In the year since he took the oath of office, Mr. Trump has shown that he simply isn’t bound by what had been seen as the previous conventions of the role he is playing. Other presidents have sought to avoid or tamp down controversy; he is as likely to stir up or make a beeline toward controversy, seeing it as a tool in effecting change. Past presidents have tended to speak off-the-cuff sparingly and carefully; Mr. Trump does it every day on a social-media platform never before deployed this way.
Past presidents strained to show consistency in all they said and advocated, fearful that changing positions would open them to charges they are feckless or unprincipled. Mr. Trump shifts positions frequently and effortlessly—at one point standing on several sides of a tense immigration debate during a single televised discussion—and boasts that keeping foes guessing that way is an asset. “I’m a very flexible person,” he said in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal. He added: “I don’t know what the word permanent means.”
William Daley, who served as a cabinet secretary and White House chief of staff for Barack Obama, says simply: “He’s fundamentally changed how people, not just here but around the world, view the presidency.”
In substantive terms, if a populist is defined as someone who challenges the country’s established elites and their views in the name of “the people,” Mr. Trump is the most populist president in modern times. That has scrambled the conventional wisdom on trade, and produced unusual presidential pressure on companies and chief executive officers as they make decisions about their firms’ capital investment and hiring plans.
“He’s now changed the argument in Washington, which for the last 70 years was: Build a global world order based on uneven trade deals, create global economic interdependence and rising middle classes around the world, (and that) will keep the world at peace,” says Anthony Scaramucci, a Trump backer who served briefly as White House communications director. “The U.S. will be a benevolent superpower to a world at peace and our economy will grow. That was the paradigm. Trump wants to do all that, but even out the trade deals—make the trade deals more fair—because he believes that will benefit the American worker and the middle class.”
One Year in, Trump Has Broken All the Rules
Past presidents strained to show consistency in all they said and advocated, fearful that changing positions would open them to charges they are feckless or unprincipled. Mr. Trump shifts positions frequently and effortlessly—at one point standing on several sides of a tense immigration debate during a single televised discussion—and boasts that keeping foes guessing that way is an asset. “I’m a very flexible person,” he said in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal. He added: “I don’t know what the word permanent means.”
William Daley, who served as a cabinet secretary and White House chief of staff for Barack Obama, says simply: “He’s fundamentally changed how people, not just here but around the world, view the presidency.”
In substantive terms, if a populist is defined as someone who challenges the country’s established elites and their views in the name of “the people,” Mr. Trump is the most populist president in modern times. That has scrambled the conventional wisdom on trade, and produced unusual presidential pressure on companies and chief executive officers as they make decisions about their firms’ capital investment and hiring plans.
“He’s now changed the argument in Washington, which for the last 70 years was: Build a global world order based on uneven trade deals, create global economic interdependence and rising middle classes around the world, (and that) will keep the world at peace,” says Anthony Scaramucci, a Trump backer who served briefly as White House communications director. “The U.S. will be a benevolent superpower to a world at peace and our economy will grow. That was the paradigm. Trump wants to do all that, but even out the trade deals—make the trade deals more fair—because he believes that will benefit the American worker and the middle class.”
One Year in, Trump Has Broken All the Rules