy, a strategy designed to convert the personal loyalty commanded by Trump into a transferable, and therefore enduring, political movement. Will it succeed? We will have to wait to see.