This article was originally published by Ryan McMacken at The Mises Institute.
Donald Trump ran for the presidency as a populist, and he won as a populist. All the usual suspects—such as Hillary Clinton—condemned him as a populist. The political playbook his campaign followed served up the typical populist fare for the voters. That is, Trump promised to serve the “common people” by fighting against the ruling class, “draining the swamp,” punishing the corrupt, ending the government gravy train, and generally throwing a monkey wrench in the whole ruling class’s machine of exploitation. But now, with nearly three years still to go in the Trump presidency, it’s quite clear that Trump will not be doing anything to actually upset the governing elite’s apple cart.
Aside from a very partial victory on immigration—and Trump has now put immigration on the back burner to concentrate on his Israel First policy—Trump has failed on every other matter. I say “failed” because it is a failure from the perspective of those who wanted to see a meaningful change in how Washington rules over its tax farm, known as “America.” The failure can be seen in how government spending is higher than ever, monetary policy is inflationist as always, and there have been no major legislative changes that so much as inconvenience the ruling elites. Trump has been either unwilling or unable to translate his electoral success in 2024 into any sort of enduring legislative program. Instead, Trump decided to do the easy thing and rule by decree, which means his changes will be easily undone a few minutes after his successor (who will almost certainly be a Democrat) is sworn in. Moreover, as Trump works to expand the prerogatives of the presidency, the next Democrat will be taking over a federal government that is even more powerful than when Trump took office.
As a result, Trump’s presidency is an immense success from the perspective of the ruling elites who actually control the US government. Who are these elites? They are the combined group of government agents and interest groups that use a mutually beneficial network of client-patron relationships to ensure the continual flow of resources from the general population—i.e., the net taxpayers—to the governing elites and their allies. Institutionally, the governing elites include the permanent government—i.e., the “administrative state” or “the deep state”—on the “patron side.” On the “client” side are key interest groups such as military contractors, labor unions, the Israeli state, Silicon Valley tech firms, major “charitable” foundations, major financial institutions, and others. From the perspective of this patron-client network, partisan politics are largely irrelevant because neither party poses a significant threat to any of these interests. Only if there is an overwhelming sea-change in public opinion—and some portion of the governing network becomes politically radioactive—will one or more of the parties begin to cut off one or more entrenched interests from the taxpayer-funded flow of resources. Note, however, that this doesn’t endanger the ruling elites overall. This simply changes the composition of elites that control the regime.
It is now clear that the governing elites have prevailed against whatever forces of populism might have had some hope of threatening the status quo under Trump. After all, Trump arrived in Washington after promising a populist anti-deep-state agenda. After only about 90 days, though, his administration has been transformed into the standard pro-regime presidency that has doubled down on support for all the usual pro-regime interest groups. He’s calling for historically immense increases in spending for the military-industrial complex. This is designed to buy off a number of special interest groups, such as the surveillance state that makes billionaires like Peter Thiel rich. He wants massive new spending programs for weapons contractors like Raytheon. He’s come out in favor of renewing the FISA-centered spy state. He promotes endless war in favor of the State of Israel, perhaps the most powerful special interest group in Washington. The Federal Reserve is as powerful as ever, with Trump demanding at least as much inflationary easy money as the last three presidents, all of whom were profligates when it came to both monetary and fiscal policy.
Sure, some “culture war” policies have changed. On issues like abortion and federal funding for the most strident LGBT schemes, there have been a few adjustments to federal policy. But culture-war politics has always been a sideshow for the governing elites. The culture war has helped provide the illusion that political power actually changes hands every election cycle. In reality, the partisan back-and-forth of the culture war presents no threat to the system that ensures the continual exploitation of the taxpayers by the permanent government and special interests. Judicial appointments provide similar cover for the ruling elites. That is, Democrats and Republicans appoint judges of differing flavors, but federal judges, who are literal employees of the federal government, almost by definition will never make rulings that delegitimize or fundamentally question the federal government’s ability to operate freely and with easy access to taxpayer resources. In this respect—and in every other respect, as well—Trump’s judicial appointments are exactly what we’d expect from any Republican administration.
Why Pro-Regime Populism Fails
Clearly, the current wave of Trump-style populism is an abject failure, and the degree of its failure will become more apparent as time goes on. It has amounted to little more than further empowering the executive state so it can be more fully and easily wielded by both political parties in the future in collaboration with the governing elites.
Moreover, the elite’s control of the electoral system—through the party nomination processes and through legal limits on third parties—demonstrates one of the reasons why this type of populism has no prospects for success in the short term. The parties simply are not going to nominate and run a candidate who is truly anti-regime. No mass movement of populists will get a candidate who is not deemed to be at least tolerable by those who decide who gets the party nominations.
But there aren’t any prospects for success for Trump-style populism in the long term either. This is because Trump-style populism is effectively pro-regime populism and, therefore, fundamentally perpetuates the status quo. This style of populism assumes that democracy “works,” that the status quo legal framework of the regime is a good thing, and that the federal government ought to remain “united,” intact, and generally strong. That is, in this way of thinking, it is a mistake to want to dismantle the federal government or to advocate for “limited government.” Rather, this type of populism tells us that it’s a good thing to centralize power and increase it—and that the real goal is simply to wield this power.
In one variation of this—the variation favored by paleoconservative Sam Francis—is the assumption that we just need enough angry working-class rural Americans to vote for restoring the good ol’ days, at which point the governing elite will give up and hand over the reins of the federal government to the new incoming elected figureheads.
Well, this vision of working-class electoral victory essentially came true in 2024. The victorious Trump coalition was built largely on “working class” non-college-educated men, especially in rural areas. The Francis plan worked, and these so-called “middle-American radicals” scored a national victory. And it has gone nowhere. If anything, it has morphed into an Israel-First-America-Last militarist regime that is now overwhelmingly concentrating on pointless wars in the Middle East while the deep state remains fully in power. Federal spending goes up, the surveillance state is stronger than ever, and the regime will only be much more powerful and ready to be deployed against the people who voted for Trump. In the Francis plan, it is essential that federal power be strong so that conservatives can use that power to effect some sort of voter-approved revolution. But this plan only works if the “good guys” keep winning elections. That’s not happening.
Here in the real world, the same governing elites that were in power before Trump was sworn in remain firmly in power today. And they will continue to do so under this administration.
The problem with this sort is populism is not that it is hopelessly naïve about how governing elites work, and about democracy—although it certainly is that. The main problem is that it is fundamentally a pro-regime type of populism. Sure, these types of populists will complain that the federal government is “too big” or “corrupt” or otherwise doing things incorrectly. But, these complaints rarely rise to the level of questioning the fundamental usefulness of the regime or the regime’s legitimacy. For every complaint about the regime’s corrupt nature, these populists will repeat well-worn bromides about the need for “unity” and “restoring confidence in America.” Moreover, anyone who actually opposes the regime and calls for its dismantling it is denounced as “hating America.” For these populists however, “hating America” is simply code for hating the regime. And, that fundamentally is why this sort of populism will never amount to much good. It is fundamentally against any radical opposition to the regime. In the eyes of this ype of populist, it is a bad thing to hate the regime. Opposition to the American state is only acceptable so long as complaints don’t rise to the level of actually wanting to dismantle it—via, for example, secession. Instead, this type of populism is romantic in nature, hoping for some imaginary future golden age of good governance from the same regime and ruling elite that systematically destroyed what the populists pine for.
This unwillingness to really oppose the state and its power is predictable from people who imagine themselves as someday wielding state power to serve their populist goals. Why oppose state power when what you really want is to take it for yourself? This is hardly an innovation of modern-day American populists. To find a similar attitude, we can look to the bourgeois supporters of the French Revolution. One explanation of why the revolution only led to runaway state power is that the bourgeois middle classes did not support the revolution primarily to reduce the power of the central state. Rather, in this view, the bourgeoisie’s main interest was simply opening up to the bourgeoisie the French regime’s countless government jobs and its system of patronage. Before that, these lucrative benefits had been available only to the nobility, the clergy, and other favored non-bourgeois groups. (See Ralph Raico for more on this.)
On the other hand, if the goal is to destroy the regime’s power, then the only real solution lies in wholesale opposition to the regime and governing elites behind it. Real opposition means, at the very least, refusing to recognize the regime as legitimate, and not credulously pinning hopes for change on the regime’s preferred state-controlled forms of political participation, such as voting. Real opposition to the state means supporting dismantling and fracturing the state apparatus into smaller pieces. Only through this method can power be checked through the formation of new, smaller states out of the old ones. This allows for the creation of counter-elites and governing institutions outside the control of the status quo elites. Real opposition means abandoning the usual propaganda of the regime, which is based on calls for “national unity,” “loving America,” and “the rule of law.”
This is where the real battle of ideas is. The real battle is to expose the American state for what it is: illegitimate, corrupt, beyond salvaging, immoral, and much too large. This is to be followed by ceaseless calls for the dismemberment of the regime’s state into constituent parts, the municipalization of the country, the decentralization of its military power, and the destruction of the fantasy that state power can be used “for good.” This is in contrast to the tepid, safe calls for a united America—to be ushered in by the next group of Trump-style populists who will “vote harder” and somehow succeed where today’s Trump populists have failed so miserably. The current style of pro-regime populism merely perpetuates the status quo, and that’s exactly how the ruling elites like it.