The Disrupter in Chief Gets Transformational Results at Home and Abroad
No president has ever delivered so much so quickly. But Trump’s biggest challenge lies ahead in Xi Jinping’s China.
The U.S. Constitution defines the president as the Commander in Chief. It is a solemn and grueling responsibility. It broke Lyndon Johnson, turned Barack Obama’s hair gray and accelerated Joe Biden’s decline into dotage. Many voters ultimately cast their votes for the candidate who is the more plausible Commander in Chief. I was one of many who struggled to imagine Kamala Harris in that role.
Say what you like about Donald Trump, commanding comes naturally to him. Not only does he thrive on the job’s relentless demands. He goes further. He has emerged this year as the Disrupter in Chief.
His “Art of the Deal” approach—the outrageous opening bid, then the wheeling and dealing—has delivered transformational results at home and abroad in the space of nine months, with this week’s Gaza deal even briefly shutting up his legion of critics. But how far Trump’s winning streak continues depends heavily on how he handles what is by far his greatest challenge: an increasingly assertive China led by a no less ambitious disrupter.
“Democracy,” H.L. Mencken famously said, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Well, Trump has given it to American voters good and hard this year. They wanted immigration restriction. They got it with breathtaking speed. Net migration to the U.S. averaged 2.6 million people a year under Joe Biden, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but will shrink this year to just 400,000, thanks to closure of the southern border and an aggressive new deportation drive. Estimates by AEI and my own firm put the net migration figure for 2025 even lower, at zero or even in negative territory.
Voters were mad at Joe Biden over inflation. Consumer price inflation was 2.9% in August, slightly down since Trump was sworn in and a third of the rate we saw in the summer of 2022. Oil prices are down 23% since Inauguration Day. Even raising the average tariff rate to a height not seen since 1934 has barely caused inflation to rise.
As for the woke mania that swept through U.S. higher education like a mind virus over the past decade, Trump has gone after it with a bazooka. I don’t love to see the federal government intruding in the governance of universities. But in forcing change that was never going to happen spontaneously, Trump’s bazooka is looking more effective than Elon Musk’s chainsaw was against the federal bureaucracy.
In short, no president has delivered so rapidly on so many of his campaign pledges. It’s not just the 217 executive actions in 100 days; it’s the stream of social media “truths” and the almost daily exchanges with the press corps. If you wanted a “vibe shift” last year, you really got one. If you hate Trump, maybe you just hate the times we live in. For Trump is the zeitgeist on a golf-cart.
The problem, as Mencken implied, is that voters don’t really want their wishes fulfilled “good and hard.”
To read the rest of this essay, go to: https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-the-disrupter-in-chief-479da627?mod=wknd_pos1