In a recent puff interview on ABC’s The View, Kamala Harris admitted that she can’t think of a single policy she would change from her current administration. Even the politically skillful Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, was unable to name one thing that distinguishes Harris from Joe Biden. Since she has long been a devout left-winger, and the relatively moderate Biden moved heavily left in response to demands from his party’s progressive wing, most people believe Harris would undoubtedly double down and expand the left-wing tilt of the current president, regardless of her present posturing as a more conventional liberal. But what about Donald Trump? How much would his prospective second term be different from his first? Well, quite a bit, actually.
The bombastic billionaire was already world-famous in 2016, but voters could only project how he might perform as the country’s chief executive. As the 45th president, he built a record. Only those in a coma for the last decade don’t know almost everything there is to know about the man. In 2020, amid a unique election animated by a pandemic and widespread violence in the streets, the situation was reversed, with Biden able to castigate Trump’s performance in the Oval Office and make all manner of claims about what his presidency would look like. This time around, voters are essentially able to compare and contrast the last two presidencies – and it’s a juxtaposition that has proven to be unflattering to Biden’s stand-in. Thus, with voters aware of hundreds of data points over eight years, a Trump victory would be accomplished by those who were fully cognizant of both candidates' records.
A president receiving a mandate to preside when voters are well-versed on his assets and liabilities, as opposed to many who believed they were taking a riverboat gamble in 2016, would provide Trump with a significantly strengthened hand. No longer could his disloyal opposition characterize his victory as a fluke or a “black swan” event. Thus, this time around, everyday Americans would be more apt to reject Democratic dirty tricks like the Steele dossier and the Russia hoax or non-stop efforts to impeach Trump, starting minutes after he takes office, as leftists did in 2017.
Having lost to Trump twice in three tries, signaling the ascendancy of the MAGA movement and the end of the progressive era, the Democratic Party will be forced to head toward the center – as Bill Clinton did successfully in 1992 after the Michael Dukakis disaster of 1988. Democrats can hardly afford to start their moderating process by taking wild swings at Trump from the get-go. This time, they are certain he would serve only four more years, not eight, so their focus must turn immediately to 2028. If they persist in their unbridled attacks on Trump just because they detest him, it will undoubtedly cost them dearly when JD Vance, Nikki Haley, or some other more conventional Republican becomes the GOP standard-bearer in four years.
Personnel Is Policy
It has been said about politics that “personnel is policy,” meaning the people who populate key positions in a presidential administration and carry out the marching orders of the commander-in-chief can determine the success or failure of a presidency. For example, think of the comparison between Antony Blinken and Mike Pompeo as secretaries of state. When Trump first arrived in Washington in 2017, he had fewer staunch allies than any newly elected president in memory. While previous presidents and candidates had already built broad coalitions, Trump, the first chief executive in history who did not come from the political class or the military, had almost no one on his side. Few in the DC Swamp thought the way he did. As he has discussed on the campaign trail, he was thus forced to rely on the advice of political professionals, many or most of whom were deeply skeptical of his “break-the-furniture” candidacy.
This time around, with a third straight presidential nomination, he now defines the Republican brand and is fully aware of who is or is not worthy of his trust. He knows “where all the bodies are buried,” meaning he would undoubtedly get his second term off the ground much faster than in 2017 when it seemed his lone loyal DC ally was Sen. Jeff Sessions. Trump thus awarded Sessions the role of Attorney General, and he flamed out quickly. Many of his other appointees were ineffective, and the man once defined by “you’re fired” was forced to constantly churn through his Cabinet, opening him up to the charge that he was an architect of chaos. That would not happen in his second term. And while Mike Pence proved to be a wise choice for VP in 2016 to calm the fears of conservative Christians, he was more a good soldier than a true Trumpist. This time, Trump picked JD Vance, a mini-me with the conviction of a born-again believer in the Trump agenda, who articulates 45’s policies better than the man himself, making Vance a valuable advocate for the MAGA agenda.
Then there is the matter of how a second Trump term would differ from those of previous two-term presidents. The huge difference is that Trump’s final four years would come after he had previously been defeated for re-election. He and Grover Cleveland would stand as the only presidents to win, lose, and then win again. It is undeniable that the second term of almost every eight-year-long presidency has been far less impressive than the first four years, if only because the re-elected president immediately becomes a lame duck. While the same thing applies to Trump, there is ample evidence that he would go in the opposite direction, accomplishing initiatives that were left undone, such as building the wall – now publicly supported even by Harris – and adding more fuel to the fire he created when he came to DC as a novice. For example, civil service reform, which would reclassify thousands of positions held by protected DC bureaucrats to be presidential appointees, impossible to accomplish in his first term, would likely be a major priority from day one.
Put another way, there are a lot of things a president can do when he is not subject to re-election. If the trajectory of the race continues as it has in recent days, Trump is likely to have at least one, if not both, chambers of Congress working with him side by side. And don't underestimate the effectiveness of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who, unlike his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, appears to be a rock-ribbed conservative and has received high marks for both his leadership of House Republicans and his fundraising ability.
Prophetic Warnings on Illegal Immigration From Trump
When he first descended the golden escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, Trump delivered remarks about illegal immigrants that were widely vilified. Leftists used this as evidence that he is a flat-out racist. But the migrant surge Trump warned about is now a reality, and a solid majority of Americans are now in favor of mass deportation, which was all but unthinkable in 2020. And a big increase in support from black and Latino voters will likely have contributed substantially to his victory.
Trump has been able to fend off legal warfare at an unprecedented level, attempts to kick him off the ballot, and widespread accusations that he would be a dictator. But those smears will all have failed if he wins. And perhaps he might finally receive credit where credit is due. For all the talk of how he botched the response to COVID-19, does anyone honestly believe vaccines could be produced any faster than they were during Trump's administration? The contrast to Biden-Harris on the economy, inflation, illegal immigration, and crime will have illuminated the downward spiral from voters who concluded they were clearly better off four years ago.
Unlike eight years ago, Trump now enjoys near-universal support from his party, aside from those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome who have left the party and made bed with the same leftists they had denounced throughout their entire careers. The likes of Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney, and Bill Kristol will have failed in their attempts to drag the GOP back to the neoconservative party it was before Trump came along, and they will be rendered entirely irrelevant if they were not already.
Oh, and there won’t be much more talk about Jan. 6, once a central issue for the left, which has now fallen off the radar, as evidenced by a recent poll by Washington’s most famous liberal newspaper, showing Trump ahead of Harris by three points on the question of “who would do a better job handling threats to democracy in the U.S.?”
Trump dramatically altered the political zeitgeist during his years in office and somehow managed to achieve an astounding reversal in positioning the GOP as the anti-war party of the working class and the Democrats as the pro-war party of elites. His agenda was audacious and risky, but with a fresh mandate, there is ample reason to believe that the seismic change he pursued until January 2021 will stand a far better chance of fulfillment the second time around.
