American Political Development and the Trump Presidency 9780812296921

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American Political Development and the Trump Presidency

AMERICAN GOVERNANCE: POLITICS, POLICY, AND PUBLIC LAW Series Editors: Richard Valelly, Pamela Brandwein, Marie Gottschalk, Christopher Howard A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

American Political Development and the Trump Presidency

Edited by Zachary Callen and Philip Rocco

U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N S Y LVA N I A P R E S S PHIL A DELPHI A

Copyright © 2020 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Callen, Zachary, editor. | Rocco, Philip, editor. Title: American political development and the Trump presidency / edited by Zachary Callen and Philip Rocco. Other titles: American governance. Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2020] | Series: American governance : politics, policy, and public law | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019032125 | ISBN 9780812252088 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Trump, Donald, 1946– | Political development. | United States—Politics and government—2017– Classification: LCC E912 .A44 2020 | DDC 973.933092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032125

Contents

Introduction: An Unsettled Time

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Philip Rocco and Zachary Callen

PART I. PARTY LEGACIES AND THE 2016 ELECTION

Chapter 1. The Scrambled Cycle: Realignment, Political Time, and the Trump Presidency 13 Julia R. Azari

Chapter 2. The Limits of Policy Feedback as a Party-Building Tool

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Daniel J. Galvin and Chloe N. Thurston

Chapter 3. Presidential Nominations, Factional Conflict, and Prospects for Democratic Party Reform 40 Travis M. Johnston

PART II. RACE AND NATION IN TRUMP’S AMER ICA

Chapter 4. “One People, Under One God, Saluting One American Flag”: Trump, the Republican Party, and the Construction of American Nationalism 55 Gwendoline Alphonso

Chapter 5. Trumpism and the Dual Tracks of American Polarization 68 Paul Nolette

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Contents

Chapter 6. Black Lives Matter from Wilson to Trump: Social Movements in APD 85 Megan Ming Francis

PART III. GOVERNANCE BY DISRUPTION

Chapter 7. Whose President? Donald Trump and the Reagan Regime 101 William D. Adler

Chapter 8. The Policy State and the Post-truth Presidency

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Philip Rocco

Chapter 9. Finding Stability and Sustainability in the Trump Era: Medicare and the Affordable Care Act in Historical Perspective 130 Andrew S. Kelly

Chapter 10. State-Building as Parlor Trick: Trump, the Executive Branch, and the Politics of Deconstruction

151

Zachary Callen

PART IV. REFLECTIONS

Chapter 11. Donald Trump and the End of American Politics Adam Sheingate

Chapter 12. Trumpism and the Future of American Political Development 178 Robert C. Lieberman

Notes 195 List of Contributors Index

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Introduction: An Unsettled Time Philip Rocco and Zachary Callen

As the words of his inaugural address echoed across a rain-soaked National Mall, Donald Trump cut a hole in time. His presidency, he said, marked a breaking point in American politics. No longer would a “small group” of elites reap the benefits of government while “forgotten Americans” bore the cost. “Now,” Trump suggested, “we are only looking to the future.” Even so, the speech telegraphed a dystopian present; the United States had become a landscape of rusted-out factories, cities teeming with crime, and national borders defenseless against terrorist threats. Gone was the promised land that Trump’s predecessors foretold in their inaugural speeches, the “city on a hill” that America was destined to be. Trump identified few, if any, sources of political possibility. America would be “made great again” not through providence, but by Trump himself: “I will fight for you with every breath in my body—and I will never, ever let you down.” Rather than binding the nation through conciliation and compromise, Trump promised nationalism: “The bedrock of our politics,” he said, “will be a total allegiance to the United States of America.” He labeled his foreign policy with a phrase burdened with an isolationist and anti-Semitic history: “America First.”1 Trump’s presidency has created an atmosphere of tension that pervades American political life. On the one hand, Trump identifies and authorizes the grievances and fears of loyal followers spread across rural and suburban communities across the country. On the other hand, his actions in office have sparked credible fears about the future of U.S. democracy. Soon after Trump’s election, there emerged a cottage industry of nonfiction literature—written

2 Philip Rocco and Zachary Callen

by academics, journalists, and pundits—devoted to interpreting the present U.S. political situation. A sample of the titles is instructive: Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America Fascism: A Warning How Democracies Die How Democracy Ends How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them How to Save a Constitutional Democracy It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America The Despot’s Apprentice: Donald Trump’s Attack on Democracy The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic As this list makes plain, anxiety is the genre’s central feature, and for good reason. In many respects, the Trump presidency has disrupted patterns of presidential governance. Trump is a figure untethered to republican virtues, who refers to the media as “the enemy of the people” and dehumanizes minorities, women, immigrants, and anyone who opposes him. Yet the anxiety runs deeper. Increasingly, even conservative commentators seem lost in the era of Trump and worried about the future of U.S. democracy itself, some going so far as to urge voters to turn to the Democratic Party.2 Does Trump portend a disruption not only in political style but in regime type in the United States?3 Given what we know about how democracies die, can it happen here? How “bad” is the situation? How much “worse” is it than our observational abilities allow it to appear? And, if regime change is indeed happening, can it be reversed? Answering these questions, as the chapters in this volume show, requires us to understand how politics play out in time. One cannot consider whether “it can happen here” without historical data on regime change. It would be difficult to assess Trump’s potential impact on democratic institutions without analyzing how these institutions—including and especially the executive branch—have developed over time. What explains the rise of Trump and, indeed, of Trumpism writ large? Without attending to the intersecting developments of political parties, racial ideologies, and governing institutions, no answer to this question would be forthcoming. To explore how time and temporality have shaped the Trump presidency, we draw on the research

Introduction 3

tradition of American political development (APD). APD research explicitly aims to consider how interactions among a range of institutions result in the shifting of power and authority in American politics, with careful attention to complex processes unfolding over time.4 By paying close attention to the factors that contribute to both continuity and change in American politics, APD research is ideally situated to take a longer view and help make sense of the Trump presidency in a period when other approaches to American political science continue to struggle. In one way, time provides a methodological instrument for evaluating the Trump presidency. Leveraging historical comparisons across national contexts allows us to identify the key variables that have contributed to democratic collapse in the past, providing a battery of diagnostics for assessing the health of American democracy in the present. Historical analysis also reminds us that for millions of African Americans, the threat of authoritarianism is a reminder of the past rather than a future dystopia.5 Not only did local “pockets of authoritarianism” exist throughout the United States well into the 1960s, but the South remained a one-party apartheid state, with a formalized apparatus for disenfranchising and terrorizing African Americans.6 The absence of political competition in the South contributed in fundamental ways to American state formation, including the buildup of a robust national security state and a clumsy, fragmented welfare state.7 Tracking change over time reveals the social forces that disrupted these authoritarian orders and identifies the forms of struggle and mobilization that may be necessary to (re)produce democracy in America. Yet time is not merely a methodological tool for comparing the Trump presidency with past moments of political disruption. Rather, understanding Trump’s rise to power as well as his effects on political institutions demands attention to how time works as a substantive component of politics. As Elizabeth F. Cohen argues, time “is required for almost any exercise of liberty that people seek to protect through the enforcement of social contracts, constitutions, and laws.”8 Politicians’ terms in office are expected to end after regularly scheduled elections. Statutes contain clauses that define their effective date and, in some cases, their date of expiration. On the other hand, constitutional rights are assumed to be “locked in” for the foreseeable future. In general, APD research reminds us that political action takes place on a “prior political ground of practices, rules, leaders, and ideas, all of which are up and running.”9 Although Trump projected the image of a “dealmaker” like no other, he could not immediately displace any policy or governing

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routine simply because he wished to do so. Indeed, his status as a political outsider has in numerous ways proved to be a liability rather than an asset. Despite these formal strictures, institutions evolve over time in ways that their designers did not necessarily intend. Creative agents within and outside the state routinely act on preexisting rules, reinterpreting their meaning, evading them, or repurposing them to serve new ends.10 A glance across the political terrain reveals the unsettling of taken-for-granted rules and procedures intended to enhance democratic governance. Past presidential administrations have thoroughly undermined transparency measures like the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Advisory Committee Act.11 Since the 1990s, the intensification of congressional partisanship has all but eroded norms of reciprocity and restraint in the legislative branch. Filibusters, government shutdowns, and debt-limit showdowns have embedded themselves as routine parts of political life.12 Polarized majorities have also found new ways of disempowering rank-and-file members by concealing the content of draft legislation.13 At the state level, sophisticated mapping software has helped legislators to draw enduring partisan gerrymanders that disadvantage opposition parties at the polls. States have also seen a resurgence of new voting restrictions, which the U.S. Supreme Court further legitimated by striking down the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance provisions in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision.14 All of these developments, which preceded Trump’s election, have contributed to the weakening of democratic processes that the Trump administration could more easily exploit. Because political actors are motivated by the prospect of change, they invoke time to legitimate their actions, either by claiming fidelity to deep historical traditions or by promising a radical break with the past. Presidential challengers—noting the “brokenness” of American politics—portray themselves as the vehicle for a new moment in politics. Trump has gone a step further, portraying the 2016 election as a “moment of crisis” in which “our very way of life” is threatened.15 As Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Doron Taussig argue, Trump “apocalyptically contrast[s] the country’s supposed demise with the deliverance that only he can provide.”16 Political actors also invoke time by concealing or revising public ideas about historical struggles. The emergence of so-called color-blind approaches to racial policy has helped to sanitize and reimagine the history of discrimination against African Americans in the United States.17 In Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion relied heavily on a comparison of voter turnout statistics from the 1960s and early 2000s, ignoring

Introduction 5

the historical record of persistent racial discrimination compiled by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.18 Trump has used both rhetoric and policy to advance a version of American history—a story of a country falling into economic ruin and facing an unprecedented onslaught of illegal immigration—that conflicts with official statistics.19 After federal courts blocked Trump’s initial ban on travel from Muslim majority countries, administration lawyers redrafted the ban to neutralize Trump’s self-described desire for a “Muslim ban” and his promotion of anti-Muslim propaganda videos on Twitter.20 Thus when the Supreme Court upheld the third version of the ban in Trump v. Hawaii by a 5–4 vote, the Court explicitly acknowledged Trump’s racist tweets about Muslims as matters of fact, but decoupled these speech acts from the exercise of authority: Plaintiffs argue that this President’s words strike at fundamental standards of respect and tolerance, in violation of our constitutional tradition. But the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility. In doing so, we must consider not only the statements of a particular President, but also the authority of the Presidency itself.21 The Court’s defense of executive power highlights an even more important temporal dynamic: time bounds the exercise of sovereign authority. Leaders in both authoritarian and democratic regimes invoke the notion of “wartime”—an exceptional circumstance—to justify the suspension of existing liberties and the extralegal expansion of state authority. Yet as Mary Dudziak has noted, ongoing military conflicts have made “wartime” into “normal time.”22 This shift has helped to create a permanent “state of exception,” in which rights and liberties can more readily be suspended.23 The Trump administration has adapted the legal and rhetorical strategies of past administrations to defend its suspension of immigrants’ rights at the southern border of the United States. De jure and de facto policies meant to deter immigration at the southern border have resulted in a humanitarian crisis of their own. The Trump presidency is thus an unsettled moment in two senses. Trump’s rise to power is the product of an unsettling. The weakening of party organizations, the reconfiguration of racial orders, and the withering of institutional trust created a target-rich environment for a self-styled “outsider”

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presidential candidate to foment race-, gender-, and status-based resentments. To some extent, prior developments shape the institutional world Trump inhabits. In the absence of a robust executive branch and a polarized and institutionally weakened legislative branch, Trump’s rise to power might appear less consequential than it does. Nevertheless, Trump has also unsettled the politics of the presidency as well—using the office less as a tool for policy change than as an instrument of cultural warfare. In turn, Trump’s rhetoric has helped to animate a violent brand of white supremacy and antiSemitism among members of the so-called alt-right. Trump has simultaneously served as a focal point, unifying—at least temporarily—a national coalition of opponents, who have turned out to protest his actions in record numbers.24 To better understand this unsettled moment, the chapters in this volume analyze the Trump presidency in the context of American political development. We asked contributors to consider how long-term shifts in the organization of political parties, the implementation of public policy, and the construction of political ideologies shaped Trump’s victory in 2016 and the unfolding of the early months of his presidency. Contributors also considered the ways in which Trump’s presidency constitutes a break with historical trajectories, as well as the implications of his presidency for future political developments.25 While all the contributions address these overlapping themes, we have grouped the chapters under four distinct headings. Given the pivotal role of parties in structuring American political development, the chapters in Part I consider how party legacies have shaped the politics of the Trump era.26 As Julia Azari argues, political science analyses of Trump’s leadership must consider the increasing instability in the party system. In particular, Azari interrogates our understanding of political time, arguing that Americans have entered a new phase of ongoing political disjunction. Yet whereas Trump’s party has focused on the creation of a durable (if syncretic) ideology and powerful emotional appeals to voters, Democrats have focused their attention on interest intermediation.27 Perhaps as a result, Daniel J. Galvin and Chloe N. Thurston suggest, the party presumed that the creation of generalinterest reforms such as the Affordable Care Act would result in gains at the ballot box. Even so, rising partisanship has limited the effectiveness of this strategy, with important implications for Democrats’ long-term competitiveness. Further, as Travis Johnston shows, Democrats’ setbacks in 2016 are unlikely to generate interest in party reform. Focusing on the power of

Introduction 7

institutional structures, Johnston stresses how the lack of widespread demands for nomination reform, especially from the parties’ elites, has created barriers to change. The chapters in Part II turn our attention to the politics of race and national identity. The struggle for racial justice has been a central axis of American political development. From the abolition of slavery until the 1960s, “pockets of authoritarianism” existed in the United States, making it a “late, late democratizer.”28 Yet the story of racial equality is not a linear narrative of progress; instead, it has been defined by persistent contestation.29 The chapters here consider how racist and nationalist elements in Trump’s rhetoric, and the reactions to Trump by party leaders and social movements, fit into this developmental story. Gwendoline Alphonso argues that Trump’s campaign rhetoric draws on a tradition in Republican Party ideology that blends neoliberal narratives about individuals and choice with ascriptive, nativist appeals to “forgotten” white Americans. Alphonso reveals how Trump draws on older racial tropes present in Republican political thought, if generally more sublimated in contemporary politics, and fuses these tropes with a contemporary spin to exceptional political effect. Yet as Paul Nolette claims, Trump has struggled to find support for his more nativist positions among Republican elites, in terms of both rhetoric and policy. This struggle has prevented Trump from delivering on his populist and nativist promises, steering him instead toward an unpopular neoliberal agenda. This development perhaps reflects a broader intransigence of American political institutions on racial issues, and the fact that the politics of race often play out beyond institutional boundaries as the result of social movements, as the chapter by Megan Ming Francis shows. Her evidence illustrates how the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched a crusade to protect black lives from lynching and mob violence during the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. And even with a president hostile to civil rights, the NAACP found that mass protest could be the catalyzing force behind revolutionary change in the political and legal branches. By drawing on the lessons of the past, Francis argues, social movements like Black Lives Matter have the potential to catalyze significant institutional and ideational developments on race in the Trump era. Part III takes up the question of Trump’s engagement with the American state. In one respect, Trump’s 2016 campaign was similar to the campaigns of other contenders in the Republican primary. Trump promised to disrupt how “big government” worked and to return power to “the people.” Yet

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unlike the other primary contenders, and certainly unlike his Democratic challenger in 2016, Trump celebrated his lack of expertise about how government worked: better to drain the swamp than learn how to navigate it. In an age of collapsing confidence in government institutions, Trump’s anti-expert gambit was a reasonable one. Yet upon taking office, Trump faced the challenge of managing the prodigious set of institutions that define the U.S. “policy state.”30 Trump’s distance from and lack of interest in the workings of government have led to a highly idiosyncratic style of governance. As William Adler shows, despite Trump’s populist message in the campaign, he has lacked a governing cadre that could convert this message into a comprehensive program. This lack may help to explain the consistency of Trump’s agenda with elements of the so-called Reagan regime. Trump has also used executive orders to distinguish himself from the Reagan regime—particularly on the issues of trade and immigration. For this reason, Adler contends that Trump is a disjunctive leader. While Trump marks a departure from the Reagan regime, his “anti-analytic” style of leadership exposes underlying tensions in the use of expert advice in the policy state. As Philip Rocco argues, although expert analyses have thwarted Trump’s legislative agenda, Trump has been more successful at using policy knowledge to sow doubt and uncertainty about significant political issues ranging from climate change to election integrity. The most impor tant legislative development in the first one hundred days of Trump’s presidency was the administration’s assault on the Affordable Care Act, the signature legislative accomplishment of Barack Obama. Although the administration benefited from polarized public opinion on “Obamacare,” Andrew Kelly contends that the law has created a strong base of support among health-care providers (as opposed to beneficiaries) who may well erect a barrier to policy retrenchment. Although the law may remain stable, however, its capacity to adapt to future political and technical challenges remains an open question. Beyond individual policy enactments, Trump’s presidency may also have broader effects on the American state, as Zachary Callen suggests. Callen’s chapter shows how the Trump presidency is unlikely to dismantle the federal state but will instead reorient the federal government’s activity away from public-goods production and toward the consolidation of private gains. Part IV features two reflections from leading APD scholars on how Trump’s presidency may affect the study of American democracy. Adam Sheingate’s chapter offers a critical reflection, arguing that scholarship on American politics can benefit from a greater level of intellectual arbitrage

Introduction 9

with comparative work on democratization, political economy, and racial politics. Coming from this broader perspective, Sheingate argues that Trump himself is not the threat to democracy. Instead, the real danger is an American democracy that bounds from reactionary leader to reactionary leader. Robert Lieberman concludes the volume by considering how APD research helps us understand why the Trump era is an “unsettled time.” Examined individually, none of the elements of the Trump era—polarization, executive overreach, racial resentment, or weak democratic norms—is entirely new. Yet, as Lieberman shows, what makes the Trump era a time of political uncertainty and disorientation is the heightened salience of each of these political patterns at a single moment. The approach of APD scholars, he argues, allows us to consider how the conjunction and collision of multiple institutional orders over time has affected American democracy in the present. On the ultimate question of what Trump’s election means for American democracy, the chapters in this volume do not speak with a unified voice. Further, we do not provide a final word on what has already proved to be a highly unpredictable moment in American politics. Rather, the contributions here invite readers to question existing assumptions about the political dynamics that unleashed, and have been unleashed by, Trump’s election. Whether the Trump presidency ultimately results in “durable shifts in governing authority” or not, we submit that political scientists and the public alike can benefit from an APD approach to thinking about American politics. Given the sense of uncertainty that pervades the present moment, improving our understanding of how the institutions and ideas that support liberal democracy endure over time, and the conditions under which they might fail, seems more essential than ever.

Chapter 1

The Scrambled Cycle: Realignment, Political Time, and the Trump Presidency Julia R. Azari

The study of American political development offers two distinct perspectives on the unique politics of the 2016 election and the unexpected Trump presidency: realignment and political time. After Trump secured the nomination, many observers anticipated a sweeping Clinton victory that would shake Republican dominance in the South and West, suggesting an electoral “realignment.” When this scenario failed to materialize in November, scholars began to mine another venerable American political development theory, Stephen Skowronek’s concept of “political time,” in order to make sense of what had happened.1 Political time, which analyzes presidents in the context of decades-long partisan regimes, helps shed light on Trump’s unusual relationship with his party and his application of its philosophy. Both realignment and political time suggest an intimate connection between change and stagnation in American politics. Events since 2016 have thus far delivered both, however. Trump’s nomination, election, and time in the White House have in some way shaken the foundations of American government; yet in other ways, stagnation and inability to take action are evident. The American political development (APD) approach is uniquely suited to addressing this seemingly paradoxical clashing of political structures.

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This chapter takes up the question of where the Trump presidency might fit in political time, with a particular focus on how political time applies to the twenty-first-century presidency. Do its cycles progress as they have in the past? The Trump administration, at the time of this writing, is in its second year. These assessments are admittedly difficult to make in real time. However, the dynamics of Trump’s nomination and general election campaign, the response of the Republican Party and other actors, and the politics of his first year in office provide some clues about how scholars might draw on cyclical theories to understand contemporary politics. The theory of political time suggests that presidential leadership is part of a cyclical pattern in American politics. Presidents who make “reconstructive” politics are those we typically regard as “great”: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). These presidents define the terms of their leadership and rebuild institutions.2 What binds this group is not solely political skill; they are distinguished by the points in time when they took office. Reconstructive leaders are elected when the polity is ripe for a new set of institutions and ideas, and are not connected to the leaders, icons, and ideas of the “regime” that the reconstructive leader displaces. These periods of presidential leadership typically encompass both party transformation and deep changes in the American state—both building, as in the case of FDR and the administrative state, and dismantling, as with Andrew Jackson and the national bank. Reconstructive presidents are typically followed by “articulation” leaders, who struggle to carry on the values of their predecessors while making a distinct political mark. The politics of disjunction occur when the political era has come to a close; the hallmark circumstances are that the party coalition assembled by the most recent reconstructive leader has begun to fracture. The disjunctive stance includes many of the presidents considered historic failures: Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Car ter. Comparing Trump’s presidency to the wreckage of this last group has provided both intellectual satisfaction and political comfort. In some respects, the early days of the Trump presidency have borne out these two theoretical perspectives. But they are difficult to reconcile. Trump’s disjunctive place in political time is intuitive and logical: the schedule adheres to the timetable from previous eras, and Trump demonstrates some of the key characteristics and political appeals of a late-regime leader. At the same time, the Trump era signifies a distinct turn in American politics. “Trumpism” has captured political imaginations as an ideology distinct from

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conventional conservatism—a potentially novel combination of familiar elements of nationalism, preservation, and populism.3 Few political terms bear the names of disjunctive presidents, with the exception of Depression-era “Hoovervilles.” Trump seems poised to alter the Republican Party in ways perhaps previously reserved for reconstructive or at least articulation leaders. Disjunctive leaders manage, as long as they can; they do not, as a general rule, transform. It is still early to suggest that Trump’s presence on the U.S. political scene has transformed it. However, the Trump candidacy and presidency have altered the political lexicon with memorable phrases such as “Some, I assume, are good people” from his 2015 announcement speech and “American carnage” and “America First” from his inaugural address. As with reconstructive presidents and realignment victors, Trump’s early initiatives, including the “travel ban” and the promises to “build the wall” have reshaped the terms of debate, setting priorities for political opponents. Past presidents who were most notorious for their norm violations were not disjunctive leaders. Rather, they were reconstructive ones like Andrew Jackson, who stepped into the policy process as no executive before him had, and FDR, who grew the executive branch and violated the well-established norm that presidents should serve only two terms.4 The distinctiveness of reconstructive politics is not limited to reshaping discourse and violating previously established informal boundaries. To destroy and create new state institutions is also an important part of transformative leadership. This aspect of reconstructive politics also points to a scrambled cycle. It is worth remembering that Ronald Reagan led a “rhetorical reconstruction,” changing the terms of debate about government, without destroying any of the agencies he had promised to eliminate. Although Trump’s first two years in office have fallen well short of his promises to redesign institutions from the bottom up, the administration’s actions toward immigrants, from “zero tolerance” family separation to altering asylum policy following the 2018 midterms, constitute noteworthy shifts in the state-society relationship. Trump’s first months in office also fall into line with the possibility of a “perpetual politics of preemption,” which Skowronek argues may be especially endemic to the Reagan era. Preemptive leaders, a group that includes Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, come to office as opposition presidents when the political order is still robust. In contrast with reconstructive leaders, they are unable to deeply alter the institutional or

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political environment. As Skowronek writes, “The weakening of political affiliation as a basis for presidential action combined with the growing resilience of established institutions portends a gradual convergence toward opposition leadership in a relatively resilient regime.”5 One driver of the preemptive cycle is the development of the American state; complete institutional rearrangement on the level of Thomas Jefferson’s, Andrew Jackson’s, or Abraham Lincoln’s is much harder for contemporary presidents.6 Party matters here as well; the close and bitter divisions of American politics cast presidents of both parties in an opposition role to some degree. Candidatecentric, individualistic politics also confer advantages on preemptive leaders, as Skowronek notes in his 2011 volume. Bill Clinton’s attempt to hand off the presidency to a chosen successor, Al Gore, ended in a popular vote victory, despite a loss in the Electoral College. Five years after that book was published, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would repeat this combination. Both Clinton and Obama benefited from a set of political norms that prized personality and authenticity. Both presidencies also illustrate the double-edged nature of the stance—when presidential authority rests on authenticity claims, the president is vulnerable to character charges. Some of these charges inevitably stick. Each of these preemptive hallmarks applies to the Trump presidency: the hurdles in passing health care reform demonstrate the difficulty of dismantling the state; the forty-fifth president faces a fierce partisan opposition; and the authenticity claims that bolstered his campaign have given way to character criticisms that have intensified since taking office. There have been brief glimpses of an even stronger version of “third way” politics, such as Trump’s meetings with Democratic congressional leaders, Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-California).7 However, perpetual preemption is an inadequate framework to use for understanding Trump. There is little doubt that his experience differs sharply from that of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or George W. Bush. The politics of Trump and the 2016 election combine elements of different leadership stances. This combination is the product of an institutional arrangement in American politics in which the mechanisms that guided the passage of political time are very different from past iterations. Both realignment and political time rely on particular assumptions about how events unfold in American politics. Cyclical theories rest on the assumption that particular classes of events recur, and that the causes and effects of specific events—realigning elections, reconstructive presidencies—bear some similarities over time. The 2016 election and its repercussions allow us a

The Scrambled Cycle

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unique opportunity to interrogate those assumptions. This analysis begins with a discussion of realignment and its critics, and continues with an exploration of how institutional change has scrambled the progression of political time. The weakness of parties, the strength of partisanship, and the changing role of race in party politics have all altered how political cycles unfold. The implication for Trump’s presidency is that it has the potential to affect politics in ways that are typical of all four leadership stances.

The Promise and Limits of Realignment Theory for Understanding 2016 Realignment theory remains a highly resonant concept for journalists and practitioners, despite having a more mixed reputation among political scientists.8 The “alignments” that form the theoretical basis for the realignment approach are certainly real; race, religion, ethnic background, geography, and socioeconomic factors have long driven partisan attachments, and the current party system is no exception. The idea that these stable alliances shift periodically is intuitively appealing, as is the sense that all elections are not alike; periodically, contests are fought over new issues, and some election results signify new underlying political dynamics.9 As with the term mandate, however, the contemporary preoccupation with realignments likely reflects the need to find meaning in competitive elections and to infuse legitimacy into a political system often looked on with suspicion.10 The extensive coverage of realignments in the 2016 cycle was not, in reality, all that different from the debates about the 2008 or even 2004 elections. Writing for the Washington Post, John F. Harris identified the Republican victories of 2004 as possible evidence of a shifted political agenda and a durable Republican advantage.11 Four years later, Democrats swept national contests, and pundits asked once again if a fundamental shift had occurred. Questions about a possible 2016 realignment took on a different character: after Trump’s victory in the Republican primaries, many analyses rested on the assumption that he would appeal to new constituencies and alienate traditional ones. However, Trump’s candidacy may have produced a recalibration rather than a realignment.12 The 2016 results differed from the previous two cycles in that the midwestern “blue wall” formed by Michigan and Wisconsin crumbled, taking Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Ohio with it; the 2018 midterm elections suggest that these areas have not permanently turned red. Explanations for the collapse of the 2016 “blue wall” abound, but many of

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the voting patterns reflect trends set in motion in the late 1970s and early 1980s: white voters tended toward Trump, while minority voters preferred Clinton. A substantial gender gap remained.13 Can we explain why the election defied so many norms and customs, and yet in other ways remained so deeply rooted in established political patterns?

The Mechanics of Political Time Skowronek’s concept of political time is sometimes presented as if its main purpose were to describe the circumstances inherited by presidents. However, as the title The Politics Presidents Make suggests, the cycle of political time is made by presidential politics.14 What matters is what presidents do to the political order. Each “leadership stance” has a par ticu lar relationship to the political order, and the actions presidents take create familiar patterns. These patterns describe the impact of presidential actions on the governing coalition on and on the relationship between policy and politics (see Table 1.1). In the period between 1824 and 1996, the end of a political cycle and the beginning of another were intimately connected. Broadly speaking, presidents like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Herbert Hoover, and Jimmy Carter were unable to reconcile the political imperative of the parties they led with the national problems of the moment. For Pierce, this reconciliation meant working through the mechanics of the Democratic Party for the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. For Hoover, the challenge of blending old and new was in the ideological constraints placed on his policy experimentation to address the Great Depression. In Carter’s case, the reform-oriented policies he sought, from consumer protection to water conservation to addressing “government waste,” were at best unrelated to the priorities of the Democratic coalition. This disconnection between policy and political imperatives defines disjunctive politics and invites correctives from betterpositioned leaders.15 Reconstructive leaders realign politics and policy, taking innovative steps in institution-building but also developing new terms of political understanding to define these institutions. This progression, however, assumes a predictable set of forces in American politics: that the “out” party will be sufficiently constituted to produce an alternative set of ideas, a leader poised to articulate them, and a fluid polity that allows for the creation of new coalitions. Even during the high polarization of the lead-up to the Civil War,

Table 1.1. Trump and Political Time Leadership stance

Classic characteristics

Trump characteristics

Past examples Jackson: destruction of the national bank, creation of the party system Lincoln: end of slavery and antebellum era, Emancipation Proclamation, Thirteenth Amendment FDR: running for four terms, new political and economic commitments, administrative state Reagan: popularization of “government is the problem” ideology Polk: expansionist politics LBJ: Great Society and expansion of the New Deal project George W. Bush: preemptive war doctrine, socially conservative politics A. Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton impeachment proceedings

Reconstruction— opposed, vulnerable

Institutionbuilding Institutional change and destruction Party-building Norm violation Shifting terms of national policy debate

Shifted terms of debate to new focus on religion and ethnonationalism Potential destruction of formal and informal institutions: health-care regime, international alliances and orders, civil-rights enforcement, environmental regulation

Articulation

Ideological orthodoxy Struggle to carve out individual political identity

Preemption

Opposition presidency “Third way” political identification

Disjunction

Outsider politics Inability to reconcile political and policy imperatives Political failure

Selection of socially conservative running mate Dependence on movement conservatives— Paul Ryan, Betsy DeVos Fierce opposition Reliance on character and authenticity claims Abuse of power scandal and impeachment talk Won nomination as party outsider Low approval ratings and uncertain legislative agenda

Car ter and struggles with Democratic Congress

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party politics was in flux due to the disintegration of the Whig Party and the absorption of its members into a variety of political organizations.16 Coalition fluidity is especially important when we consider the progression from articulation to disjunction to reconstruction. Articulation leaders invite challenges to their interpretations of the “faith” and take actions that split often delicate and fraught coalitions. Consider James Polk’s westward expansion, or the efforts of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) on civil rights. However, for political time to unfold predictably, these splits must involve at least one faction that might credibly defect to another party.

Race, Party Politics, and the Political Order From the Jacksonian period through the late New Deal era, American political parties maintained much of their basic structure, creating the backbone for the progression of political time. Elite-centered conventions produced reliable constraints and incentives for presidents and aspirants. The Democrats accommodated regional divisions by requiring that presidential nominees win two-thirds of the convention vote. This so-called “two-thirds rule” allowed the South to maintain a veto in the Democratic Party, and its elimination in the 1930s changed that dynamic. The rules and norms of convention politics shaped the struggle between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft as they struggled to articulate the order set forth by Abraham Lincoln.17 The same dynamic played out in the 1968 convention between Humphrey and his antiwar competitors. The stability of the convention system helped to crystallize factions over time and to regulate the relationships among rank-and-file and elites.18 Robust political parties also featured congressional leaders whose power rested on their mastery of that branch and did not rely on the president. Contemporary party politics offer a weak variation on these themes. Party actors have little leverage over one another, a state of affairs that created coordination problems for Republicans in 2016. Informal mechanisms of coordination have replaced the old convention system. However, elite coordination through endorsements and informal influence—the “invisible primary”—showed its vulnerabilities in 2016.19 Without the ability to coordinate the selection of a broadly acceptable candidate, the Republican Party was vulnerable to Trump’s takeover.20 Individual politicians can communicate with constituents and raise money on their own. Parties still play an

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impor tant role, but they are often viewed with suspicion, and they no longer enjoy monopolies over impor tant political resources. Contemporary parties are both porous and polarized, providing the ideologically committed with numerous opportunities to participate beyond the official officeseeking apparatus. The late-regime politics of the Reagan order are thus quite different from those observed in previous orders. Whereas the actions of articulation leaders like Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, and LBJ aggravated tensions among established factions, similar actions by George W. Bush did not appear to have an equivalent effect. The Republican coalition is an alliance between economic and social conservatives, whose core principles may not always align. Endorsement of amendments and other measures to curb the growth of same-sex marriage efforts brought the issue onto the agenda and created some tension, perhaps, for a few cross-pressured Republicans (including those with gay family members, such as then–vice president Richard Cheney and Ohio Senator Rob Portman). However, for the most part, the tension between social conservatives and moderates has not been an animating source of strife or redefinition in the party; moderation has become a less impor tant force in the party overall.21 The 2016 national platform included a line endorsing marriage as an institution between “one man and one woman” and criticizing the 2015 Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, that struck down state laws against same-sex marriage.22 The 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential races have all featured socially conservative candidates such as Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz. John Kasich and Scott Walker reported struggling with family and personal views on the subject in 2016.23 Nevertheless, a major rift in the party over social questions, like the rift over civil rights that fractured the New Deal Democratic coalition, has not emerged. In Trump’s 2016 candidacy, an unusual disjunctive dynamic emerged. To the dismay of some conservative observers, Trump expressed views out of sync with the party’s Bush-era orthodoxy (see, for example, the series of essays labeled Against Trump published in National Review in January 2016).24 However, Trump chose a running mate with a very socially conservative record, Indiana governor Mike Pence. A familiar disjunctive dynamic is apparent here as well; Republican leaders face very different incentives within their own party coalition and in the electorate as a whole. For example, a 2017 Pew study reported that majorities of independents and Democrats supported same sex marriage—an issue with national majority support—while only

22 Julia R. Azari

40 percent of Republicans did.25 In other words, particularly on social issues, the Republican base has drifted further from the national midpoint. Another issue that split the party during the George W. Bush administration was immigration. Bush also split his own party by attempting bipartisan immigration reform, rejected by conservatives as too forgiving to individuals who had entered the country without documents.26 However, leaders of the opposition generally did not pose a serious challenge to Bush’s leadership or status within the party. The examples of immigration hawk Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) and conservative Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) are instructive: after leaving Congress, Tancredo became a columnist for the conservative news site Breitbart (and officially left the Republican Party in 2010). DeMint eventually headed the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation after leaving Congress. Neither remained in the formal Republican Party to lead a faction challenging the party’s later nominees, either on the convention floor or in Congress. Rather than defecting to the other party—or nascent party alternatives—departing members of the Republican coalition can take their position in a robust establishment of conservative media and extra-party organizations. Thus as the Republican coalition goes through the stages of political time, the result is not partisan realignment but parties’ increasing dependence on these nonelected positions of influence. This configuration has the potential to shape Trump’s presidency. A key source of pressure on him to conform to party ideological orthodoxy lies outside the scope of electoral accountability, particularly in the conservative media establishment. The capacity of members of Congress to serve as an ideological check on Trump, pushing him toward conservative orthodoxy, has been more complicated. For prior disjunctive presidents, independent party leaders and centers of coordination created formidable barriers. Yet many congressional Republicans have been reluctant to stand up to the president in tangible ways. The weakness of traditional party organizations— and the strength of conservative media and think tanks—muffle the dynamic of disjunction. By contrast, Trump’s evident devotion to party orthodoxy on social issues is perhaps more characteristic of articulation politics.

Strong Partisanship American political history has no shortage of deep divisions. In some periods, these have been predominantly across parties, while at other times they have lurked within party lines. What appears to make the twenty-first century

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distinct is the scope of partisanship, which predicts public opinion on a wide range of issues, shapes public evaluations of domestic and foreign policy, and drives vote choice.27 The first implication for Trump’s presidency is that deep and abiding loyalty, combined with weak, diffuse party institutions, have made it relatively easy for Trump to assume Republican leadership.28 It would be a stretch to say that he has engaged in the kind of party-building that Galvin identifies as characteristic of modern Republican presidents from Eisenhower to George W. Bush.29 Yet Trump’s distance from his party is not like that of Franklin Pierce or Jimmy Carter; whether he intended to or not, the forty-fifth president has elevated new issues and led other actors to do things they might otherwise not have done out of loyalty to his presidency. This kind of personalistic leadership is more strongly associated with reconstructive leadership. Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan were all influential builders of their parties. Franklin Pierce, Herbert Hoover, and Jimmy Carter were not. If Trump’s influence on the Republican Party proves to be lasting and significant, this will defy the pattern of disjunction.

Civil Rights and Political Time Scholars disagree about when race and civil rights began to redefine modern party politics.30 What is clearer, however, that after the 1960s, the policy status quo had shifted. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act became the law of the land, altering both policy and political logic. In previous iterations of political time, policy struggles around race centered on agitations to alter the status quo or enact policy protections for African Americans. Abolition was the rising movement that defined the nascent Republican Party in the 1850s.31 The Lincoln-through-Hoover era in political time featured complex racial politics: the passage of the civil war amendments, the passage and subsequent court rejection of civil-rights legislation, the failures of Reconstruction.32 The legal and policy decisions that shaped the Jim Crow South also led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a concentrated, cross-institutional movement to lobby for antilynching legislation.33 These efforts were ongoing through the New Deal era. Between FDR and LBJ, of course, civil-rights protection became a focal point. The shifted political and policy logics have several effects on the current era that distinguish it from previous ones. The relationship between racial

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conservatism and the status quo has changed. This change is asymmetrical; racial liberals and activists continue to press for social change and government action. The script for racial conservatism is less clear. There are a number of policy outlets for what social scientists describe as “racial resentment.” These include opposition to affirmative action, opposition to welfare programs associated with black recipients, and concern about the impact of immigration.34 Furthermore, while previous political orders were built on uneasy intraparty compromises about race, there is increasing evidence that race constitutes an important axis for contemporary polarization. The Republican and Democratic Parties traditionally took divergent positions toward immigration and the status of African Americans. Republicans favored better treatment of blacks but more restrictive immigration, and Democrats were more conservative on black-white issues but embraced (European) immigrants.35 Immigration and black-white relations have since the 1960s been compressed onto a single axis. American politics was racialized in this manner prior to Barack Obama’s presidency, but a growing body of evidence suggests that the Obama years amplified the effect.36 Perhaps most striking, and most impor tant for thinking about the unfolding of political time, is Michael Tesler’s finding that racial attitudes had a greater impact on the 2016 presidential vote than on the 2008 presidential vote.37 The implications for studying the racial dynamics of the 2016 election through an American political development lens are twofold. First, with respect to political time, the Obama and Trump presidencies function somewhat as we might expect preemptive and reconstructive presidencies to function. Just as Woodrow Wilson brought Progressive ideas to the White House decades before the old order had given way, and Richard Nixon’s priorities foreshadowed some of what the next era would bring, Obama’s presidency can be seen as laying the initial groundwork for a more racialized polity. Trump has drawn heavily on racial politics throughout his campaign and his presidency. Since taking office, he has signed executive orders banning travelers from some Muslim countries from entering the United States, denounced National Football League (NFL) players for kneeling during the national anthem as an act of racial protest, and pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio from charges related to his violation of civil-rights protections. These were all actions that, in the language of political time, have reshaped and even disrupted racial politics.38 However jarring, this continuity between the Obama and Trump presidencies cannot be ignored. Although

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their actions, statements, and coalitions differed greatly, as to be expected, their presidencies appear to have been received in racial terms. Like a reconstructive leader, Trump’s presidency appears to be poised to recast the terms of debate in substantially—if not fully—ethno-nationalist terms. Returning to the concept of a boiling point allows us to gain some insight into why the 2016 election invited so much invocation of realignment terminology. Decades of coded racial appeals, without overt policy manifestation or honest confrontation, may have brought a segment of the electorate to the boiling point that Burnham described. What remains to be seen is whether these kinds of demands can be satisfied, and at what cost to American society. The reliance of twenty-first century politics on symbolic appeals and partisan loyalty may have rendered policy responsiveness that much more elusive.

Moving Forward As we seek to analyze these conditions, what can scholars take from existing cyclical theories? In light of the many elements of leadership stance that Trump embodies, is political time still a useful approach? Scholars of American political development can still find usefulness in the political time formulation. The utility is not so much in placing presidents within the typology as in identifying the impact of presidential action and examining the dynamics of the president-party relationship. First, how presidents affect their coalitions depends on the substance of the issues. Actions that challenge racial orders have a different impact from those that take a side on debates about economic issues or procedural issues (such as the direct primary for Theodore Roosevelt). The scrambled nature of the contemporary political time cycle may suggest that racial orders are distinct from other aspects of the polity. The shifting of the racial status quo after the 1960s means that presidential action, symbolic and substantive, on racial issues, has a different impact than presidential action did in previous iterations of political time. Second, contrary to common perception, the political time approach does not strictly privilege structure over agency, discounting individual leadership characteristics and decisions. Rather, the political context helps to shape the impact of the decisions that different presidents make—decisions that we might expect to vary across individuals. The implication is that analyzing how presidents fit within political time requires considering the impact of their

26 Julia R. Azari

actions rather than their behav iors alone. For understanding the Trump administration, this consideration is especially crucial. Paradigms in presidency research that emphasize the legislative success rate are not equipped to deal with the full range of implications of the Trump administration. Studying political time, even as it moves through a scrambled cycle, draws our attention to how presidents affect politics more broadly, including how they inform party coalitions, political discourse, and the state. Fi nally, political structures affect political orders. In The Politics Presidents Make, Skowronek acknowledges that the norms and expectations of presidential politics as well as the president-party relationship have changed significantly over time, resulting in rhyming as well as repetition across different eras. The impact of the development of the administrative state is well covered in earlier works, which argue that real political reconstruction is difficult to achieve in a more developed state. In the contemporary political landscape, the weakness of party organizations alongside the strength of partisanship also affects the progression of the political cycle. Weaker parties mean that presidents face fewer independent sources of party power to push back against the president’s ideas or develop alternatives within the party framework. Strong partisanship means that party coalitions, however, are more likely to resist fracturing.

Conclusion Changes to representation, party politics, and the national conversation about race have altered the mechanisms that drove previous political cycles. These changes can help observers to reconcile the paradoxical features of the 2016 election and its aftermath, in which politics appeared to be simultaneously fundamentally altered and deeply anchored to past patterns. Considering the altered mechanisms of political decision making also helps to explain how the Trump presidency has thus far featured characteristics of multiple leadership stances. Previous scholarship in this vein has suggested that reconstructive leadership may be difficult or impossible, but less attention has been devoted to whether the other leadership stances may also be altered in the future. The challenge of aligning politics and policy suggests that perpetual disjunction, not preemption, may be a grim possibility for presidential politics. Disjunction itself appears to have changed, however. We might expect disjunctive leaders to have more leeway to effect party change and shatter institutions, a possibility that will offer little comfort to Trump

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critics. Furthermore, the articulation elements evident in a system that prizes symbolism and ideological orthodoxy may deepen the stagnation of disjunction. This political stagnation provides both opportunity and incentive for a reconstructive turn. Changes in the mechanisms that drive the political cycle, however, cast doubt on the institutional capacity of presidents and parties to undertake this task.

Chapter 2

The Limits of Policy Feedback as a Party-Building Tool Daniel J. Galvin and Chloe N. Thurston

Politicians and political observers have long treated policy success as if it were tantamount to political success, assuming that the enactment of significant legislation would create supportive constituencies that would reward the party at the voting booth. Indeed, the notion that public policies generate feedback effects that result in electoral benefits for parties is so commonly held that it has become almost an unstated premise of political thinking. In 2018, for example, President Donald Trump suggested that the GOP tax cut was providing a boost to the Republicans’ midterm electoral prospects, tweeting, “Great Pollster John McLaughlin now has the GOP up in the Generic Congressional Ballot. Big gain over last 4 weeks. I guess people are loving the big Tax Cuts given them by the Republicans, the Cuts the Dems want to take away. We need more Republicans!”1 Just prior to Trump’s inauguration, writers on the left similarly encouraged state-level Democrats to enact policies explicitly “aimed at creating reinforcing feedback loops that will further empower progressive policymaking . . . [and] mobilize beneficiaries to protect the benefits they enjoy.”2 The anticipated party-building effects of such “feedback loops” can also mobilize opponents to block policy enactments. In 1993, Republican strategist William Kristol famously warned that the enactment of Bill Clinton’s health care plan would generate feedbacks that would tilt the electoral balance of power in the

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Democrats’ favor for many years to come: “Its passage in the short run will do nothing to hurt (and every thing to help) Democratic electoral prospects in 1996. But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse—much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for ‘security’ on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests.”3 The presumed policy-party connection also has deep roots in political science scholarship. Whether the topic has been Civil War pensions, minimum wage increases, voting rights, labor laws, or tax cuts, political scientists have long assumed that voters express their enthusiasm for the policy benefits they receive by voting for the party they associate most closely with the policy’s enactment.4 Scholars of American political development (APD) and policy feedback have further explained how new policies, once implemented, can “create a new kind of politics” by setting in motion self-reinforcing processes that effectively “lock in” policies, bolster their political supports, and alter subsequent political developments.5 Recent scholarship has pursued this line of inquiry even further, examining how, “if policies do indeed make politics, rational politicians have opportunities to use policies to create a future structure of politics more to their advantage” including “using policy to shape the larger structure of partisan politics.”6 For example, as Sarah Anzia and Terry Moe have shown, the construction of state-level public sector labor laws was widely expected to “advantage the Democratic Party, just as the expansion of private-sector unions had.”7 At the same time, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez has shown that policy feedback can also be deployed “as political weapon, showing how groups and politicians can use legislation as a means of disadvantaging their opponents in durable ways over time.”8 Suzanne Mettler and Mallory SoRelle summarize the mutually reinforcing relationship between policy feedback and party-building as such: “Policies may foster partisan identities associated with the protection of particular public programs and, in the process, enable parties to mobilize voters who rely on them, thus turning those parties into devoted defenders.”9 Most existing scholarship in this area, however, has tended to examine policy feedback effects in isolation from other factors that may shape a party’s electoral prospects more directly, such as efforts to bolster the party’s organizational capacities and enhance its campaign operations. Indeed, upon inspection, the basis for thinking that policies are capable of building durable electoral majorities, or are good substitutes for the more tedious work of organizational party-building, is quite thin.

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Our aim here is to sketch out the limits of policy feedback as a partybuilding tool. We synthesize insights from a diverse range of scholarly perspectives in political science and draw upon historical and contemporary examples to illustrate these limits, paying par ticular attention to policy developments and party dynamics set in motion under President Barack Obama that have proved constitutive of Trump-era politics. We make three interrelated arguments: First, policies do not always, or even very often, generate their own political supports. Second, even when they do, there is little reason to think they will cement partisan loyalties. Third, and finally, although policy-building and party-building are symbiotic and mutually dependent, they do fundamentally different things. In the concluding section, we suggest several ways in which the APD approach can be used to help sort out the complex relationship between policy and party-building.

The Limited Lock-in Effects of Policy Feedback When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law in 1964 in spite of the opposition of the medical community, he wagered that once enacted, senior citizens would mobilize in continued support of the program and cement Medicare’s future.10 Indeed, the post-enactment history of Medicare is often hailed as an archetypal example of how powerful feedback processes can ensure that a policy, once enacted, generates its own self-reinforcing dynamics over time. Policies may indeed induce new investments by key stakeholders, incorporate earlier opponents as supportive constituencies, and reconfigure the political terrain in ways that make their reversal unlikely. But as recent scholarship has shown, policies do not automatically or even necessarily create those conditions. Instead, policy feedbacks that generate self-reinforcing dynamics à la Medicare are but one of many possible future courses a policy might take. Sometimes, policies fail to take hold in the first place; other times, policies can produce self-undermining dynamics or “negative feedback effects” that cause them to “unravel” over time or be “eroded or reversed.”11 Policy makers may have little ability to influence which of these paths a policy takes, as the nature of policy feedback—whether self-reinforcing, self-undermining, negative, or eroded—may be shaped by contextual factors. These include the degree of support the policy receives at the outset, the partisan context during enactment and implementation, design features of the policy itself, and administrative challenges that may arise.12 Political polarization may also

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undermine the routine “policy maintenance” that is needed for policies to function in a crowded “policyscape.”13 Moreover, when policies do manage to resist repeal or erosion, their most important supports may not come from voters. This possibility may be particularly likely for policies lacking visibility or easy traceability to the policy makers who enacted them—a condition that applies to many of the “submerged” policies that make up the contemporary American policy landscape.14 An example is the charitable deduction, which has been a part of the tax code since 1917 and which has “mobilized charities as powerful stakeholders in the policy’s endurance” while generally remaining out of public view.15 More recently, the politics of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) similarly illustrate how feedback effects can sustain policies without necessarily generating a supportive mass political constituency. Andrew Kelly’s work in this volume contrasts the policies of Medicare—which created an “identifiable and cohesive constituency” transcending socioeconomic, racial, and geographic boundaries—with the ACA, which owes its resilience (thus far) to its ability to mobilize hospitals, providers, and insurers.16 Even policies that are highly visible and traceable may generate feedback effects that erode rather than bolster public support, disempower citizens, or dampen political participation. Studying the consequences of Medicaid concentration for political mobilization, Jamila Michener has found a negative relationship between the presence of high levels of Medicaid users in a county and political participation, including voter turnout and local organizational strength.17 While Michener finds that the geographic concentration of a program’s users may in some contexts diminish political participation, others have found that that the quality of a citizen’s experience with a policy can also influence political participation. Negative experiences with a policy can erode support among its constituents or disempower citizens who interact with that policy, as Joe Soss finds in the context of welfare program design, and as Vesla Weaver and Amy Lerman demonstrate in their work on citizens’ experiences with the carceral state.18 Moreover, irrespective of a policy’s visibility, traceability, or experiential effects, it can also simply fail to move public opinion. As Joe Soss and Sanford Schramm’s study of welfare reform reveals, even when Democrats employed a deliberate strategy to use welfare reform to move mass opinion toward investment in anti-poverty programs, the effort failed to significantly change public opinion.19 Taken together, these findings do not bode well for parties wishing to use public policies to cement durable party majorities.

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The Obama presidency was marked by many of the features that scholars have pointed to as reducing the likelihood of policy-generated self-reinforcing dynamics, including a partisan context that tended to incentivize opponents to push for designs that make credit-claiming more difficult, and a style of policy delivery that tended to obscure the role of the federal government from its beneficiaries.20 The economic stimulus package passed in the wake of the Financial Crisis and Great Recession offers a case in point. Funds were directed not toward highly visible, hallmark programs that could easily be associated with the federal government in the mold of, say, Hoover Dam, Skyline Drive, or the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Instead, government funding was directed toward programs that, albeit no less crucial, were less visible and exciting, including helping states avoid drastic cuts in public ser vices and public employees; unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other assistance for victims of the downturn; and tax cuts for 95 percent of American workers. And the money that did flow into public works went more toward fixing stuff that needed fixing—aging pipes, dilapidated train stations . . . —than building new stuff. In its first year, the stimulus financed 22,000 miles of road improvements, and only 230 miles of new roads.21 One reason the administration pursued these less visible initiatives may simply be that Republican opposition made it difficult to move legislation through Congress that would have allowed for Democratic credit-claiming. Another is that such projects may have been the most financially responsible ways to generate employment, improve infrastructure, and bolster cashstrapped state governments. In either case, the stimulus package clearly did not generate mass policy feedbacks on the scale needed to benefit the Democratic Party. A year after the passage of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, a Pew survey found that almost two-thirds of respondents did not believe that the $787 billion package created jobs; even among Democrats, only 51 percent thought it had contributed to job creation.22

The Challenges of Cementing New Partisan Loyalties Even when policies do happen to generate supportive constituencies, there is little reason to think they will generate partisan loyalties and lock in reliable

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electoral constituencies for the party’s majority-building purposes. Although it is possible that voters will (1) link the policies they like to the party most responsible for enacting those policies, (2) develop strong party attachments as a result, and then (3) translate those new party attachments into reliable voting behav ior, existing research suggests that each step in that three-step process poses formidable obstacles. The first step—linking favored policies to parties—requires, first and foremost, that voters are able to identify the policy effects at stake. But as a long and venerable tradition of political science scholarship has shown, most citizens have a very limited understanding of how policies operate, many are not aware of policy benefits they receive, and few are able to identify which party is responsible for them.23 Some citizens, to be sure, will be able to appreciate policy effects and associate them with a party, and certain conditions will be more conducive to making this connection than others—for example, when the issues are salient, elite cues are strong, and partisan frames are well constructed.24 But given the multiple cognitive steps citizens must take within a competitive, polarized political environment, their ability to durably link policy benefits to support for a particular party is likely to be limited. More often, causation will run in the opposite direction—rather than develop strong party attachments as a result of favored policy benefits, citizens’ policy views will be shaped by their partisanship. We know, for example, that citizens engage in “motivated reasoning,” meaning they tend to accept information that aligns with their existing beliefs and disregard information that does not.25 Moreover, we know that party identification and elite partisan frames powerfully shape how information is processed, including information about public policies.26 But for more than sixty years, political science has confirmed that party attachments tend to be sticky and slow to change, and that “only an event of extraordinary intensity can arouse any significant part of the electorate to the point that established political loyalties are shaken.”27 Real movement is likely only if there is a shock during a time in which an individual is particularly vulnerable (e.g., developments during the teenage and early college years). Most policies are unlikely to rise to this level of intensity. Thus, most scholarship would suggest that the second step— the development of strong party attachments as a result of newly favored policies—faces steep hurdles. But the third step may be the trickiest of all. Even in those rare circumstances in which voters understand and favor new policies, link those policies to a particular party, and develop new, durable party attachments as a

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result, it is another thing altogether to expect reliable voting for that party.28 Historically, even major changes in party positioning—such as the Democrats’ position on civil rights—produced only very gradual changes in voting patterns.29 Even in cases in which positive experiences with a policy (such as food stamps) lead to greater political participation and indirect electoral gains for the party, there is scant evidence of a causal pathway running from policy mobilization to party conversion and loyal voting.30 There can be little doubt that under some circumstances, policies can generate supportive new constituencies. But even in those cases, support is more likely to be for the continuation of the policy than for the political party most responsible for its creation. Consider Social Security, one of the bestknown examples of a public policy that produced an entrenched constituency ready to mobilize against any threats to their benefits. In a 2010 poll of AARP members, 95 percent of respondents agreed that it was “important that a candidate pledge to protect Social Security as a guaranteed, life-long benefit.”31 Yet rather than translating into Democratic gains, support for Social Security has been strong among senior citizens regardless of party. Policy longevity, at least in this case, would appear to be linked to the generation of crosspartisan support for the program.32 Public support in early 2017 for Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” the ACA while preserving its most popular features also puts this distinction in sharp relief, as it occurred immediately after the electoral repudiation of the party most responsible for the ACA’s enactment. The first clue that voters had not made a partisan connection between the policy features they liked and the Democratic Party was the positive correlation between counties that saw the highest increases in enrollment for Obamacare and electoral support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.33 Joshua Clinton and Michael Sances have further observed that county-level increases in insurance coverage covaried with increases in political participation in 2014 (in both registration and turnout, up to 3 percentage points), but this participation boost evaporated by 2016, thus failing to generate cumulative electoral gains for the Democratic Party.34 Perhaps most revealing of all is Amy Lerman and Katherine McCabe’s finding that Republicans who received new health insurance through the ACA were more likely to support the policy, but not necessarily the Democratic Party.35 As the Republican Party labored to keep its commitment to “repeal and replace” throughout Trump’s first year in office, public opinion revealed strong, persistent support for key features of the policy—no insurance

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denial for those with preexisting conditions, keeping children on their parents’ health insurance until age 26—but respondents did not seem to care which party took credit for their protection.36 Policy makers who seek to enact significant new public policies that both endure and advance party-building objectives appear to face a trade-off in the contemporary era: the policies that generate the broadest support often cut across parties and may even undercut efforts at party-building, while the greater the association between the policy and the party, the more vulnerable the policy may be to retrenchment.

The Distinctive Roles of Policies and Parties Obama’s presidency offers a particularly useful illustration of this trade-off. During his eight years in the White House, Obama focused almost exclusively on achieving significant policy accomplishments, assuming that those policy successes would redound to the party’s electoral benefit in the long run. From the economic stimulus package to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the revival of the auto industry to the Affordable Care Act, new immigration policy to the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, environmental protections to historic treaties, Obama certainly made his mark on national policy. But policy accomplishments are only as durable as their political supports are strong. And Obama, like most modern Democratic presidents, did not do enough to build up those political supports.37 Obama’s policy-centered approach did not appear to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election or boost the prospects of down-ballot Democrats during his two terms in the White House: during that period, Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress (including sixty-two House seats and eleven Senate seats), ten governorships, twenty-seven state legislative chambers, and almost one thousand state legislative seats. At the time of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Republicans controlled more legislative seats than at any time since the party’s founding, while Democrats enjoyed unified government in only six states, their lowest number since the Civil War. Predictably, the early Trump presidency was defined by the swift use of unilateral actions, executive branch directives, and legislation to undo much of what Obama had accomplished. In the waning days of his presidency, Obama acknowledged that policy could not, by itself, produce electoral benefits, generate loyalty to the Democratic Party, or stave off the dismantlement

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of his legacy by opponents. Attention must also be paid to bottom-up organizational party-building, he told former aide David Axelrod: Look, the Affordable Care Act benefits a huge number of Trump voters. There are a lot of folks in places like West Virginia or Kentucky who didn’t vote for Hillary, didn’t vote for me, but are being helped by this. . . . The problem is, is that we’re not there on the ground communicating not only the dry policy aspects of this, but that we care about these communities. . . . Part of what we have to do to rebuild is to be there and—and that means organizing, that means caring about state parties, it means caring about local races, state boards or school boards and city councils and state legislative races and not thinking that somehow, just a great set of progressive policies that we present to the New York Times editorial board will win the day.38 To put it somewhat differently, if policies generated their own political supports, there would be no need for party organization. But as Obama regretfully observed, recipients of ACA benefits did not develop a partisan connection between the policy benefits they favored and the Democratic Party. This lack of connection left the Democrats weakened electorally and the ACA vulnerable to significant revision or repeal under a Republican administration. Party organization was therefore still needed, both to promote policy accomplishments and to build the electoral majorities necessary to preserve and protect those same policies in later rounds. This, after all, is what parties do. To promote and protect a set of policies desired by key allied groups and constituents, parties seek to build legislative majorities and fill key elective offices across the decentralized federal system.39 But parties do not perform these “functions” automatically—they require significant investments of resources, time, and attention from their leaders.40 Party organizations must be built and maintained if they are to help candidates win elections and promote and protect policies. “It’s not rocket science,” retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid said recently. “It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to figure out what needs to be done . . . take a few states every election cycle, maybe three maybe four, and help them develop the infrastructure for good state party organization.” 41 Attractive public policies, of course, can serve as powerful rallying cries in the building of party organization, providing useful incentives for collective action among party activists, groups, and voting constituencies.42 Indeed,

The Limits of Policy Feedback as a Party-Building Tool

37

there is little doubt that “policy position-taking” is integral to the partybuilding project, and that for the purposes of winning elections, where politicians stand is often far more important than what they (or their policies) actually do.43 But while policies and parties are symbiotic and mutually dependent, they operate on different dimensions and do fundamentally different things. Facing recriminations from many corners of the Democratic Party, Obama acknowledged at the end of his presidency that he was so preoccupied with the policy challenges stemming from the Great Recession that he was not able to pay as much attention to building his party organization as he should have: Partly because my docket was really full here, . . . I couldn’t be both chief organizer of the Democratic Party and function as Commanderin-Chief and President of the United States. We did not begin what I think needs to happen over the long haul, and that is rebuild the Democratic Party at the ground level.44 To be fair, Obama did make a handful of organizational party-building moves in his second term—not enough, though, to prevent the decimation of his party’s electoral standing or equip it to resist the rollback of much of his policy legacy under Trump.45 This example serves to illustrate our main point: Policies do not create their own political supports. That’s what parties are for.

Scrutinizing the Presumed Connection Why, then, if policy feedback is such a poor party-building tool, do politicians so often seem drawn to the idea of using policy to expand their parties? The prospect has allured even conservative Republicans. George W. Bush and Karl Rove, for example, sought to use major policies to engineer a partisan realignment in the early 2000s: the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, for instance, was expected to cement the loyalty of senior citizens and help build a “permanent Republican majority.”46 More recently, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) noted that if Republicans enacted Trump’s tax cut plan it would mean “the difference between succeeding as a party and failing. . . . It’s the difference between having a majority in 2018 or losing it.” 47 Perhaps political actors are simply unaware of the many perils and pitfalls along the road from policy enactment to the building of partisan

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majorities. Or perhaps hope just springs eternal. But it is also possible that political actors have drawn a mistaken lesson from history. The Democrats’ electoral and policy successes in the period from the 1930s through the 1960s are so often conflated in composite historical concepts like “the New Deal Order” and the “Democratic Political Order” that it hardly seems surprising that politicians see a connection between policy accomplishments and the construction of durable partisan majorities.48 But that connection, we would argue, is likely more apparent than real. At least, far more scrutiny is needed to flesh out what is causing what, and when the dynamics might be expected to vary. At present, it is not even clear in which direction the causal arrows point. Were the Democrats’ electoral successes in the post–New Deal period really a function of policy feedback effects? Through what mechanisms? How much of a contribution did policygenerated supports make to the party’s electoral prospects, relative to other factors? Or might there have been a third factor that produced both policy feedbacks and electoral successes? For example, as Eric Schickler has shown, key constituency and group bases of the Democratic Party—specifically “CIO unionists, African Americans, Jews, and other urban liberals”—were instrumental in both the formation of Democratic majorities and in the passage of major civil-rights laws.49 But as the organizing capacities of these groups withered after the 1970s, most notably in labor unions, the competitive standing of the Democratic Party weakened, and key policies became more vulnerable to retrenchment, layering, and drift. Was the ostensible relationship between policy feedbacks and the Democrats’ electoral success more a function of group-level processes, or was this relationship contingent on contextspecific factors? And what of the simplest explanation—that causation actually runs in the opposite direction? When one considers the effects of the “Reagan Revolution” on civil-rights enforcement in the 1980s, the partial privatization of Medicare under unified Republican government in the 2000s, or the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, it seems easier to argue that the durability of the Democrats’ key policies depended more on the Democrats’ continued electoral success than vice versa.50 Although policies clearly have effects on parties, we think those effects are likely to be more indirect and instrumental than direct and causal. Taking policy stands and making policy promises, for example, is undoubtedly

The Limits of Policy Feedback as a Party-Building Tool

39

integral to winning elections, and fashioning attractive policy agendas for the party to promote is surely an essential part of building partisan majorities. Being “for” tax cuts and “against” big government likely helped Republicans swell their numbers of elected officials in recent decades, and promising to protect social insurance programs and defend voting rights likely helped Democrats win elections. But on balance, we do not think the effects of policies, once enacted, are likely to offer politicians much electoral benefit. As David Mayhew put it, “I remain convinced that politicians often get rewarded for taking positions rather than achieving effects.”51 Admittedly, our pessimistic view of the party-building potential of policy feedback raises more questions than it answers. But we are hopeful that greater attention to causal mechanisms, historical conjunctures, and configurative explanations—all common themes for scholars steeped in the scholarly traditions of American political development—will yield more precise understandings of this commonly assumed relationship.

Chapter 3

Presidential Nominations, Factional Conflict, and Prospects for Democratic Party Reform Travis M. Johnston

Presidential conventions generally serve two purposes: to formally ratify the nominee and generate enthusiasm heading into the general election. These well-rehearsed events are curated to present officeholders, activists, and other policy demanders as being united behind the party’s nominee. The 2016 conventions, by contrast, featured intense intraparty conflict over procedural motions and substantive issues alike. Rather than unifying divided factions, the conventions revealed deep tensions within the Democratic and Republican coalitions. As the general election neared, pundits and party leaders alike recognized that the 2016 nomination process was flawed and warranted significant reform. National party organizations routinely revise their bylaws after an election, but the historic nature of the 2016 general election and the partisan infighting that characterized the primaries held the promise of more ambitious reform. For Democrats, this mandate called for a further democratization of the party’s nomination process, a system created in response to earlier contested conventions.1 On the Republican side, the reform message was less clear, but a postelection showdown between establishment Republicans and conservative factions seemed likely.2 Or so the situation appeared at the time.

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41

In the wake of Donald Trump’s unexpected November victory, these preelection plans were shattered, but the pressures to reform have persisted, particularly within the Democratic Party.3 Indeed, superdelegate reform remained a key issue in the party’s postelection leadership fight and continued to animate progressive factions demanding reform from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).4 How should we make sense of these efforts to modify the nomination process, and what accounts for the pro-reform faction’s modest and largely symbolic achievements at the 2018 DNC annual meeting? To address these questions, this chapter adopts a historical perspective in examining how the Democratic Party has responded to electoral defeat in previous cycles and how the coalition’s frustration precipitated reform of the selection process. Minor changes to the nominating procedures occur frequently, but windows for major reform can open after elections that feature intraparty debate over the nominee and a subsequent general election upset.5 In studying these previous episodes of electoral upheaval, I specify the institutional and coalitional factors that determine the scope and eventual success of party reform. First, pro-reform factions must be institutionally positioned to enact or compel reform implementation. Significant reform requires not only support from the party’s national leadership, but also buy-in from state-level actors. In many cases, pro-reform factions have leveraged their electoral power to compel national and state leaders to agree to consider reforms after the general election.6 Second, the desire to reform must be cross-cutting and broadly shared within the coalition. The pressure to upset the existing order cannot come from one ideological wing or set of organizational actors, such as grassroots activists or donors. When dissatisfaction with the status quo is widespread and pro-reform factions possess the means to implement change at both the national and state levels, the ensuing reform can amount to a grand reordering of the system, as Democrats learned after the 1968 election with the McGovern-Fraser reforms. These conditions, however, are rarely met. The typical response to reform is less ambitious and better characterized as a disjointed process of institutional layering.7 Furthermore, as old reforms take root, feedback effects and strategic adaptation to the new rules have made it increasingly unlikely that party coalitions will support large shocks to the status quo.8 Consequently, the modern system’s core features of sequential state primaries and candidate-centered campaign finance have remained remarkably stable since their inception.9

42 Travis M. Johnston

Before discussing the post-2016 reform movement, the next section examines how Democrats responded to similar pressures in 1968 and 1980. These elections were marked by contentious nomination battles and general election upsets, but their respective paths toward reform depart significantly from one another. Although both cases offered an opportunity for sweeping reform, the 1980 election and subsequent Hunt Commission ultimately adopted a less ambitious set of proposals. Turning to 2016, I then examine the Democrats’ postelection reform fight and present data on the degree of coalitional support for reform. Although disgruntled factions have continued to call for reform, these demands have been less widespread than their proponents or media accounts would suggest. Moreover, those agitating for reforms such as the elimination of unpledged or superdelegates lacked the capacity to independently enact change at the national level, a crucial institutional hurdle. In August 2018, the DNC did agree to weaken the influence of unpledged delegates, but this compromise reform is unlikely to radically alter the party’s role in future nominations. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of what this period of coalitional tension suggests for party reforms and intraparty conflict more generally.

Lineages of Party Reform Nominating candidates for office is one of the party’s central responsibilities and, for the past fifty years, a subject of intense internal debate. Candidate selection is a closely guarded process that party elites use to manage their brand and ensure that the party’s standard bearer represents the values of the coalition’s policy demanders.10 To rank-and-file voters, however, these procedures can appear confusing and even “rigged” to the advantage of party insiders. Reforming these institutions is no easy task, but under the right conditions significant reform is possible. After the 1968 election, Democrats adopted sweeping reforms offered by the McGovern-Fraser Commission, thereby creating the modern primary system. Yet, even when large reform is institutionally feasible, as it was after the 1980 election, the range of reforms considered by the Hunt Commission was ultimately constrained by the degree of frustration within the coalition. In addition to illustrating the institutional hurdles and coalitional factors that shape the substance of reform, these cases are impor tant for understanding the institutional “terrain” that pro-reform factions faced after the 2016 election.11 More than merely changing the selection procedures, these earlier

Presidential Nominations, Factional Conflict

43

reforms altered the politics of nominations, creating feedback effects that further lock in the existing system.

McGovern-Fraser and the Birth of the Modern Primary System In the prereform era, the selection process was a closed-door negotiation of party insiders. State primaries were, as Harry Truman remarked, mere “eyewash” as their results had little direct effect on the nomination process.12 These “beauty contests” essentially served as a testing ground where candidates could audition for convention delegates by demonstrating their acceptability to voters.13 John F. Kennedy notably decided to compete in the West Virginia primary in 1960 to prove his viability among non-Catholic voters. The official results of the primaries were far less impor tant than how these initial races were viewed by state party leaders. To seal a nomination, candidates needed to build a coalition that would back their nomination in a smoke-filled room at the convention. This system of “boss rule” came to an end with the calamitous Democratic National Convention of 1968. In response to the violence and political chaos at the convention, the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and other party leaders agreed to the creation of a commission to reform the nomination process.14 After the election, the Democratic Party empowered the McGovernFraser Commission to provide new guidelines for selecting delegates—a task that took on new importance in the wake of Richard Nixon’s victory over Humphrey. The subsequent report essentially created the modern presidential primary system, and in doing so ceded much of the party’s power over nominations to rank-and-file voters.15 The McGovern-Fraser reforms, combined with changes to campaign finance, sought to relegate party insiders to more of an advisory role in presidential nominations. Rather than picking the nominees, state leaders and other party elites are invited to work with candidates who themselves face a starkly different political environment.16 The convention’s kingmakers, who once ensured that the nominee reflected a consensus of the party, retained little direct control over the nomination process. Under the McGovern-Fraser system, conventions simply ratify the factional candidate who survived the primaries. Despite their obvious loss in power, party elites were compelled to implement the commission’s report. Antiwar activists and other progressive

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policy demanders represented a significant voice on the commission and used their position to create an open process with binding results. Having publicly established the commission to placate these groups, party leaders were in no position to ignore the McGovern-Fraser recommendations.17 In accepting the report’s proposals, the party committed itself to a path of reform that would be difficult to change.18 The commission’s guidelines asserted that “when State law controls, the Commission requires State Parties to make all feasible efforts to repeal, amend, or other wise modify such laws to accomplish the stated purpose.”19 This clause would have a profound effect on the institutionalization of the reforms. By the early 1980s, most states had ratified the rules on presidential primaries, thereby locking in the new system across the country. The political beneficiaries of these reforms were charismatic outsider candidates like Jimmy Carter who were capable of stealing the nomination from the party’s preferred candidate—that is, until the party adapted.20

The Hunt Commission and the Reassertion of Party Control In 1980, the Democratic Party experienced another electoral defeat preceded by a contentious nomination battle. Though far less tumultuous than the 1968 elections, the 1980 primaries saw considerable partisan infighting between the sitting president, Jimmy Car ter, and a politically insurgent Senator Ted Kennedy. Factions within the coalition were disappointed with Car ter, but the party eventually fell in line behind the incumbent president’s unsuccessful reelection bid.21 For many in the party, Car ter’s general election defeat demonstrated that the nominating “rules should be seriously re-examined.”22 The DNC responded with a new round of reforms led by the Hunt Commission. From the outset, the Hunt Commission departed from earlier efforts to democratize the process. The problem, as they saw it, was not that party insiders possessed too much control, but too little. Rather than strengthening the party’s chances in the general election, the reforms had empowered “militant minorities or inexperienced nobodies from seizing the nomination, as in 1972 and 1976.”23 When the Hunt Commission convened, pundits remarked that the party needed to “make the necessary connection between the distortions of their nominating process and the disasters of their presidential candidates,” and seek to “reduce the number of ‘grassroots’ delegates.”24

Presidential Nominations, Factional Conflict

45

From the commission’s start, this question of how to counter the effects of the McGovern-Fraser reforms remained central. In an early discussion on this topic, one commissioner stated that she wished to know “what specific rules we might start considering very early that could hopefully stop, and even roll back the proliferation of presidential primaries.”25 This idea was brushed aside as being too “abrupt,” but the goal of empowering party professionals was shared by many, including the former co-chair of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, Mayor Don Fraser. As he explained to those present, “A political party is the nominating committee to which the citizens refer the question of who the candidate should be, and I think the political parties have got to take that and accept that responsibility and not give it back to the people until they have at least made a recommendation.”26 In the end, the Hunt Commission took a more modest approach in creating a system of unpledged delegates. The proposal increased the total number of convention delegates, and then allocated approximately 15 percent of the seats to officeholders and other party elites. Rather than being tied to the winner of their state’s primary, these “superdelegates” would be free to support any candidate at the convention. Although less extreme than some of the other proposals, the superdelegate system was by no means uncontroversial.27 Several commissioners expressed concerns about the “legitimacy” of creating “different castes of delegates.”28 The Hunt Commission offered several justifications for the rule change, including the contention that it would make the convention more representative and help with larger coalition-building and party cohesion. In its final and most telling point, the commission explained that the “presence of unpledged delegates would help return decision-making discretion and flexibility to the Convention.”29 In short, pro-reform factions sought to reclaim control over the nomination process, but an outright dismantling of the McGovern-Fraser system was unrealistic and unlikely to succeed. The Hunt Commission is an important episode in the ongoing, disjointed process of reform. Moreover, the case is instructive of the factors that shape partisan reform. Once again, factions within the party expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo. Democrats were frustrated with Carter’s performance in office and deeply disappointed with the outcome at the ballot box. Core groups within the coalition, including the organization’s leadership, were concerned that their inability to guide the process meant that future nominees would neither represent the party’s values nor have a

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high probability of winning the general election. With party leaders committed to reasserting a hand in the selection process, the Hunt Commission’s report was adopted by the DNC in time for the 1984 election, to the public relations benefit of party insider and eventual nominee Walter Mondale.30 Though less profound and entrenched than the McGovern-Fraser reforms codified at the state level, the superdelegate system has proven to be an institutionally resilient feature of the Democrats’ process.

Reforming a “Rigged” System? In most election cycles, neither the media nor the public pays much attention to the rule of unpledged delegates. This changed, however, in 2008 when Hillary Clinton found herself trailing then senator Barack Obama.31 Both Clinton and Obama sought the support of superdelegates throughout the primaries, but with the Clinton campaign struggling to catch up, this lobbying effort received new criticism.32 Clinton’s appeals to party insiders came to be seen as an attempt to subvert the will of the voters. In the end, these efforts proved unsuccessful as Obama received the backing of important party elites, such as Senator Ted Kennedy, and possessed majorities among pledged and unpledged delegates alike. Nonetheless, this episode brought new attention to the status and influence of superdelegates and would set the stage for a similar debate during the 2016 election. After a contentious primary season and general election upset, Democrats found themselves in 2016 out of office and once again reevaluating their nomination process. Despite substantial support from party insiders and large donors, Secretary Hillary Clinton struggled to overcome Senator Bernie Sanders until shortly before the convention. Moreover, the bruising fight exposed party leaders, and the DNC in particular, to criticism for its apparent support of the Clinton campaign. With many Sanders delegates demanding reform at the convention, party leaders agreed to reexamine the nominating procedures after the general election.33 The newly formed Unity Reform Commission was established to study ways to increase participation among the party’s grassroots and, in particular, reforms to the financing of elections and the superdelegate system. From its inception, many doubted whether the Unity Reform Commission possessed the political will to democratize the nomination process.34 Indeed, the complete elimination of superdelegates, let alone larger reforms to address the rising costs of political campaigns,

Presidential Nominations, Factional Conflict

47

has eluded pro-reform factions. In 2018, the party modified its nominating rules, but the scope of these modest reforms was limited by institutional and coalitional constraints.35

Institutional Challenges to Enacting Reform Nomination reform faces several hurdles, starting with the fact that implementation of major reform requires buy-in from national and state party leaders. The leadership of the Democratic National Committee plays an important role in setting the reform agenda and can stack the deck in favor of a preferred outcome. Furthermore, enacting significant change to the timing and funding of elections often requires action at the state level. A reform commission can, as a party official explained, propose an ambitious reform agenda, “but to the degree you can make fundamental changes to the primary process, which is largely run by the states themselves, that will prove difficult.”36 The success of the McGovern-Fraser Commission rested on the fact that state legislatures, largely controlled by Democrats at the time, would adopt the commission’s guidelines on selecting delegates. State party leaders were further incentivized to accept these reforms in order to maintain their state’s influence at future conventions. The real ity facing the Democratic Party following 2016 was quite different. Given that Republicans controlled thirty-two state legislatures and occupied thirty-three gubernatorial seats, the party lacked the capacity to implement substantial reform of the primary system or the financing of elections.37 More modest reforms, including the elimination of superdelegates, require less state-level action, but are equally susceptible to obstruction by party elites. In establishing the Unity Reform Commission, the DNC appointed Democratic strategist Jennifer O’Malley Dillon as the commission’s chair and Sanders supporter Larry Cohen as vice-chair.38 The convention proposal further stated that Secretary Clinton would select nine members while Senator Sanders would choose seven. The remaining three spots, pivotal to forming a winning coalition, were left to the next DNC chair. Consequently, pro-reform factions came to see winning the leadership election as a key requirement to fulfilling their agenda. In February 2017, Representative Keith Ellison, a Sanders superdelegate, was defeated by former labor secretary Tom Perez on the second round of balloting. In his acceptance speech, Perez quickly informed the divided crowd that Ellison would serve as his deputy

48 Travis M. Johnston

chair. The gesture sought to formally tie Ellison, and the progressive grassroots, to the larger DNC.39 Perez’s victory ensured that the organization’s formal leadership remained under the control of what pro-reform factions perceived as the party’s establishment wing. Indeed, many Sanders supporters decried the process as “corrupt” and forecast little change from the status quo.40 While Perez campaigned on a platform of reform, any rule change would require buy-in from other established groups that enjoy a privileged status within the party.

Coalitional Frustration with the Status Quo In addition to institutional constraints, nomination reform requires widespread support throughout the coalition. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, media accounts of partisan infighting were quick to declare an existential crisis in the Democratic Party.41 With respect to questions over the selection process, these reports likely overstate the case. Party elites, from DNC leadership and elected officials to donors and interest groups, have adapted to the current system and face little incentive to agitate for reform. The sequential primary system and the increasing costs associated with campaigning actually empower those groups that have acclimated to the rules, making them less willing to tolerate significant reform. A harder test centers around grassroots voters who felt that their voices were ignored and whom the reforms are supposed to empower. In other words, is the Democratic base clamoring for reform? To help get at this question, Figures 3.1 and 3.2 present survey data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES).42 The figures show the percentage of respondents, by strength of party identification and primary vote choice, who believed that the Democratic Party would be stronger or weaker for having selected Hillary Clinton as its nominee.43 The panels on the left present respondent evaluations made before the general election but after the chaotic July convention. The panels on the right display postelection evaluations of the party’s future strength.44 Prior to Clinton’s defeat, nearly 70 percent of Strong Democrats believed that the party would be stronger for having selected her. Clinton primary voters expressed identical levels of support and, rather than predicting the party’s weakening, 50  percent of Sanders voters agreed. Despite partisan strife at the convention, Sanders primary voters were actually more positive than Weak Democrats and Leaners. Unsurprisingly, the electoral upset dampened

Presidential Nominations, Factional Conflict 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Preelection

49

Postelection

60 50 40 30 20 10

Lean Dem Weaker

Weak Dem Neither

Strong Dem

0

Stronger

Lean Dem Weaker

Weak Dem Neither

Strong Dem Stronger

Figure 3.1. Strength of the Democratic Party, by strength of partisanship as shown by the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Travis Johnston, “CCES 2016, Team Module of University of Massachusetts-C (UMASS),” Harvard Dataverse, 2019, https://doi.org /10.7910/DVN/WBV1KW (accessed February 27, 2019).

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Preelection

Postelection

60 50 40 30 20 10

Clinton Weaker

Sanders Neither

Stronger

0

Clinton Weaker

Sanders Neither

Stronger

Figure 3.2. Strength of the Democratic Party, by primary vote choice as shown by the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Travis Johnston, “CCES 2016, Team Module of University of Massachusetts-C (UMASS),” Harvard Dataverse, 2019, https://doi.org /10.7910/DVN/WBV1KW (accessed February 27, 2019).

optimism about the party’s future strength. Sanders supporters are particularly negative, with nearly 50 percent now expressing the view that the Democratic Party will be weaker for having selected Clinton. Nonetheless, this pessimism is far from universal. Fewer than 20 percent of Clinton voters believe that the party will be weaker moving forward. More important, Strong Democrats remain fairly confident in the party’s future; only 25  percent indicate a belief that the party will be weaker. Hence, while the election depressed evaluations, it did not result in a complete loss in confidence, especially among those subgroups of greatest import. Strong Democrats are crucial to the debate on nomination reform. If the party’s electoral base remains confident in the party’s future or, at least, not devastated by the 2016 election, then party leaders are unlikely to perceive a

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broad coalition calling for nomination reform. In short, combined with the institutional challenges to implementation, pro-reform factions faced an uphill battle in convincing party leaders in 2018 that the rank and file were demanding radical reform.

Symbolic Superdelegates and Party Affirmations In August 2018, the Democratic National Committee met in Chicago for what DNC Chair Tom Perez described as a passionate “family debate.”45 Despite efforts to present a unified public front, the meeting was marked by protest from multiple wings of the party.46 The central question was whether the party would ratify the revised delegate selection rules, amendments to the party charter, and 2020 convention call proposed by the Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC). These proposals, guided by the report of the Unity Reform Commission, represented a concerted effort by party leadership to reconcile the warring factions, and included notable revisions to the role of superdelegates and the branding of presidential candidates. Progressive factions cheered the new rule that superdelegates, now innocuously referred to as “automatic delegates,” cannot vote on the first convention ballot unless a candidate has already locked up the nomination.47 In short, this change meant that superdelegates would be unable to play a decisive role in determining the party’s nominee.48 Though the reform is a victory for Bernie Sanders supporters, it is unclear whether it will have any practical impact. In summarizing the change, the Rules and Bylaws Committee noted that while superdelegates “have never overruled the will of the grassroots voters who form the base of our party, the RBC has a proposed a plan that will eliminate any possibility, as well as the perception, that it could happen going forward.”49 Hence, this reform allowed the party to be perceived as democratizing the process, without weakening its broader control over candidate recruitment, funding, and other organizational responsibilities. Moreover, automatic delegates continue to enjoy a privileged status within the party and can wield considerable influence during the “invisible primary” through endorsements and fundraising.50 In addition to revising the convention’s voting procedures, the 2018 reforms included a new rule for presidential candidates. To the frustration of some on the left, the 2020 convention call requires that candidates “must publicly affirm that they are a Democrat” when declaring their candidacy.51 This rule change helped garner buy-in from those reluctant

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to accept the superdelegate reform but also created tension among Sanders supporters.52 Neither the pro-reform, progressive faction nor the establishment wing can be said to have won or lost all that much. The party weakened the influence of superdelegates, at least formally, and imposed a loyalty requirement on its nominees. Altogether, it seems unlikely that the 2018 reforms will unsettle or disrupt the current system.

Consequences of Unfulfilled Party Reform After an election, out-party organizations consider changing their rules and bylaws.53 Electoral upsets often portend large reforms stemming from renewed discussion about how the process should operate. Big procedural changes to the primary system, however, are extremely rare and difficult to enact. The general pattern of disjointed, institutional layering belies this fact. Between the McGovern-Fraser Commission and the Hunt Commission, the party created advisory bodies after each election to refine the nominating process. These commissions primarily sought to further the goals initiated by the McGovern-Fraser Commission and made relatively minor changes to that end. Instead of assaulting these rules head-on, parties have largely adapted to the primary system and work to leverage their institutional advantages when it comes time to “decide” the nominee.54 In 2016, the Democratic Party tasked the Unity Reform Commission with developing recommendations to create a less top-down and more democratic nomination process. The ultimate impact of the commission’s report remains unclear. That said, the 2018 reforms will likely do little to change the entrenched system of sequential state primaries and candidate-centered finance. The debate over party reform continues, nonetheless, because of its symbolic importance to larger questions about what the party stands for and who controls it.55 Throughout its history, the Democratic Party has struggled to balance the priorities of its various coalitional policy demanders.56 Indeed, the 2017 DNC leadership fight came to represent an impor tant proxy war among the different groups that constitute the party. The party hoped to settle these questions with the installation of Ellison as deputy chair and the adoption of the 2018 compromise reform package. Yet, despite these overtures, divisions will likely persist as the party struggles to define its place and legislative priorities in the age of Trump.57

Appendix. Evaluations of the Strength of the Democratic Party, 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study Preelection evaluations Much weaker Party identification Lean Dem 5.3 Weak Dem 10.3 Strong Dem 3.7 Primary vote Clinton Sanders

2.9 13.7

Weaker

Neither

Stronger

Much stronger

N

18.4 21.8 4.3

38.2 29.5 22.7

26.3 24.4 38.7

11.8 14.1 30.7

76 78 163

4.9 6.8

21.4 28.8

38.8 38.4

32.0 12.3

103 73

Postelection evaluations Much weaker

Weaker

Neither

Stronger

Much stronger

N

Party identification Lean Dem 17.1 Weak Dem 13.1 Strong Dem 3.3

31.7 16.4 22.1

36.6 37.7 41.0

7.3 31.1 17.2

7.3 1.6 16.4

63 96 178

Primary vote Clinton Sanders

16.7 34.0

43.8 31.9

21.8 17.0

16.7 2.1

135 73

1.0 14.9

Source: Travis Johnston, “CCES 2016, Team Module of University of Massachusetts-C (UMASS),” Harvard Dataverse, 2019, https://doi.org /10.7910/DVN/ WBV1KW (accessed February 27, 2019).

Chapter 4

“One People, Under One God, Saluting One American Flag”: Trump, the Republican Party, and the Construction of American Nationalism Gwendoline Alphonso

Donald Trump’s steadfast avowal of nationalism has prompted much speculation regarding his Republican credentials and ideological fit within the party.1 In many ways the brand of nationalism articulated in his 2016 campaign for the presidency, which emphasizes racial and ethnic identity, appears to eschew the color-blind, free-market ideology of the GOP establishment. Does this race-based identity nationalism signify a shift in Republican Party ideational and coalitional politics? The answer to this question is multifaceted and can be answered in multiple ways, analyzing, for instance, GOP voter alignment; mobilization of new or existing coalitional groups, or both, within the Republican tent; Trump’s personal characteristics and message; and institutional change, such as alterations in Republican nomination rules. Paul Nolette’s contribution to this volume also addresses a similar inquiry and highlights growing ideational divisions between party elites and voters. This chapter, however, examines Trump’s campaign discourse, across sixty-two campaign speeches,

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focusing squarely on its discursive construction of nationalism, and analyzes the alignment of this discourse with preexisting Republican party ideology.2 I suggest that the heightened appeal to identity-based American nationalism in Donald Trump’s campaign is not new or unprecedented. Instead, I argue, Trump has merely built upon a long-standing hybrid strain of conservative ideology, termed here as ascriptive neoliberalism, which has been integral to Republican ideology since the late 1960s. Although anchored in arguably antithetical ends,3 of upholding individual rights or social hierarchies respectively, the two political traditions of liberalism and ascription have interpenetrated in a variety of ways throughout American history, illustrating an evolving cultural and political lexicon.4 Since the late twentieth century, starting with presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, Republican construction of Americanness has centered on marketbased liberal values of individual economic opportunity, self-reliance, and freedom, which are blended with racialized images of market-centered legitimacy and delegitimacy. Poverty, criminality, hard work, law-abidingness— all central to Republican neoliberal construction of economic progress and American markets—have been cast in racially laden terms, generating a distinctive narrative of American greatness and nationhood that associates neoliberal market-economic values and racial identity. This hybrid discourse has been used to accommodate a range of members under the Republican party tent, including economic conservatives, libertarians, and religious conservatives, many of whom are racial progressives, while also successfully accommodating racial conservatives—namely, white southern Democrats— into Republican ranks.5 I demonstrate that Trump’s formulation builds on and retains the essence of this ideological strain, highlighting the link between racial identity and (market-based) liberalism that now constructs the political legitimacy of newer groups within the Republican fold, such as working-class whites, while delegitimizing other groups, like Mexicans and Muslims. Trump should thus be seen as another stop along the ideational and coalitional path set in play by the conservative ascendance of the late twentieth century and the marginalization of moderate Republicans since, and demonstrates the ongoing ideational salience of the southern and southwestern base to the New Right, expanding what was once its “Southern strategy” and its narrative of American peoplehood. In this way my analysis highlights the identity roots and racial character of the late-twentieth-century Republican turn to neoliberal values whose underlying ascriptive subtext was always

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present, understood, and capable of expansion, stoking more active contestations over American identity, as we see now.6 American political development (APD), as an evolving approach that looks to historical mechanisms to analyze governance structures and outcomes, is especially useful in evaluating the onset of Trump’s version of nationalism and will be utilized in this chapter in three distinct ways. First, prompted by APD research, the chapter analyzes Trumpism not as a discrete phenomenon but as informed by a preexisting historic arc of party development, paying attention to the possibility of both a durable and dynamic politics. Although time continuously reshapes politics, time does not render every thing in flux; therefore, “a timely politics rejects the dichotomy of stability and change, focusing instead on how fast- and slow-moving processes exist side by side along different scales of social organization.”7 The chapter thus evaluates both what has changed and what endures in assessing Trump’s nationalist rhetoric, his embrace of identity-based nationalism, and the dynamics of Republican Party change and continuity that this development heralds. Second, the chapter also highlights the significance of ideas, narratives, and discourse in analyzing when and how political change occurs. As Victoria Hattam and Joseph Lowndes rightly assert, “to understand political change, we need to attend to discourse, since this is where political identifications and social cleavages are made and remade.” Political discourse is an important focus of any study of political change to the extent that “the very words used, the political appeals made, and the identifications evoked” are “the ground of politics, the site of change.”8 Visions of American nation and peoplehood are particularly potent forms of political discourse, often serving as “communicative discourses” insofar as they can communicate a compelling collective and shared narrative of what is “American” that can construct coalitions across diverse interests and garner widespread support for policies.9 Thus, shifts in the content of political discourse, the association of certain ideas with others, and, in particular, specific stories of American nation and peoplehood portend changes (or not) in formal governing authority and in the electoral coalitions those changes represent. Fi nally, the chapter highlights the importance of grand narratives in charting American political development, typically examined as “orders,” “regimes,” or “traditions.” The chapter suggests that the ascriptive neoliberalism of the GOP underlying Trump’s nationalist discourse demonstrates one of the newest intertwined formulations of ascriptivism and liberalism, two

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grand scripts that have enduring value in American politics. Building on work on parties and political ideologies, the assumption here is that parties in their quest for electoral success formulate coherent and historically contingent ideologies, which trade off politically against multiple common values and ideological proclivities that Americans widely share.10 The analysis that follows is divided into two parts. The first section is theoretical and evaluates literature on party and policy development to illuminate the ideological blending of race and liberal values in late-twentieth-century Republican neoliberalism and its attendant story of American nationalism. The second, empirical section then analyzes Trump’s campaign transcripts and other materials to demonstrate Trump’s reliance on this blended ideology and his modifications.11

Ascriptive Neoliberalism in American Party Development and Late-Century Republican Ideology Liberalism and ascriptivism are two central political ideologies that have endured through American history.12 American liberalism is an individualcentered tradition based on commercial liberty and political equality, among other things, that promotes the expansion of individuals’ rights. Contemporary market-based conservatism, or neoliberalism, in its focus on individual rights, free markets, and equality, invokes the political tradition of liberalism.13 In contrast, ascriptivism, or ascriptive Americanism, is a groupbased American tradition that seeks to uphold existing biology-based social hierarchies in policies and in political institutions, such as those based on race, gender, or sexuality.14 Multiple-traditions literature tells us that even though the winners and losers in political hierarchies alter and change over time, the ascriptive illiberal impulse and its ongoing political value to political actors and their parties endure, always alongside the inclusive political tradition of liberalism. Despite their contradictory goals (inclusion versus exclusion) and their divergent foci (individuals versus groups), the two traditions are far from distinct. Instead they have often been merged by political actors and parties in this and in previous historical eras, toward varied political and policy ends.15 It is thus both possible and worthwhile to chart political change and its reliance on prevailing and evolving cultural tropes by tracing shifts and patterns in the precise ways in which the two traditions have been blended and aligned in different political eras. Complex conceptual iterations of Americanness are

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latent within political amalgamations of the traditions, often demonstrating the interlinking of an open (liberal) notion of what is “American” with a more restrictive (ascriptive) one.16 Republican late-twentieth-century interlinking of market-based liberalism with ascriptivism is especially evident in the party’s welfare, anti-poverty, and crime policies.17 Joe Soss, Richard Fording, and Sanford Schram point to the distinctive turn since the end of the 1960s toward “neoliberal paternalism,” whereby the promotion of market-centered liberties and values, such as free competition and personal responsibility, were combined with, and predicated upon, regulatory governance of the poor that advocated extensive surveillance, monitoring, and penalties for the noncompliant. The authors then trace the Republican-led neoliberal paternalism in poverty and crime policies to its ascriptive roots, its “path . . . smoothed by the racial basis of existing institutions and by symbolic appeals to racial anxieties.”18 Other work on felony disenfranchisement also demonstrates the “hybrid character of liberalism” with its “exclusionary liberal-republicanism and its liberal ascription.”19 These works, among several others, point to a distinct ideological shift since the late 1960s toward a politicized “ascriptivization” of market-based liberalism as a development that accompanied (and facilitated) the rise of modern conservatism in the Republican Party. “Character” and “personal responsibility” emerged as part of the new Republican political script, in which universal economics-based values, goals, and responsible economic behav ior achievable by all were cast as American and deserving of policy attention, and those linked to “bad” (economic) values were cast as undeserving outsiders.20 Party scholarship attests that party politics in the late twentieth century thus came to be centered on a new valuational dimension, in contrast to the previous material axis between the two parties that existed when they clashed solely over issues of tangible economic redistribution.21 The GOP’s new conservative coalition—of economic libertarians, cultural traditionalists, the religious right, and national security hawks, in addition to states’ righters and racial conservatives—thus hinged on a unifying values-based neoliberal Americanism. Yet the roots of this universalistic script were inextricably mired in racial contexts, legacies, and preexisting racial imagery on which the narratives relied and affirmed; the politicization of crime and “law and order,” for example, was first invoked by southern segregationists to oppose civil-rights protests and racial integration.22 Law and order then gained greater salience when GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater used such appeals in 1964 to

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advocate for states’ rights and to oppose race-based economic redistribution, thus successfully courting white southern Democrats who were disaffected by the Democratic Party’s growing race-conscious civil-rights agenda.23 Richard Nixon revived Goldwater’s iteration of law and order, stressing it as a common prerequisite for the economic progress, free enterprise, and prosperity of all Americans, stating in his acceptance speech during the 1968 Republican National Convention: “And to those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, there and here is a reply: Our goal is justice for every American. . . . We cannot have progress without order. . . . Let us commit to progress. . . . American private enterprise is the greatest engine of progress ever developed.”24 Through their Southern strategy, Goldwater first, then Nixon, thus embraced a distinct form of neoliberalism with accepted ascriptive meaning, which was cast in universalistic valuational terms and also contained racial contexts and goals.25 In so doing, Goldwater and Nixon launched an ideology attractive to social and economic conservatives that also served to facilitate the exodus from the GOP of race-conscious groups, such as African Americans, as well as social moderates.26 The term ascriptive neoliberalism used in this chapter highlights these long roots of ascriptive racial appeals in late-century GOP conservatism. Such a characterization emphasizes the ongoing racial ascriptive dimension of late-twentieth-century party competition and the formulation of this dimension within Republican Party ideology, particularly in contrast to the previous nonascriptive neoliberalism embraced by the party during the mid-century post–World War II era.27 This historical party-centered interpretation runs counter to analyses less attentive to party ideational development as well as scholarship that maintains the “race absorption” thesis.28 The interpretation in this chapter instead aligns with party and policy development scholarship that pays greater attention to the southern origins of and membership within the current GOP conservative alliance in contrast to the party’s previous ideology and coalition.29 As others have pointed out, the political science emphasis on economics and redistributive issues in politics, along with the conclusion that issues of race in the last two decades of the twentieth century have been absorbed into these dimensions, “does not capture the range of goals and members in the modern alliances”30— nor, I add, the contexts and enduring ideational strains of preexisting cultural (often racial) narratives used to construct the new form of neoliberal Americanism.

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Thus from the perspective of party ideological development, the late 1960s era was a critical juncture insofar as there was a durable shift toward ascriptive neoliberalism in the GOP. The “critical” quality of this ideational development lies in the “enduring shift in how policy issues are (now) predominantly conceived,” fitted within party ideologies, which “advantages one political coalition (color-blind GOP alliance) over its rivals (race-conscious Democratic ones).”31 In substance, as discussed next, Trump continues to invoke the oncesouthern ascriptive neoliberalism that has shaped color-blind Republican ideology for the past five decades. In his 2016 campaign rhetoric, Trump redirected the party’s muted but consistent reliance on negative cultural imagery of marginalized racial groups, such as poor African Americans, to characterize and exclude newer ascriptive groups—Muslims and Mexicans— and so asserted an identity-based conception of American nationalism that continued to interlink with a values-based neoliberal script of American prosperity, security, and greatness.

Trump: From “Welfare Queens” and “Wetbacks” to “Illegal Aliens” and “Radical Islamists” Since the late 1960s, the construction of Americanism by Republican intellectuals, party elites, and media as one based on neoliberal values such as hard work and personal responsibility has deployed positive and negative cultural images directly associated with distinct racial groups and policies.32 The script of shared American values of self-reliance, hard work, and moral fortitude, universally achievable by all regardless of their ascriptive identities, has long relied on negative racial imagery to pathologize oppositional values of immorality, dependency, and criminality. For example, the success of the Republican-led campaign for welfare reform, to reinstate the value of work over “entitlement,” hinged in many ways on the stigmatization of poor black mothers, as epitomized by Reagan’s depiction of Linda Taylor as a “welfare queen” in his 1976 campaign, which drew on and constructed cultural associations of blackness with drug addition, dependency, sexual promiscuity, and criminality.33 Other Republican candidates, such as George H. W. Bush, continued to reify the ascriptive cultural foundations of law-and-order appeals, through infamous campaign tactics such as the “Willie Horton” advertising campaign in 1988. Launched by a political action committee against Democratic candidate (and Massachusetts governor) Michael Dukakis, the advertisement

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focused on the mug shot of an African American prisoner who had raped a white woman while on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts jail, and was successfully used to delegitimize Dukakis (and his policies) as “soft on crime.” Here too, the success of the Willie Horton campaign depended on negative cultural associations (and fear) of black male criminality in contrast to the promise of an ordered, economically successful American society.34 American color-blind nationalism based on neoliberal values and economic goals, such as American prosperity and economic order, thus calls for Americans to place their responsibilities and identity as hardworking, moral Americans above racial and gender allegiances—all while relying on particularized, ascriptive contexts to give meaning to this image. In its 2016 platform, the Republican Party again invoked neoliberal Americanism to oppose race-conscious policies: We oppose discrimination based on race, sex, religion, creed, disability, or national origin and support statutes to end such discrimination. As the Party of Abraham Lincoln, we must continue to foster solutions to America’s difficult challenges when it comes to race relations today. We continue to encourage equality for all citizens and access to the American Dream. Merit and hard work should determine advancement in our society, so we reject unfair preferences, quotas, and set-asides as forms of discrimination.35 In his campaign for the presidency, Trump too deployed a similar Americanism. His oft-repeated slogan “one people, under God, saluting one American flag” as well as his “Make Amer ica Great Again” campaign underscored a common national peoplehood focused on American economic opportunity and prosperity. His “civil rights agenda of our time” was also stated in universal economic terms: “the right to a safe community, a quality education, and a secure job, . . . economic rights that attach to all Americans.”36 He continued, however, to draw on the long-standing racial contexts and legacies of this form of neoliberal Americanism. For instance, school choice—a central plank of Trump’s color-blind civil-rights agenda—promised to “ensure that every child in this nation, African-American, Hispanic-American, all Americans, will be placed on the ladder of success.”37 This is a prime example of a neoliberal policy framed in terms of common economic American values (material success) but with a long and documented racial history and appeal. Initially appearing as part of the neighborhood schools movement

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in Republican Party platforms in the 1960s, school choice was central to the party’s Southern strategy, upheld both as the means to appease disaffected southern whites seeking to oppose school integration while also presenting education reform as the means for common American economic success.38 Trump’s articulation of school choice illustrates the continued ascriptive neoliberalism commonplace in southern-based GOP conservatism since the late 1960s, which has entangled ascriptive and neoliberal traditions in the construction of American peoplehood as economically responsible, selfdetermined, and vital to national economic prosperity. In another instance of this pattern, Trump targeted “forgotten Americans” throughout his campaign—“hardworking” Americans beleaguered by global threats, special interests, and “rigged” political establishments. Deployed to bring attention to the declining fortunes of blue-collar workers, this economic image too has long ascriptive (racial and gendered) roots that are embedded in the current cultural context in which the image is deployed and its meaning is received. First used during the New Deal, the “forgotten man” image was invoked by FDR to refer to the unemployed white male, the head of a nuclear two-parent white family and the target of the majority of New Deal relief and work policies.39 The racial and gendered, ascriptive identity of such “forgotten Americans” was central to the group’s political value during the Great Depression and thereafter, marking the boundaries of legitimate Americanness to define those who were and those who were not worthy of policy attention. Through ascriptive identity-bound deployment and meaning, “forgotten Americans” thus actively excluded women, transients of both genders (“tramps”), and nonwhites of various ethnicities from American peoplehood and policy redress.40 Richard Nixon revived and similarly highlighted “forgotten Americans” in his 1968 campaign appeal to the “silent majority,” whom he then described in terms of a neoliberal script as “the great majority of Americans—the nonshouters, the non-demonstrators,” who were “not racists”—“they are good people, they are decent people; they work, and they save, and they pay their taxes, and they care.” 41 By contrasting the moral imagery of upstanding “forgotten Americans”—their neoliberal values of hard work, thrift, morality, and abiding by the law—with the negative, racially charged image of rioters, protesters, and those engaged in the “tumult and shouting,” Nixon successfully evaded calls for government action to address residential segregation in the suburbs and racial inequality in the cities.42 Nixon’s political blueprint centered on “forgotten Americans” was thus distinctively ascriptive in its appeal,

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cultural imagery, and outcome, resonating most with “white middle-class voters in the metropolitan South and throughout the nation,” even while constructing a common narrative of Americanism centered on neoliberal values.43 In his appeal to “forgotten Americans,” Trump is drawing on this GOP legacy, which has long interlinked this racial (white) image with common neoliberal values and economic appeal. Yet Trump has also made certain modifications to the GOP neoliberal script of American people and nationhood. First, identity, not values, foregrounds Trump’s construction of Americanness. Trump, like all Republicans since Nixon, also repeatedly mentioned “hard work” as a central descriptor of “forgotten Americans” deserving of policy redress, addressing those “who are working so hard to make [their] life better.” 44 However, in his remarks he more repeatedly highlighted the group’s very identity as Americans per se and not their values or qualities as foregrounding their legitimacy and political inclusion. Addressing supporters in Asheville, North Carolina, for instance, Trump spoke to “mothers, fathers, soldiers and sailors, carpenters and welders” who “above all else, are Americans—and are entitled to leadership that honors you, cherishes you, and defends you.” He continued, “Every American is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect in our country.” 45 Again, in his focus on “angel moms,” as a subcategory of “forgotten Americans,” Trump highlighted this preoccupation with identity over values. Described as “mothers of American children killed by illegal immigrants” and called to stage by Trump at rallies, “angel moms” (almost all of whom were white) were deployed as the “face of [Trump’s] campaign,” according to Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.46 Once again, these women are “angels” not because of their maternal or nurturing values or qualities but because they are mothers of American children who were victimized by nonwhite outsiders, notably “illegal (Mexican) aliens.” Second, in his characterizations of Mexican illegal immigrants Trump deployed long-standing negative ascriptive associations in new ways, positioning the undesirability of a new “them,” wanton outsiders, against that of a common moral “us”: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. . . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” 47 This portrayal draws on the legacy of negative cultural imagery of nonwhite Americans, notably inner-city blacks, as criminal, sexually licentious, and dependent on drugs, which is now transposed to describe a foreign threat to all Americans (including racial minorities) and

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thus continues to construct American group identity (“you”) in terms of neoliberal values (law-abiding, responsible, not drug-dependent, and economically self-reliant). In certain instances, Trump directly invoked the previous politicized negative images of illegal Mexican immigrants during his campaign debates. In the fourth Republican primary debate in November 2015, for example, he endorsed Dwight Eisenhower’s 1954 “Operation Wetback”: “ ‘I like Ike,’ right? Moved a million-and-a-half illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border. They came back. Moved them again beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south. They never came back.” 48 As a militaristic deportation program in 1954, Operation Wetback was officially described by General Joseph M. Swing, its creator, as a response to the “alarming, ever-increasing flood tide” of migrants from Mexico, characterized as “an actual invasion of the United States.”49 As historians have shown, however, more than a law enforcement initiative, Operation Wetback was a campaign to reinstate “the idea that American citizenry was white,” whose goal was to “draw lines between who was and who was not American.”50 Launched two years after immigration laws were expanded to remove for the first time “whiteness” as a prerequisite for naturalization, the program reflected the ascriptive cultural resistance to this legal shift. Trump’s valorization of Operation Wetback, as well as his embrace of militarization to combat an alleged “invasion” by a “caravan” of Central American migrants, further illustrates the long ascriptive roots and goals of his identity-based Americanism. Positive and negative cultural group imagery, of common American people versus “others,” was also evident in Trump’s constructions of another group central to his 2016 campaign: “radical Islamic terrorists,” whom he described as “an evil, sadistic, monstrous enemy,” those who “enslave women and murder gays.”51 Like illegal Mexican immigrants, “radical Islamists” (U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike) were also designated as acute outsiders, a “monstrous enemy” to the American people, in terms that were both ascriptive identity-based (nonwhite, Islamic) and also valuational (evil, criminal, non-liberty-loving). Syrian refugees and Muslims are threats in this context not only to American values of tolerance and freedom but also to the lives of various Americans identity groups, such as American “women and children, gay and straight, Jews and Christians.”52 Trump’s insistence on an ascriptive identity-based conception of American nationalism admittedly shifts the center of gravity away from the

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conventional GOP neoliberal formulation that is identity-neutral and more values-based. In repeated vows to make “Americanism, not globalism, our new credo,” Trump proclaims, “American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. . . . We will put American metal into the spine of this nation.”53 In this formulation, the worth of the product is centered squarely on the fact of its American identity—that it is made by Americans and used in America—without reference to the products’ superior quality or ingenuity, the characteristics more conventionally invoked in free-market-based neoliberal ideology. However, Trump’s emphatic embrace of ascriptive identity over neoliberal values in his campaign does nothing to suggest that ascription replaces neoliberalism in his ideation. In announcing his candidacy, he asserted, “I’m a free trader,” repeatedly claiming, “the problem with free trade is you need really talented people to negotiate for you” and “we have people that are stupid . . . that are controlled by special interests, [so] it’s not going to work.”54 By personalizing and individuating the problem with free trade (as being negotiated by the “wrong” people) Trump eschews a systemic or structural critique of free markets, pledging instead (however incoherently) an allegiance to neoliberal political ideals. Despite his recent high-profile imposition of tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other imports, 42  percent of the thirty-six executive orders issued from Trump’s inauguration through May  11, 2017, dealt with deregulation, economic growth, and free enterprise.55 Moreover, Trump’s racial discourse does not treat all nonwhite “others” as threats to the American people. Instead, in much the same way as others have long embraced so-called model minorities, like Asian Americans, for displaying neoliberal values (for example, in their rates of saving and prosperity), Trump in his campaign discourse embraced certain Muslim populations, such as Saudi Arabians, when it came to their wealth and prosperity: “Saudi Arabia, they make $1 billion a day. $1 billion a day. I love the Saudis. . . . They make a billion dollars a day.”56 Thus, as this section has outlined, it is more appropriate to see Trump’s ascriptive, identity-based articulation of American peoplehood as still deeply intertwined with neoliberal scripts, values, and goals, rather than as an alternative to these. Trump’s neoliberal lineage is especially evident in his explication of “American greatness,” the linchpin of his “Make America Great” 2016 campaign, in which he proclaims, “We are the people that tamed the West, that dug out the Panama Canal, that sent satellites across the solar

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system, that built great dams, and so much more,” who then “started thinking small . . . and became reliant on other countries, other people, and other institutions,” thus losing “our sense of purpose and daring.”57 Here, market products and the values they represent, such as self-reliance, competitiveness, and initiative—critical to the neoliberal agenda—become the very embodiment, the artifacts as it were, of the greatness of the American people, as an identity and a nation.

Conclusion Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign rhetoric articulates an ascriptive identitybased (and not value-based) Americanism that nevertheless continues to strongly invoke the late-twentieth-century Republican neoliberal strain of American prosperity and greatness. In this way Trump’s ideation spotlights the previously muted theme of racial exclusion that has permeated modern Republican neoliberalism since the late 1960s and has been critical to attracting and keeping a faction of southern-based racial conservatives within the GOP coalition, alongside economic conservatives and others. Although Trump’s formulation appears stark in its contrast to the color-blind economic ideologies of conventional Republicans, Trump builds on the racially conservative membership and ascriptive goals that have been accommodated within the GOP since the advent of its Southern strategy, now nationalizing that ideation to cast a wider electoral net. Using negative cultural imagery historically associated with nonwhite groups to continue to exclude other ascriptive groups and to construct a collective narrative of American peoplehood, Trump demonstrates the tenacity and mutability of ideas of ascriptive neoliberal nationalism. Thus, in terms of party ideology, it is more appropriate to see Trumpism not as a transformation of the Republican Party but as another, more extreme pit stop along the pathway of the party’s ideational development—sculpting new, more trenchant forms while using the same ingredients.

Chapter 5

Trumpism and the Dual Tracks of American Polarization Paul Nolette

One of the central features of the 2016 presidential campaign was Donald Trump’s willingness to push back against established norms about what constitutes proper conduct for a presidential hopeful. Time and again, Trump faced intense criticism from both inside and outside of his party for his various remarks about, for example, the press, race, women, and Muslims. His policy positions diverged from Republican orthodoxy in some key areas, and he criticized major Republican figures like John McCain and George W. Bush throughout the campaign. Although many observers predicted that these norm transgressions would cost Trump key votes from within the Republican coalition, Trump in the end received a share of his own party’s voters similar to Hillary Clinton’s share of hers. The same Republican officeholders who had belatedly tried to stop his candidacy eventually fell into line behind him by Election Day. How is it that so-called Trumpism could be both outside of the GOP’s mainstream and yet so quickly accommodated by that party’s leaders? What does Trump’s rise say about the state of contemporary political polarization in America? There are many ways to tackle these questions, but the American political development (APD) concept that the American state consists of “multiple orders” that overlap and interact with one another can help

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provide part of the explanation. Analyzing American politics from this APD perspective emphasizes that the American state is not one entity but instead a product of several overlapping institutions, cultural commitments, and policy regimes. These multiple orders operate simultaneously within American politics even though they often conflict with one another, and tensions among these multiple orders contribute to political change over time. Identifying and explaining these shifting patterns of political authority over time, and examining whether these new arrangements stabilize into consistent patterns, comprise a central project of APD. In this chapter, I focus on multiple cultural orders that have long been part of American political development to help explain the tensions between the Republican elected officials and party leaders (“party elites”) who largely rejected Trump at the start of the 2016 presidential campaign, on the one hand, and the Republican rank-and-file voters who embraced him, on the other. I make two main claims. First, although observers have long noted the growing polarization in American politics, Trump’s rise suggests that polarization among party elites and the mass public is occurring along separate yet parallel tracks. This polarization is parallel in the sense that elites and rank-and-file voters alike from both parties have grown more politically distant from their counterparts in the other party. This parallelism is illustrated, for instance, through measures of congressional roll-call voting showing deepening polarization among Democratic and Republican politicians on policy issues and through public polling of the views of self-identified Republican and Democratic voters.1 Yet this polarization of elites and rank-and-file voters is separate because substantial gaps exist between the cultural traditions emphasized by party elites on the one hand and party voters on the other—particularly among Republicans. Party elites have tended to share a commitment to political ideas based on the American liberal tradition, which emphasizes the importance of individualism using the language of liberty and individual rights as the dominant mode of discourse.2 The 2016 campaign, however, featured increasingly robust challenges to the liberal tradition because of the popularity of competing cultural traditions among the mass public on both ends of the political spectrum. The first competing tradition, republicanism, places “the people” at the heart of politics and suggests that the collective wisdom of regular people is superior to the views of the privileged elite. The second, ascriptivism, elevates the importance of racial and gender group identity in politics. Republicanism

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and ascriptivism, while long part of America’s cultural fabric, were both especially significant elements of the political conversation in 2016.3 These traditions conflicted with the reigning liberalism among party elites in both parties, with Trump’s combination of ideas from both competing traditions posing a particularly significant challenge within the Republican Party. Trump’s ascriptive republicanism clashed particularly strongly with the neoliberalism of Republican party elites, both in terms of the policies he favored during the campaign and the rhetoric he espoused. Nevertheless, Trump’s positioning proved popular among the Republican rank-and-file as Trump took advantage of widening divisions within the public on issues of cultural and racial identity. The Republican establishment embraced Trump following his election, however, and continued to do so even through a rocky start to his presidency. This embrace leads to my second main claim: the rapprochement between Trump and Republican party elites occurred in part because the establishment believed that President Trump would govern more like a neoliberal. This prediction has proved largely accurate through the start of his presidency, as his policy positions have largely mirrored past Republican presidencies. At the same time, Trump’s rhetoric continued to draw heavily from the republican and ascriptive traditions, frequently threatening to unravel his uneasy rapprochement with Republican party elites. By addressing how the threads of American cultural traditions appeared in the 2016 election, this chapter shares a similar focus to Gwendoline Alphonso’s contribution to this volume.4 Alphonso examines how Donald Trump is the latest manifestation of an “ascriptive neoliberalism” that had been building within the Republican Party since the 1960s. Alphonso’s chapter stresses the compatibility of American liberal and ascriptive ideas, providing several examples of how contemporary Republican elites drew upon both sets of ideas to help create a new partisan coalition. This chapter, by contrast, focuses on the tensions existing between the liberal and ascriptive ideas that had been brewing within the Republican coalition even before the rise of Trump. By adopting a rhetorical strategy that foregrounded ascriptive ideas rather than liberal ones—the reverse of previous contemporary Republican leaders—Trump exacerbated the tensions between these ideational threads in American politics and made clearer how wide the gap was between the leading ideas of Republican elites and those of the Republican rank and file. The two chapters, read together, illustrate that the recombination of different threads of American political

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culture over time provides both opportunities and challenges for political development.

Political Polarization and the 2016 Presidential Election There is widespread agreement among scholars and political observers that polarization is both real and growing in American politics. Analyses of Congress, for instance, suggest that the institution is more polarized now than it has been in well over a century.5 However, there has been debate about whether polarization is mainly a story of increasing divisions among politicians and other political elites, or whether it also reflects increasing divisions within the public. Morris Fiorina has long argued that while polarization is increasingly apparent in elite institutions like Congress, polarization in the broader electorate is exaggerated.6 He points out, for example, that trends in both party identification and ideological self-identification have remained relatively stable since the 1970s.7 Others have suggested that polarization runs deeper, extending beyond elite actors to regular voters.8 Among other things, James Q. Wilson argued that polarization is reflected not simply by trends in voter responses to policy questions, but in increasing voter commitments to groups that are set “definitively apart from people in another, rival group.”9 This debate is often framed as the question “Are voters as polarized as elites?” The 2016 election, however, suggests that asking the question in this way masks the different tracks of polarization occurring for both the elites and the mass public. On the one hand, during the 2016 campaign, voters appeared less committed to an ideologically consistent policy program than did party elites. Throughout the campaign, Trump maintained his popularity among the Republican rank and file despite regularly expressing policy views that clashed with the party leaders’ ideological orthodoxy. In numerous speeches, Trump pledged to maintain Medicare and Social Security benefits, in contrast to previous Republican efforts to cut back on the two staples of the New Deal and Great Society.10 Perhaps Trump’s clearest departure from elite Republican orthodoxy came in the form of his constant attacks on free trade, which included support for tariffs, a desire to scrap free trade deals such as NAFTA, and a willingness to punish companies that moved jobs out of the country.11 At several points, Trump also praised Planned Parenthood—a frequent target of Republican politicians—for doing “very good work.”12 That Trump’s ideological flexibility held appeal among Republican voters even while causing consternation among Republican party elites is

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consistent with findings that elites are considerably more polarized than the constituents they claim to represent.13 At the same time, however, certain divisions among Republican and Democratic party elites appeared less prominent than among rank-and-file voters. One of the few things Republican and Democratic party elites seemed to agree upon throughout the campaign was the nature of Trump’s rhetoric. At numerous points, Republican politicians pushed back on how Trump discussed issues of race, religion, and gender, whether it was his suggestion that a federal judge was biased against him because of the judge’s Mexican heritage,14 his various comments about women,15 or his proposal that all Muslims should be banned from entering the country because of their religion.16 Scores of prominent current and former Republican politicians even urged the Republican National Committee (RNC) to cut off funding for Trump following his nomination, citing his “divisiveness” and “recklessness.”17 Yet Trump’s divisive rhetoric remained popu lar among Republican voters. Throughout the fall, Trump maintained similar levels of support among Republican voters as Clinton did among Democratic voters, even as Republican party elites resisted aligning with him. This dynamic suggests that party elites and regular voters had different conceptions of what constituted “acceptable divisiveness.” For Republican party elites, Trump did not display enough policy polarization while going too far in stirring cultural grievances. Rank-and-file Republican voters, meanwhile, embraced Trump’s ideological flexibility along with his rhetorical divisiveness. This situation suggests that polarization is operating on separate (though parallel) tracks for party elites and for the mass public, tapping into different sources of division. These different sources, I would suggest, are rooted in the multiplicity of cultural traditions that have long been a part of American society, which can be helpful in analyzing the unusual 2016 presidential campaign.

Candidate Donald Trump and America’s Multiple Traditions Examinations of American culture often begin with Louis Hartz’s famous claim that American political culture is dominated by a “liberal consensus” emphasizing the values of individual rights, freedom, and an orientation to market-driven public policy solutions.18 Hartz did not suggest that this “consensus” led to a lack of political disagreement—only that these disagreements

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relied upon similar liberal principles as a central reference point while ignoring other possibilities (in his view, chiefly socialism). When Hartz was writing in the 1950s, divisions between the two major parties were narrow enough to spur calls for more “responsible” parties marked by greater ideological differences.19 This began to change with greater elite-level polarization from the 1970s onward, though this polarization occurred largely within the framework of the existing liberal consensus. Since the 1980s, leaders on the political right gravitated toward one brand of liberalism, neoliberalism, which “privileges the freedoms associated with private property, market relations, and trade across nations.”20 President Reagan’s first inaugural is perhaps best remembered for his line that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”21—a philosophy Republicans have relied on to critique alleged excesses of the New Deal and the Great Society. A central project of the modern Republican Party has been to chip away at the public sector through funding cuts and reductions of the role of the public sector in the market. While the modern Republican Party coalition includes important groups favoring other mechanisms to organize society—evangelicals emphasizing religion and tradition being perhaps the most important—one overarching theme held by Republican party elites in the post-Reagan years is preference for private markets. Democratic party elites in the Reagan era, meanwhile, embraced certain elements of this neoliberalism. Following the Republican triumph in the 1994 midterm elections, Bill Clinton famously stated that “the era of big government is over”22 and pursued an agenda that drew upon market-based thinking, among them his central welfare reform initiative. Barack Obama likewise modeled several of his policies on ideas originally proposed by pro-market conservatives. The Affordable Care Act, while aiming to provide wider access to health care provision, relied heavily on private insurance markets and the originally conservative idea of the individual mandate. Expansions of the earned income tax credit and proposals for a cap-and-trade system to tackle climate change also reflected the more market-oriented thinking that grew more ascendant beginning in the 1980s. At the same time, Democratic party elites became increasingly committed to other aspects of the liberal tradition, namely egalitarianism and civil libertarianism. The party embraced a view of individual rights that would “get government out of the bedroom,” including sexual freedoms and abortion rights. Democrats also pushed back on perceived excesses of the national security state during the George  W. Bush administration in the name of

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preserving civil liberties and the rule of law. Democrats’ egalitarian liberalism was evident through the embrace of policies aimed at preventing workplace discrimination and ending bans on same-sex marriage. Divisions between Democrats and Republicans on these issues increased sharply among elected officials starting in the 1970s, even as this polarization was not as apparent in the general public. But this polarization remained along the dimension of basic liberalism—respect for market processes, private property, individual rights, the rule of law, and so forth. However, while these liberal values have indeed been central to political discourse in the United States, they have long existed alongside other values that sometimes align but often clash with liberal principles. As Rogers Smith’s “multiple traditions” thesis put it, American political culture has long incorporated elements of republicanism and ascriptivism in addition to liberalism.23 American republicanism, for example, emphasized the welfare of “the people” as opposed to the individualistic focus of the liberal tradition. For the republican tradition, as Gordon Wood described it as existing at the time of the American Revolution, “the solution to the problems of American politics seemed to rest not so much in emphasizing the private rights of individuals against the general will as it did in stressing the public rights of the collective people against the supposed privileged interests of their rulers.”24 Among other things, this emphasis on the primacy of “the people” against their rulers helps explain why early republicans could advocate for broad freedom of speech against “the elites” while simultaneously seeking to punish those speaking out against the true representatives of “the people.”25 This willingness to curtail certain individual liberties to achieve the public good continues to be a key feature of the contemporary American republican tradition—something that has troubled republicanism’s liberal critics.26 The American liberal tradition has also been challenged by an ascriptive American tradition. As Smith described it, this tradition has both inegalitarian and illiberal dimensions, seeking to link the true meaning of “Americanism” to established social hierarchies, particularly those related to race and gender.27 These ascriptive ideas have had such strength throughout American political history in part because they have allowed “many Americans to believe that their social roles and personal characteristics express an identity that has inherent and transcendent worth, thanks to nature, history, and God.”28 Although Smith discussed American ascriptivism largely in reference to ideologies of white supremacy, the rise of an egalitarian form of identity

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politics since the civil-rights movement of the 1960s also poses challenges to American liberalism. Contemporary identity politics emphasizes individuals’ identity with their par ticular race, ethnicity, or gender as opposed to broader commitments to an “American creed” based on shared liberal ideologies. This form of ascriptive identity politics often cites liberalism as a roadblock to addressing injustice, advocating instead forms of multiculturalism and ethnic nationalism.29 The prominence of each of these three traditions—liberalism, republicanism, and ascriptivism—has ebbed and flowed throughout American history. None of them has ever defined the whole of American political culture, which is better understood as a blend of these multiple cultural visions—a point also made clear in Alphonso’s chapter in this volume on “ascriptive neoliberalism” in the contemporary Republican Party.30 Particular traditions, however, may play a larger or smaller role within the existing political order, depending on how political leaders manage to repurpose elements of each tradition to win votes.

The Republican Tradition and the 2016 Campaign Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign cycle, the liberal consensus among party elites frayed as other elements of American cultural traditions became a more prominent part of the political conversation. Rhetoric tapping into the communal, group-centered emphasis of American republicanism was shared by insurgent forces in both parties, though by stressing different aspects of this republicanism. Among Democrats, Bernie Sanders tapped into anger fueled by the party’s acceptance of neoliberal ideas. Sanders styled himself a “democratic socialist,” though much of his rhetoric tapped into the rhetoric of an egalitarian version of American republicanism as opposed to European socialist traditions. Building upon the Occupy movement (“We are the 99  percent”) beginning during the Obama years, Sanders made frequent references to the need for “the people”—whom he envisioned as all Americans who were not at the highest echelons of the income scale—to take back the country from “a handful of billionaires, their Super-PACS, and the lobbyists.”31 Sanders stated that his emphasis was on the “democratic” aspect of “democratic socialism,” saying that he supported private enterprise and especially policies that would aid small business. Rather than suggest a socialist program of nationalizing industries, his aim was to reduce corporate elites’ influence over

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American policy and governance. Contrasting with the civil libertarianism of the American liberal tradition, Sanders argued that curtailing certain liberties of the most powerful in society would serve to bolster participatory governance among the broader American public. A frequent Sanders target was the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which he urged should be overturned to provide regular Americans more of a voice in politics by limiting the free speech of wealthy elites.32 Trump also raised republican themes, though his reference point for “the people” was “the forgotten men and women of this country”33—the bluecollar whites for whom he would “make America great again.” The republican themes in Trump’s rhetoric frequently set him apart from the dominant neoliberal language of contemporary Republican party elites. It was not market forces that ought to play the dominant role in governance, but rather “the people”—particularly those who produced things benefiting American society. Shifting away from the Republican neoliberalism dominant since the Reagan era, Trump criticized free trade agreements and advocated for economic sanctions on countries that treated Americans “unfairly.” He also called for a stronger role for the state in building up production, including increases in infrastructure spending and penalties for corporate elites who eliminate American jobs. This call tapped into long-standing republican “producer ethic” themes elevating those who build and produce for society— farmers, builders, and laborers—over nonproducers who merely profit on the labor of others. Trump’s praise of hardworking blue-collar workers who built things, and his criticism of “international bankers” and corporate elites who were taking production out of the country, reflected this theme, suggesting that the former group had the strongest claim to govern. He even referred to himself as “blue-collar,”34 a seemingly incongruous claim for a Manhattan billionaire, yet one that fits Trump’s broader association of this term with those (like himself) who build and produce. Trump’s republican rhetoric set up several clashes with Republican Party leaders. He spoke frequently of how he would be the voice of “the people” against Washington elites, and in doing so displayed a willingness to criticize members of his own party, such as Speaker Paul Ryan, whom he accused of ignoring the will of the people.35 Trump’s call for “draining the swamp” of Washington, D.C., implied that both Republican and Democratic party elites were the problem. Trump’s inaugural address tapped into similar republican themes, with references to “the people” throughout: “What truly matters is not what party controls our Government, but whether our Gov-

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ernment is controlled by the people.” As he had done throughout the campaign, he represented himself as the people’s true voice, suggesting that “today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.”36 Trump’s republican rhetoric and claims that he represented “the people” also led him to criticize the media frequently for treating him unfairly. His attacks on the liberal value of the free press, made starkest through his threats to “open up the libel laws” against the media, garnered criticism from members of both parties.37 Trump’s frequent suggestions that the media was acting “irresponsibly” was in part a reflection of his version of republican civic responsibility, which included criticizing neither “the people” (whom out-of-touch media elites misunderstood) nor the people’s representatives— particularly Trump himself. The popularity of republican commitments to “the people” on both the political right and left has occurred alongside growing distrust of American political institutions. Since the mid-2000s, the percentage of respondents expressing trust in government “always” or “most of the time” has not exceeded 30 percent, dipping below 20 percent at most points during the Obama era.38 Few institutions in American society have withstood the general decline in confidence Americans have in them—especially Congress, with approval ratings approaching and sometimes into the single digits.39 This skepticism of elite-run institutions has helped create fertile ground for appeals in the republican tradition.

The Ascriptive Tradition and the 2016 Campaign In addition to republicanism receiving more of a hearing across the political spectrum in the 2016 campaign, American ascriptive traditions increasingly challenged liberalism. On the political left, this arose in the form of a robust commitment to group-centered identity politics that emphasized the priorities of specific groups with similar ascriptive characteristics. This egalitarian version of “identity politics” has plenty of crossover with aspects of American liberalism—for example, advocacy for rights of gays and lesbians based upon broad appeals to individual liberty and equality. As Will Kymlicka has argued, strong linkages exist between multicultural theories of group rights and the preservation of individual liberty.40

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Nevertheless, ascriptive identity politics has clashed repeatedly with the liberal “American creed” as multiculturalism and diversity have become more central elements of American left-wing politics.41 This tension is illustrated perhaps most concretely in increasing disputes pitting liberal principles of free speech against stronger hate-speech codes aimed at protecting specific groups, especially on college campuses.42 These battles have split those who see themselves as members of the political left, with some criticizing the group-based emphasis on ascriptive characteristics as ultimately harmful to American liberty and society.43 These tensions are implicit in much of the debate over racial, ethnic, and gender justice, as advocates of identity politics have criticized the inadequacy of broad-based liberalism in achieving justice.44 A politics based upon ascriptive identity has become a more important part of Democratic politics as the party itself has become considerably more diverse over time. When Bill Clinton won in 1992, 76  percent of his party’s voters were white; by the time Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee, white voters were a bare majority (57 percent) of the party’s rankand-file.45 A clear majority of lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender (LGBT) voters identified as Democrats in 2016,46 and the party has become considerably more religiously diverse as well.47 Hillary Clinton embraced identity politics throughout her campaign, emphasizing her status as the first female major party presidential nominee and speaking on themes that would appeal to the “rising American electorate” of minority voters, women, and diverse millennials that Barack Obama had brought together in a successful electoral coalition. As Hillary Clinton embraced a more robust identity politics than previous Democratic candidates, Trump used a very different version of ascriptive politics that proved to be popu lar among Republican voters, even as it was far less so among Republican party elites. Trump’s rhetoric incorporated ascriptive themes in his initial presidential announcement, in which he stated that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. . . . They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” 48 Trump antiimmigration stance was perhaps his most consistent and prominent policy position, and was based not simply on economic concerns about Americans losing jobs to immigrants, but upon cultural concerns that “they” are not like “us.” Trump’s subsequent policies, including his call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” also implied that Muslims, as a group, were outside of the meaning of “Americanism.” 49

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This approach differed from that of previous Republican politicians, who frequently linked their campaign rhetoric to liberal commitments of inclusion and the American creed. A few days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, for example, George W. Bush announced in a speech that “Islam is peace,”50 and candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain, themselves later Trump critics, explicitly attempted to appeal to those outside their largely white voting base through inclusive rhetoric. Following Romney’s loss in 2012, the Republican Party’s own post-election “autopsy” stressed the need to appeal to a more diverse base of Americans beyond white voters.51 To be sure, as Alphonso emphasizes in her chapter in this volume, Republican Party elites have long recognized the power of ascriptive appeals.52 Richard Nixon’s law-and-order rhetoric, as part of his broader “Southern strategy,” was strongly racially coded. President Reagan’s frequent references to undeserving “welfare queens” during his 1976 and 1980 campaigns were built on widespread racial and gender stereotypes. Nevertheless, even while Republican Party elites engaged in racialized “dog whistles” to win support from white voters harboring racial resentment, mainstream Republican politicians were generally careful to avoid making these appeals explicit. Instead, any racial messages were coded in the language of color blindness permeating mainstream conservative politics throughout the Reagan era, which served as a way to criticize policies benefiting specific minority groups, such as affirmative action.53 Yet Trump’s rhetorical strategy took his commitment to ascriptive appeals a step further by shedding the coded racial appeals of his Republican predecessors and making them explicit, causing consternation among Republican politicians. He made several comments about Latinos, Muslims, and women that prominent Republicans like Sen. John McCain and Speaker Paul Ryan refused to defend or outright criticized. Meanwhile, groups well outside of Republican elite circles, including white nationalist “alt-right” groups, embraced Trump’s rhetoric. Trump himself appeared to provide subtle expressions of support for these groups, particularly on Twitter.54 This interaction between candidate Trump and far-right groups was repeatedly denounced by members of the mainstream Republican establishment.55 The success of Trump’s ascriptive language even in the face of Republican Party resistance reflects greater polarization among the American public on deep-seeded issues of culture and identity. As recently as the mid-2000s, for example, roughly equal percentages of Democratic and Republican respondents agreed that immigrants strengthened the country. By 2016, the

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gap between Democrats and Republicans on this question reached a remarkable 43 percent.56 While Americans as a whole are more likely than Europeans to agree that “diversity makes the country better,” Americans are also more ideologically divided on this question. Indeed, the gap between liberals and conservatives on this question was larger in the United States than in any of the European nations recently surveyed.57 Significant gaps between liberals and conservatives also exist on whether “there is too much attention paid to racial issues,” with Democrats overwhelmingly stating that too little attention is devoted to these issues and Republicans stating just the opposite.58 At the same time, Trump supporters were the most likely to view blacks negatively, and Republican respondents in general identify prejudice against whites as the biggest racial issue facing America.59 This ascriptive polarization among members of the mass public reflects in part the growing reliance of the Republican Party on white voters from the South, where hierarchical ascriptive politics has long played a profound role.60 This polarization also has parallels in European countries, as right-wing populist movements have gained strength on the basis of critiques of diversity and concerns about the decline of cultural identity.61 What Trump managed to do is harness this growing global polarization about identity issues and meld it with a republicanism that made it a particularly successful and American variant on these broader trends. This ascriptive republicanism proved popu lar with the Republican rankand-file, even as it clashed with the broader commitment to liberalism held by the Republican establishment.

The Republican Party and President Trump’s “Governing” and “Rhetorical” Modes It seemed reasonable to expect that Trump would have difficulty holding his Republican coalition together after a campaign in which he was actively resisted by elite elements of his own party. In the end, however, the divergence between the preferences of Republican rank-and-file voters and Republican Party elites virtually disappeared by Election Day. Few “never-Trump” Republican party elites held out against him through November  2016, and Trump received a share of the vote from his own party members similar to the share Hillary Clinton received from hers.62 Though a few high-profile Republican Party elites continued to openly criticize Trump during his first two years in office, such as Senators Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), Ben Sasse

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(R-Nebraska), and Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), even they largely voted to support Trump administration priorities. Trump’s strength among Republican voters reflected both the strength of partisan identification in contemporary American politics as well as the intense dislike Republicans had for Clinton despite her explicit attempts to reach out across the aisle to disaffected Republicans. Eighty-eight percent of Republican voters had a “very unfavorable” opinion of Clinton, according to an Economist/YouGov poll taken on the eve of the election.63 Meanwhile, political animosity between members of both parties reached new highs, with record numbers of each party’s members holding “very unfavorable” views of the other party.64 This increasing antipathy was a significant reason why Trump, despite his seeming norm transgressions, could hold together the Republican coalition in the 2016 election. For their part, Republican Party elites bet on the prospect that Trump’s actual policies once in office would diverge less from Republican neoliberal orthodoxy than his campaign rhetoric did. The early part of the Trump Administration suggests that the Republican establishment was largely correct. President Trump’s executive-branch nominees were largely drawn from the same elite financial class that he frequently criticized on the campaign trail, and his successful nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court drew rave reviews from the conservative legal establishment. Meanwhile, Trump provided progressively less influence to controversial advisers who advocated a turn away from existing Republican orthodoxy, including ousting Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon from an official role in the White House.65 Trump also backed away from many of the policies he championed during the campaign. Trump supported House Republicans’ efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act even as it cut Medicaid—one of the key social programs (along with Medicare and Social Security) that he previously pledged not to alter. His proposed 2017 federal budget sought to boost military spending, drastically cut spending on social programs, and lower tax rates on the wealthiest Americans—a budget quite like what a typical postReagan Republican president would be expected to propose. Missing from this proposal were other of Trump’s campaign pledges that had more potential to clash with Republican neoliberal commitments, such as massive spending on infrastructure or a complete scrapping of existing free trade deals. Trump also backed away from other campaign commitments disfavored by neoliberals, such as his vow to label China a currency manipulator.66 Even where

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Trump most notably did depart from neoliberal orthodoxy—the series of tariffs imposed on China and other trade partners—the relatively small size of the tariffs suggested that they served more of a rhetorical purpose than representing a wholesale shift in American trade policy.67 Meanwhile, Trump’s few major legislative accomplishments during his first two years supported long-standing goals of neoliberal Republican politicians, including signing into law a tax bill that represented a major victory for House Speaker Paul Ryan and other congressional leaders.68 While Trump’s legislative accomplishments were slim, Trump’s appointments to executive agencies engaged in substantial administrative policy making. Agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, and the Federal Communications Commission rolled back Obama-era regulations and pursued agendas consonant with the deregulatory goals of the post-Reagan Republican Party. Trump’s policy positions did not entirely back away from the ascriptive republicanism that he advocated on the campaign trail. Most prominently, he announced in the first days of his presidency a travel ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, fulfilling one of his most controversial pledges.69 Trump also suggested that he would direct the federal government to cut funding for so-called “sanctuary cities” that did not comply with strict immigration enforcement.70 He continued to insist on funding for a new border wall with Mexico, albeit displaying more flexibility on the issue than he did when he made the wall a centerpiece of his campaign.71 Nevertheless, Trump’s ability to implement these policies was at least temporarily stymied by injunctions granted by federal courts. Despite fears that he would refuse to abide by liberal conceptions of the rule of law—a perhaps justifiable assumption given his campaign rhetoric—he has not yet refused to comply with a court order. In general, Trump has not provided much indication that he is overly concerned with policy, preferring instead to hold campaign-style rallies and to maintain focus on his electoral victory.72 President Trump’s relative lack of interest in policy has likely empowered the more traditional Republican voices within his administration and helped to steer Trump’s “governing mode” in a neoliberal direction. While this aspect of Trump’s presidency stayed largely on the neoliberal track amenable to Republican elites, however, his “rhetorical mode” continued to reflect the ascriptive republicanism aimed squarely at the Republican rank and file. Throughout his first two years, Trump’s continuing use of ascriptive republican rhetoric continued to cause consternation among the Republican

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establishment. As he had on the campaign trail, he picked fights with important Republican leaders such as Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, setting himself apart from “Washington elites.” Republican leaders also criticized much of Trump’s behav ior in office, such as his frequent tweeting about protests by black National Football League players and his failure to condemn white supremacists participating in a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. On the eve of the 2018 midterm elections, Trump focused much rhetorical attention to a caravan of Central American migrants making their way to the U.S. border, which he claimed consisted of a dangerous mix of criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners.”73 Trump’s political team created a firestorm of protest when they released a campaign ad referencing the migrant caravan that leaders of both parties roundly denounced as racist and misleading.74 The disjunction between Trump’s neoliberal governing mode and ascriptive republican rhetorical mode reflects the Trump administration’s efforts to preside over a party system that has polarized along separate yet parallel tracks. Republicans and Democrats have grown more politically distinct, though with differences in how polarization has operated among party elites and regular party voters. On the one hand, both Republican party elites and Republican rank-and-file voters have polarized in similar ways vis-à-vis the Democrats, as both elected officials and the voters of both parties have grown more politically distant from one another. At the same time, however, the split between party elites and regular voters continues to grow, particularly in Trump’s Republican Party. Trump’s ascriptive republicanism both during the campaign and in office proved popular with the Republican rank and file even as Republican Party elites frequently criticized it. Trump has continued to maintain loyalty among Republican Party elites, however, by pursuing neoliberal policies that look more traditional in contemporary Republican politics. A key question is whether Trump’s strategy of appealing to elites through his governance while appealing to the rank and file via his rhetoric will be stable in the long term. There are already indications that it will not be, largely because both Trump’s governing and rhetorical modes are unpopular with the broader electorate. The Republicans’ proposed health-care plan, which Trump endorsed, proved highly unpopular among the general public and Republican voters alike.75 The various cuts to government programs Trump proposed in his budget were likewise met with high disapproval in public polling.76 President Trump’s own approval ratings, never strong to begin with, sank lower as Trump embraced these unpopular policies. Meanwhile, his

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frequent tweeting and inflammatory rhetoric during his partisan rallies likely contributed to his unpopularity with the broader public. In the 2018 midterm elections, Trump’s general unpopularity contributed to Democrats’ capturing the House of Representatives and making significant gains on the state level.77 Remarkably, Trump’s widespread unpopularity has continued despite a strong American economy and has seeped into traditionally Republican suburban districts across the country.78 At the midpoint of his presidency, Donald Trump has used different aspects of America’s multiple cultural traditions to maintain support from both elites and regular voters of his party. Employing the language of ascriptive republicanism helped him win in 2016 and to maintain strong support from the Republican voting base, while governing largely like a neoliberal has kept Republican Party elites from defecting from his coalition. Given the very different visions these traditions represent, however, Trump’s prospects of maintaining a successful balance between clashing orders faces a challenging future.

Chapter 6

Black Lives Matter from Wilson to Trump: Social Movements in APD Megan Ming Francis

On the evening of August 11, 2017, white nationalists and neo-Nazis marched on Charlottesville, Virginia, with tiki torches. Giving the Nazi salute and chanting slogans such as “white lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us,” these young men came from all over the country—even as far as the liberal enclave of Berkeley, California. Their mission, which they all chose to accept: stop the nation from eroding the power of white men. The anger on their faces was palpable in the glow of the torches. The men continued their onslaught at an afternoon rally the following day at a park featuring a prominent statue of Robert E. Lee, the top Confederate army commander, which was slated to be removed. By this time, word had gotten out, and the nation’s media descended on Charlottesville. Counterprotesters also got organized, with signs reading “black lives matter” and “love not hate.”1 Police, decked out in militarized riot gear, attempted to prepare for the inevitable. Charlottesville was a powder keg—ready to explode. And it did. DeAndre Harris, a black man, was attacked by a mob of angry white men in a downtown parking garage. At 2 p.m., a neo-Nazi deliberately drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters—killing one white woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring seven more.2 This was the face of white rage, ready to kill white people if necessary to protect against a society that was slowly trying to become more inclusive.

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The images of the violent mob of mostly white men sent shockwaves through a nation deeply divided by race. The tragic events did not surprise President Donald Trump. He refused to categorically call out and denounce the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville. Instead, Trump reluctantly blamed the hatred, bigotry, and violence on “both sides.”3 Trump’s embrace of white supremacists in Charlottesville displayed an administration uninterested in the racial decorum and embrace of colorblind rhetoric adopted by previous presidential administrations. The succeeding months in 2017 witnessed a president focused on sowing the seeds of racial discord and attacking communities of color. Trump issued his first pardon for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, famous for his inhumane treatment and racial profiling of the Latinx community. Trump recklessly denounced players’ kneeling when the national anthem is played at  National Football League games, in a protest of police brutality that was started by Colin Kapernick. And Trump stooped to a new presidential low when he took to Twitter to call Myeshia Johnson, an African American Gold Star widow, a liar. Trump’s administration continued to  heighten racial division in 2018 by caging undocumented children, issuing a redesigned Muslim ban, and publicly mocking black women journalists. The hostility toward black communities in the Trump administration has directly impacted social movement organizing. Partly influenced by the hostile landscape of the Trump administration, civil-rights activists—most notably those associated with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—have retreated from federal politics and are focusing increased attention on change at the state and local level.4 In contrast, before Trump, BLM activists met with President Obama, convened a conference at the White House in 2016, and frequently met with members of Congress to encourage them to introduce legislation directed at reforming police brutality in America.5 The activism of BLM had such an impact that the Department of Justice (DOJ) felt compelled to conduct federal investigations of the Ferguson and Chicago police departments for suspected (and ultimately confirmed) misconduct and constitutional rights violations.6 Today, BLM is no longer at the table in federal conversations about law enforcement. In a staggering reversal, Trump’s DOJ has ramped up the racist drug war, reduced oversight of police departments, and continued the delivery of military-grade equipment to local law enforcement officials.

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The racism exhibited by Trump’s administration has surprised many. Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates referred to Trump as “the first white president” in a blistering article and proceeded to detail how his political “ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.”7 But not only journalists have been surprised; seasoned political operatives and many political scientists have expressed confusion about the racial demagoguery of Trump, with many writing various versions of “this is not who we are” on social media. But Trump’s statements, the attitudes of his supporters, and the complicity of lawmakers undermine this constant refrain. Trump is not an aberration; he is, in the words of the great poet Claudia Rankine, “an amplification of what was.”8 This chapter suggests that the blatant racism and disregard of black protesters displayed by Donald Trump is not entirely new for a sitting U.S. president, nor is it reason for protesters to despair. In fact, contextualizing Trump’s relationship with BLM protesters in a much longer history reveals the pivotal role of social movements in contesting and ultimately transforming political and constitutional development. It is precisely these unsettled moments, when institutions are not responding to the demands of citizens, that can provide an opening for bottom-up protest to disrupt and reshape top-down structures. By calling attention to how institutions and ideas change over time, the American political development (APD) approach is uniquely situated to provide useful historical context to the current moment of black mobilization and racist state violence. While much of the energy of the BLM movement is centered on an analysis of the ways different institutions devalue black life, it is impor tant to note that black citizens, long marginalized in the polity, are delivering this critique. The state is powerful, but citizens are not without agency. Throughout the long arc of U.S. history, the fight to protect black lives from racist state violence has always been at the center of the struggle for equal rights and citizenship. In APD, pattern identification is considered the “sine qua non of the enterprise” because through identifying patterns, we can better understand how the American political system operates.9 The pattern of black protest leading to an expansion of civil rights and the subsequent contraction of these very rights through state-sanctioned violence is durable, and this pattern is integral to the way the American political system has developed. Studying BLM in the Trump era poses a challenge and an opportunity for APD. Though most scholarship on APD centers on institutions

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and political elites to understand political and constitutional development, there is a growing body of APD scholarship that has attempted to decenter this top-down focus.10 Recent work has pushed past the traditional APD framework and revealed how different aspects not widely understood as connected to state-building contributed to the creation of a modern American state. For example, Kimberly Johnson sheds light on the critical role of white and black reformers in remaking Jim Crow institutions.11 Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov argue that nonstate actors at the subnational level played a significant role in state-building during the time period between Reconstruction and the New Deal.12 These works, among others, make clear that meaningful political development is also a product of bottom-up change from orga nized citizens on the ground. The challenge that BLM poses for APD, and American politics more generally, is that the movement exposes the overwhelming tendency to describe the nation in hegemonic liberal democratic terms and not account enough for the afterlife of slavery and illiberal Jim Crow political regime.13 Indeed, BLM understands American political and constitutional development as a series of white supremacist political and legal projects. Drawing on a long history of black radical struggle, the BLM movement suggests this country was less a liberal democratic project than a settler colonial project.14 The mass BLM protests and images of tense confrontation between police and demonstrators across the United States suggest an urgent need to peel back the well-worn layers of the triumphant liberal narrative of American politics. The contemporary moment is not the first time that a vibrant movement focused on the protection of black lives mobilized against a racist presidential administration. To understand how black social movements can reshape political development during the Trump era, I would like to examine the administration of Woodrow Wilson. In this chapter, I will center on civil-rights organizing in the Wilson era as a way to rethink the potentiality of civil rights organizing in the Trump era. In what follows, I examine Wilson’s stance on civil rights and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) mobilization around lynching and mob violence, and I explore BLM activism in the Trump era. In the one hundred years between Wilson and Trump, much has changed around race in this country, but the quiet embrace of violent white supremacy has not. The persistence of the movement to protect black lives from unjust private and state

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violence calls our attention to the jagged and often nonlinear path toward racial justice in the United States.

NAACP and the Battle for the Right to Live The contemporary BLM movement has its roots in the not so distant past. In general, the American public knows little about the long tradition of protests to protect black lives from white violence. In 1892, Ida B. Wells conducted a series of dangerous lynching investigations and published her findings in a huge exposé for T. Thomas Fortune’s New York Age, an African American weekly newspaper with a substantial white following. Wells was the first to effectively situate lynching at the crux of American democracy: in order to protect the voting, education, and workplace rights of African Americans, the brutal killings of African Americans had to stop.15 Wells was relentless in her crusade for justice and pursuit of facts. Building upon this foundation of knowledge production, the NAACP led the largest movement in history against lynching and racist mob violence in 1916.16 Focused on protecting black lives, the NAACP organized mass demonstrations in the streets and launched an extensive public outreach campaign in order to reach the “heart and conscience of the American people.” The NAACP’s activities should come as no surprise. Lynching and mob violence were at the top of the NAACP’s issue agenda, since racial violence was believed to be the greatest obstacle that African Americans in both the North and the South faced to gaining equality in America. As the NAACP’s 1909 platform put it, “We regard with grave concern the attempt manifest South and North to deny black men the right to work and to enforce this demand with violence and bloodshed.”17 Seven years later, racial violence remained high on the list of NAACP’s concerns. When concern was raised at a meeting that the NAACP’s agenda was too narrowly focused on the issue of racial violence, Roy Nash, an African American who was part of the NAACP’s leadership, attempted to explain the organization’s focus: “All he [the American Negro] wanted was a chance to live without a rope around his neck.”18 This was a sobering but necessary reminder that if the protection of black lives were not secured, all other civil rights were meaningless. As the NAACP saw it, before the organization could appropriately address other problematic areas of civil rights, such as voting, labor, and housing, it was necessary to focus on ending lynching and mob violence so that African Americans could live to enjoy the benefits of their struggle.

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It was not enough for the NAACP to raise the public’s awareness about mob violence and lynchings; the organization knew a lot of power lay in politics and felt it necessary to supplement publicity with advocacy work in the formal branches of government. The NAACP’s activism during Wilson’s presidency is particularly remarkable because it was a different strategy from that being pursued by any other civil-rights organization. At the time, the prominent movements in the African American community stayed out of national politics to focus on rousing public opinion (National Equal Rights League) or turned inward at the local level (Tuskegee Institute, National Association of Colored Women), as there was no track record of success— especially in dealing with the Oval Office. Thus, it was the NAACP’s fight over lynching and mob violence that changed how subsequent organizations thought about the range of openings in the political system to fight for change.

Woodrow Wilson’s (White) America The operation of Trump’s White House and his cabinet has striking similarities to that of Wilson. Trump, like Wilson, is a white supremacist who has surrounded himself with other white supremacists intent on rolling back gains made by racial minorities. Wilson was no supporter of civil rights. Born in Virginia and raised in South Carolina and Georgia, Wilson was the first southerner elected president since the Civil War. During Wilson’s tenure, lynchings of African Americans rose to historic levels, and his southern Cabinet appointees began to implement a system of Jim Crow segregation in federal governmental office. Wilson chose outspoken white supremacists as his close advisers, such as Senators James Vardaman (D-Mississippi) and Hoke Smith (D-Georgia), both notorious for exploiting African American convict labor for state benefit.19 One of Wilson’s biographers noted, “Southerners were riding high in Washington for the first time since the Civil War, demanding segregation in the government departments and public ser vices and dismissal or down-grading of Negro civil servants.”20 It wasn’t long before southerners began to implement a system of Jim Crow segregation in national governmental office. It started on April  11, 1913, when Postmaster General Albert Burleson recommended segregating the federal ser vices during a cabinet meeting.21 Not long afterward, the Bureau of the Census, the Post Office Department, and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving quietly segregated employees in offices, shops, toilets, and restaurants.22

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In the South, the changes were bolder; officials in the Post Office and Treasury were given permission to discharge or demote African Americans as they pleased. Later, in May  1914, the Civil Ser vice Commission required photographs to accompany applications. African Americans became concentrated in menial jobs for which they were overqualified. Jobs with greater responsibilities and prestige were no longer open to qualified African Americans. Although segregation in the federal government existed prior to Wilson, this segregation was limited and unofficial.23 Under Wilson’s administration, that situation changed. Of the thirty-one most impor tant government jobs held by African Americans in 1913, only eight were retained in 1916.24 Remarking about the situation, Booker T. Washington wrote, “I have recently spent several days in Washington, and I have never seen the colored people so discouraged and bitter as they are at the present time.”25 This was not maintenance of a norm of racial inequality; this was retrogression. Racial segregation in government was vigorously protested. In response to these protests, Wilson claimed to the NAACP that segregation would protect African Americans from discrimination.26 However, government segregation was never about protecting African American interests; it was always about buttressing white supremacy. In a letter to Thomas Dixon, author of The Clansman, Wilson bragged about his administration’s segregation policy as a way of maintaining separation of the races: “I do not think you know what is going on down there. We are handling the force of colored people who are now in the departments in just the way in which they ought to be handled. We are trying—and by degrees succeeding—a plan of concentration which will put them all together and will not in any one bureau mix the two races.”27 The racism of Wilson’s first administration was obvious to everyone. In August, the senior leadership of the NAACP wrote a formal letter of protest to Wilson, calling the justification that African Americans would be safer in segregated facilities “fallacious” and “humiliating.” Appropriating Wilson’s campaign slogan for the NAACP’s purposes, the letter reasoned: “They [African Americans] desire a ‘New Freedom,’ too, Mr. President, yet they include in that term nothing else than the rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution.”28 Six months after Wilson took office, W. E. B. Du Bois could no longer mask his disappointment and penned an open letter in The Crisis, stating, “It is no exaggeration to say that every enemy of the Negro race is greatly encouraged; that every man who dreams of making the Negro race a group of menials and pariahs is alert and hopeful.”29 Indeed, during his first term,

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Wilson’s administration expressed obvious indifference to the plight of African Americans and eroded progress made before he took office. Despite the tremendous barriers erected to African American civil rights during Wilson’s first term, the NAACP refused to give up. Much as it is today, the White House then was a hostile environment helmed by an uninterested administration. But despite the dangerous racial climate, the NAACP did not turn away from Washington. Instead, the NAACP intensified its public protest efforts during Wilson’s second term. After the establishment of a formal campaign against lynching in April 1916, the NAACP renewed its commitment to fight lynching in the federal government, and attempted to change Wilson’s attitude on racial issues. The NAACP’s majority white board members (with the exception of Du Bois) retained a sense of liberal idealism and were convinced that they could change Wilson’s mind about racial violence during his second term by educating him and applying pressure through the NAACP leadership. In a few years the NAACP attained surprising success in its quest, and Wilson, the staunch southern conservative, met with a delegation concerned about lynching, followed the NAACP’s request for clemency for African American soldiers, and made a public address against lynching. However, the road was not an easy one for the NAACP; it was only through an unyielding onslaught of pressure that the organization was able to obtain support from Wilson. A few months after Wilson assumed his second term as president, the massacre of hundreds of African Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois, occurred and strengthened the NAACP’s resolve to pressure Wilson to address lynching and mob violence. The NAACP was enraged by the events that unfolded in East St. Louis and felt they could reach Wilson through this incident. The public visibility of this violent spectacle gave the NAACP an opportunity to seize on the issue. It was one thing to ignore individual lynchings, and another to turn a blind eye to the mowing down of hundreds of African Americans and the burning up of the African American section of town. The need for outside attention became all the more obvious when reports began to surface revealing that the East St. Louis police and the Illinois National Guard, both law enforcement agencies in charge of handling the violence during the riot, stood idly by and even participated in the violence against African Americans. The incident highlighted the inability of states to prevent or even to halt racial violence.30 Although many in the nation expressed outrage about the violence, Wilson ignored the incident. The Cleveland Gazette reported on July 21, 1917,

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that a delegation from Baltimore went to the White House and attempted to meet with President Wilson but were denied and given the excuse that Wilson was trying to conserve his time.31 Other attempts at reaching Wilson, such as petitions and open letters in many newspapers, fell on deaf ears. After the massacre, the NAACP felt a dramatic public demonstration would be helpful in raising awareness about lynching. In Harlem, James Weldon Johnson organized the largest mass demonstration of African Americans in the twentieth century to that date, in the “Silent Protest Parade” (see Figure 6.1).32 On July 28, 1917, more than ten thousand African Americans marched in silence down Fifth Avenue in New York City to the sound of muffled drums in protest against mob violence and racist oppression.33 Hundreds of children held hands in the front; thousands of women dressed in white followed them, and the men in dark suits took up the rear. Police estimated that an additional ten thousand African Americans lined along Fifth Avenue to show their solidarity.34 Protesters held signs reading “Mr. President: Please Make America Safe for Democracy”; “Mother, Do Lynchers Go to Heaven?”; “Give Me a Chance to Live”; “Race Prejudice is the Offspring of Ignorance and the Mother of Lynching”; and “If You Hate Me on Account of My Color, Blame Yourselves and God”; and next to the man who carried the American flag was a bold indictment against the nation on a streamer: “Your Hands Are Full of Blood.” In addition, African American Boy Scouts distributed circulars that explained the NAACP’s drive against lynching, discrimination, brutality, and other forms of racism. It was one thing to read about the struggles African Americans faced and it was another to see thousands come together in orga nized mass protest against these conditions. Demonstrations helped magnify the humanity of African Americans in a very powerful way. In reflecting on the larger significance of the parade, Johnson wrote, “The power of the parade consisted in its being not a mere argument in words, but a demonstration to the sight. More than twelve thousand of us marching along the greatest street in the world, marching solemnly to no other music than the beat of muffled drums, bearing aloft our banners on which were inscribed not only what we have suffered in this country, but what we have accomplished for this country, this was a sight as has never before been seen.”35 The march captured the public’s attention. Major newspapers across the nation carried coverage of the protest. And afterward, Wilson, in a rare break from his adversarial stance toward civil rights, personally met with a delegation representing the Silent Protest Parade in August 1917. The delegation sat down with Wilson and told

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Figure 6.1. Underwood and Underwood, Silent Protest Parade in New York City Against the East St. Louis Riots, New York City, 1917. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, https://www.loc.gov/item/95517074/ (accessed February 27, 2019).

him about the race massacre in East St. Louis and about racist violence in other parts of the country. The NAACP delegation implored Wilson to make a strong statement denouncing the lynchings of African Americans. Wilson expressed genuine shock and promised that every thing would be done by the federal government to prevent future occurrences of mob violence.36 Although these assurances did not result in any immediate action by Wilson, the meeting represented a rare concession from Wilson in addressing African American concerns. And it was not all puffery: months after meeting with members of the NAACP, Wilson delivered a speech on July 26, 1918, condemning lynching and pledging the support of the entire nation to rid the country of this evil.37 In the speech, he declared: “There have been many lynchings and every one

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of them has been a blow at the heart of ordered law and humane justice. No man who loves America, no man who really cares for her fame and honor and character, or who is truly loyal to her institutions, can justify mob action while the courts of justice are open and the governments of the States and the Nation are ready and able to do their duty.” While seemingly a small rhetorical concession, Wilson’s condemnation of lynching marked a critical shift in the president’s unofficial acceptance of racial violence.38 Previously, Wilson supported the film adaptation of his friend Dixon’s book Birth of a Nation, which celebrated the Ku Klux Klan, and stubbornly refused to meet with African American activists, going so far as to kick Monroe Trotter out of the White House. Read today, Wilson’s words might ring hollow, but they marked a striking change from his previous rhetoric. Furthermore, for African Americans trying to fight against lynching and for equality of citizenship in the first quarter of the twentieth century, Wilson’s statement was an important indication that the federal government had not completely forgotten about them. President Wilson certainly was no advocate for African Americans, but the tenor of his approach toward mob violence and lynching softened during his second term. This change did not occur in a vacuum: the NAACP was responsible for this shift, as the organization felt Wilson’s support was critical to its campaign. In Wilson’s personal correspondence after the meeting with NAACP representatives from the Silent Protest Parade, he exhibited a desire to take affirmative action as a direct result of the NAACP appeal, going so far as to say he was “moved very much”39 by one of the petitions from the NAACP. Moving forward, the NAACP’s activism directed toward the Wilson administration emboldened the organization to use public demonstrations in tandem with its battles in Congress and the Supreme Court. And these efforts yielded surprising results. In 1922, the first-ever antilynching bill passed the House of Representatives (though the bill was abandoned in the Senate). And the NAACP secured a breakthrough in criminal procedure with the landmark case Moore v. Dempsey in 1923, which marked the first time the federal government interfered in a state criminal court proceeding and declared that a fair trial must be free from mob domination. The NAACP fought on multiple institutional fronts and adapted its strategies when it did not get the response from government it desired. By the mid-1920s, the number of lynchings fell sharply across the United States, in large part as a

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Blacks Whites

140 120 100 80 60 40 20

1882 1885 1888 1891 1894 1897 1900 1903 1906 1909 1912 1915 1918 1921 1924 1927 1930 1933 1936 1939 1942 1945 1948 1951 1954 1957 1960 1963 1966

0

Figure 6.2. Lynchings by year and race, 1882–1968. Douglas Eckberg, “Reported Victims of Lynching, by Race: 1882–1964,” in Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition, ed. Susan B. Car ter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), table Ec251-253.

result of the organizing of the NAACP and other black organizations (see Figure 6.2).

State-Building in Trump’s America Of course, Trump is different from Wilson, but there are striking similarities in their base of support (the white South) and derisive treatment of black protesters; both men also surrounded themselves with southern racists and northern apologists in the guise of cabinet members and policy advisers. For both President Wilson and President Trump, a significant part of their support was contingent on being perceived as hostile to civil rights. Trump has translated this unspoken demand from his base into the literal erasure of African Americans from serving in senior roles in the White House—at the time of writing, zero were employed. The last person to hold such a role, former White House aide Omarosa Manigault, insisted Trump was “truly a

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racist” in her memoir and expressed her unease at being complicit with an administration that did not properly attend to the violent white nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.40 To make sense of the searing state violence already legible in the Trump administration, an engagement with the past history of racial violence is necessary. Both President Trump and President Wilson engaged in white supremacist state-building, but in different areas of the federal government. Whereas Wilson chose to focus on segregation in the civil ser vice, Trump chose to focus on implementing his agenda through the Department of Justice (DOJ). Jeff Sessions, who served as attorney general until he was ousted, carried out this mission and waged a war against the hardfought gains of the Black Lives Matter movement. In this role, Sessions rolled back oversight of local police departments, dialed back voting rights protections, implemented a family separation policy for immigrants at the border, and reinvigorated the racist war on drugs in poor black communities. Finally, in one of his last acts before exiting the DOJ, Sessions approved an order to expand the requirements for court-enforced “consent decrees,” which effectively undermined the federal government’s ability to enforce changes at state and local law enforcement agencies accused of abuse. As a result, the DOJ, long heralded as a protector of civil rights for the most vulnerable in our society, is now attacking these very rights. There is a lot to take note of in the Trump administration, but it is important to move past the bright glare of the rallies and the incendiary speeches to examine the way institutions and policies are being remade in the shadows. This is not an entertaining reality television show, nor is this all bluster; state-building is happening in real time. Trump is a president who has actively taken policy-oriented steps to implement white supremacist policies. In this respect, I believe he is most similar to President Wilson. The parallel between the two men helps elucidate the persistent role of racism in American politics. And yet, the hostile political environment has not occluded the success of black social movements. It is my hope that the consideration of the NAACP’s antilynching movement during Wilson’s administration can provide insight into how social movement activists strategize and fight for racial justice in the Trump era. What the Silent Protest March teaches us is that publicity garnered through mass demonstrations is an important component of social movements aimed at transforming political and legal arrangements at the federal level. Put simply: institutional

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development derives from the tension between powerful actors and those who contest and critique the projects they seek to implement. Although the BLM movement may have incentives to mobilize on the state and local levels, the evidence here suggests that the movement should not turn all its energy away from activism at the federal level. The racial climate in the Trump administration is abysmal, but it is still a vast improvement from the realities that African Americans faced during the Wilson era. The period of Woodrow Wilson’s administration, as a time with a callous disregard for black life when lynchings reached a peak, was categorically worse than the present. And despite the improbability of doing so, the NAACP secured a number of substantive and descriptive representation victories that shifted the path of development. As the NAACP did a hundred years ago, activists must continue to resist the president’s draconian agenda and place pressure on him through mass protests. Public protest changes the calculus for politicians by making it more costly to support violent and unjust systems of power. Ultimately, the legitimacy of political institutions resides with the people. Boldly protesting for the government we want in the current political climate is the tremendous challenge of contemporary politics, but it is also the only way to a more just future.

Chapter 7

Whose President? Donald Trump and the Reagan Regime William D. Adler

What sort of president is Donald J. Trump? In his campaign for office, Trump often acted like a classic populist, rallying the masses by opposing the power of economic and social elites.1 His opposition to free trade agreements that have traditionally gained bipartisan support is the best example of Trump’s populism, although he has demonstrated this tendency in other policy arenas as well. In many respects, however, Trump has behaved like a standardissue Republican: he nominated as his running mate conservative governor Mike Pence of Indiana; has expressed support for gun rights and opposition to abortion; and has worked to cut taxes while increasing military spending. Is Trump best understood as the leader of a new era in American political life, or is he rather just another conservative Republican in the vein of other Republicans who preceded him, such as George W. Bush? This chapter argues that Trump’s surprising electoral triumph, and the beginning of his presidency, represent a return to power of the regnant Reagan regime. Trump might be able to find success if he can make his way as an articulator of those governing ideals, yet the contradictions inherent inside the regime now threaten to tear it apart. In that respect, given the temporal and ideological distance from the Reagan presidency, Trump will very likely be the last president of the Reagan era, representing a disjunction in

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political time. Trump’s combination of orthodox Republican politics alongside a rejection of many key governing commitments of the Reagan regime demonstrates how this era is coming to a close. I conclude by discussing the ways in which Trump represents an inflection point that does not fit neatly into any of our existing understandings of the presidency in the context of political time, requiring continual reevaluations of his presidency.

Political Time and Presidential Power Understanding a presidency begins with understanding presidential power and the sources of that power. Theorists of the modern presidency have argued that presidents in the modern age (going back to at least Franklin D. Roosevelt, possibly Theodore Roosevelt) have expanded tools and resources at their command that they can use to gain a systemic advantage over Congress, particularly regarding setting the agenda, rallying public opinion, and waging war.2 In The Politics Presidents Make, Stephen Skowronek argues, contrary to Neustadt and other theorists of the modern presidency, that “the notion of a prior age when presidents did not have to be leaders . . . is nothing more than a conceit of modern times [emphasis in original].”3 Presidents have always been leaders; the real question should be what kind of leaders they are. Secular changes within the presidency have given the institution greater resources and new modes of action, but these alone do not determine the strength of a president’s leadership. Building on these insights, Skowronek suggests a more appropriate way to view the presidency is by comparing the actions of presidents across time and describing their similarities and differences. Of particular importance is what he calls “the institutional logic of political disruption”—that is, the ways that all presidents shape their surrounding political environment through their ability to alter the institutions around them: “The presidency is a battering ram.”4 Those presidents best situated to use their authority to its full extent have been the most successful. To understand their circumstances, Skowronek argues, we need to focus on the concept of political time—that is, “the various relationships incumbents project between previously established commitments of ideology and interest and their own actions in the moment at hand.”5 Skowronek then argues, based on the idea of political time and the relationships presidents have with their predecessors, that there are four recurrent patterns of presidential leadership: reconstruction, in which a president has the latitude to break the old order and remake existing governing com-

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mitments; disjunction, which represents the end point of the incumbent regime; preemption, where a president from the opposition gets elected but finds himself trapped between both sides; and articulation, in which a successor carries out the legacy of the reconstruction into a new era. This last type can also be thought of as an “orthodox innovator,” someone who tries to uphold accepted beliefs while simultaneously pushing new ways of establishing those ideas in a new time. Here I will argue that Trump represents a return to power of the regnant Reagan regime, albeit at a much weaker stage of its development. Like Reagan, Donald Trump favors conservative fiscal policies that would cut domestic government spending and significantly reduce tax rates while also increasing military spending. Like Reagan, Trump also supports socially conservative policies aimed at limiting abortion access and defunding liberal organizations such as Planned Parenthood, along with a racial conservatism that rejects affirmative action and a need for further civil-rights laws. At the same time, Trump has maintained his distance from certain Reaganite positions, such as expanding free trade, relatively open immigration policies, and an aggressive international military posture. Given the distance from Reagan’s reconstruction, and the increasing contradictions within the Reagan regime, any Republican president would now face significant challenges in holding together the party’s coalition (especially a Republican president who challenges the regime’s orthodoxy in important details). In this respect, Trump will quite likely be the last of this regime’s presidents. His significant departures from previous norms of the presidency, while reminiscent in certain ways of an unconventional president such as Teddy Roosevelt, are fundamentally better understood as the last gasps of a dying regime, akin to the presidencies of Franklin Pierce, Herbert Hoover, or Jimmy Carter.

Trump as Articulator of the Reagan Regime? An initial look at the available evidence might suggest that the president Trump most resembles is Teddy Roosevelt, whom we would categorize as an articulator: someone who accepted the principles of the Republican regime that started with Abraham Lincoln but also wanted to do something new to change politics in his own time. Like Roosevelt, who consistently battled factions within his own party, Trump is someone with a high degree of political independence—in the party, but not of the party.6 This independence

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creates the political space for him to innovate even while swearing loyalty to the ideas of the regime’s founder. As a headline in The Hill on September 1, 2015, noted, “Trump compares himself to Reagan.”7 Indeed, Trump has positioned himself as a loyal soldier of the Reagan coalition by swearing fealty to the overarching ideals of the regime even while bringing new policies to bear within the larger ideological and institutional framework of that regime. However, Trump differs in crucial ways from other articulators, like George W. Bush, who hewed very closely to the conservative principles behind Reagan’s reconstruction.8 While many of Trump’s achievements after slightly more than one hundred days in office seem to be based on Reaganite priorities, there are some important distinctions we can draw. Table 7.1, based on a memo prepared by the Trump administration and published by CNN, lists the administration’s major accomplishments after one hundred days in office.9 Those clearly based on Reaganite priorities and ideology have been marked with a star. There are certainly similarities between Reagan and Trump in areas such as cutting regulations, aggressive national security policies, a “law-and-order” approach to governing crime, and the appointment of conservative judges to the courts. At the same time, there are key distinctions: Trump has prioritized his socalled “America First” plans, which include withdrawing from international trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership; his positions on immigration are much more restrictive compared with Reagan’s; and Trump has also emphasized outreach to women and minority groups (at least rhetorically) in a way Reagan did not. According to Skowronek, Teddy Roosevelt succeeded as an articulator of the dominant Republican regime “by building into the presidency itself new resources for executive action.”10 Trump seems to be attempting to do the same, using aggressive executive action to advance his agenda on controversial issues, such as his order that bans Muslims from certain countries entering the United States, or his planned border wall with Mexico. Unilateral executive action is always an attractive option for presidents impatient with Congress or factions within their party that disagree with elements of their agenda.11 At the same time, however, Trump is finding that unilateral actions can have costs. Some of his initiatives have been blocked by the courts, although others have been upheld, such as the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Hawaii that allowed the third version of the travel ban to be implemented. Similarly, Congress has not yet been forthcoming with funding for a border wall and has been reluctant to follow Trump’s lead on how to handle

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Table 7.1. Trump’s Accomplishments at One Hundred Days Cutting regulations

Job creation Trade Ethics National security Immigration Public safety Helping women and minorities Supreme Court appointment

Energy independence*; revoking federal contracting rules*; eliminating stream protection rule*; eliminating regulations on extraction*; minimizing ACA regulations*; 13 Congressional Review Act resolutions* Buy American rules; Keystone pipeline*; Dakota Access pipeline*; U.S. material in pipeline construction Withdrawal from TPP; stronger trade enforcement Federal hiring freeze*; ethics committee on appointments Strike on Syria*; travel ban; sanctions on Iran*; increased defense spending in budget*; F-35 cost savings Building a wall on the Mexican border; cutting funding to sanctuary cities; hiring more immigration agents and judges Opioid crisis commission*; protecting law enforcement*; task force on violent crime* HBCU initiative; Canada-U.S. council for advancing women entrepreneurs; women and space exploration initiative Appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court*

Source: Jim Acosta, “These Are the 100-Day Accomplishments Trump Is Touting,” CNN, April 24, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/24/politics/donald-trump-white-house-100-day -accomplishments/. *Indicates priorities consistent with Reagan regime.

relations with Russia, imposing sanctions despite Trump’s opposition. Table 7.2 lists all of Trump’s executive orders signed between his inauguration and November 2018. Those resembling Reaganite priorities are again noted with a star. This table also demonstrates certain similarities to Reagan, in the areas of religious liberty, regulatory cutbacks, and “law and order.” The differences are once again in immigration enforcement and trade policy. Significantly, the most controversial items from Trump’s agenda, such as the travel ban and the border wall, are also the ones that mark the greatest departures from Reagan’s reconstruction. Also, similar to Roosevelt, Trump is using new methods of communicating with the public to push his political agenda. Roosevelt helped to create the rhetorical presidency, in which presidents have the ability to take their case directly to the public instead of only negotiating with Congress to pass their policy proposals.12 Trump’s approach involves 140 or 280 characters per post on Twitter, but it too breaks the mold of customary

Table 7.2. Executive Orders Issued by President Trump E.O. 13765 E.O. 13766 E.O. 13767 E.O. 13768 E.O. 13769 E.O. 13770 E.O. 13771 E.O. 13772 E.O. 13773 E.O. 13774 E.O. 13775 E.O. 13776 E.O. 13777 E.O. 13778 E.O. 13779 E.O. 13780 E.O. 13781 E.O. 13782 E.O. 13783 E.O. 13784 E.O. 13785 E.O. 13786 E.O. 13787 E.O. 13788 E.O. 13789 E.O. 13790 E.O. 13791 E.O. 13792 E.O. 13793 E.O. 13794 E.O. 13795 E.O. 13796

Minimizing the Economic Burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Pending Repeal* Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals for High-Priority Infrastructure Projects* Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States* Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs* Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System* Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking* Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers* Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety* Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda* Restoring the Rule of Law, Federalism, and Economic Growth by Reviewing the “Waters of the United States” Rule* White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch* Revocation of Federal Contracting Executive Orders* Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth* Establishing the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis* Establishing Enhanced Collection and Enforcement of Antidumping and Countervailing Duties and Violations of Trade and Customs Laws Omnibus Report on Significant Trade Deficits Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice Buy American and Hire American Identifying and Reducing Tax Regulatory Burdens* Promoting Agriculture and Rural Prosperity in America Enforcing Statutory Prohibitions on Federal Control of Education* Review of Designations Under the Antiquities Act* Improving Accountability and Whistleblower Protection at the Department of Veterans Affairs Establishment of the American Technology Council Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy* Addressing Trade Agreement Violations and Abuses

E.O. 13797 E.O. 13798 E.O. 13799 E.O. 13800 E.O. 13801 E.O. 13802 E.O. 13803 E.O. 13804 E.O. 13805 E.O. 13806 E.O. 13807 E.O. 13808 E.O. 13809 E.O. 13810 E.O. 13811 E.O. 13812 E.O. 13813 E.O. 13814 E.O. 13815 E.O. 13816 E.O. 13817 E.O. 13818 E.O. 13819 E.O. 13820 E.O. 13821 E.O. 13822 E.O. 13823 E.O. 13824 E.O. 13825 E.O. 13826

Establishment of Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty* Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure Expanding Apprenticeships in America Amending Executive Order 13597 Reviving the National Space Council Allowing Additional Time for Recognizing Positive Actions by the Government of Sudan and Amending Executive Order 13761 Establishing a Presidential Advisory Council on Infrastructure Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States* Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects* Imposing Additional Sanctions With Respect to the Situation in Venezuela* Restoring State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement’s Access to Lifesaving Equipment and Resources Imposing Additional Sanctions With Respect to North Korea* Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees Revocation of Executive Order Creating Labor-Management Forums Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition Across the United States* Amending Executive Order 13223 Resuming the United States Refugee Admissions Program With Enhanced Vetting Capabilities Revising the Seal for the National Credit Union Administration A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse or Corruption* Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay Termination of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity Streamlining and Expediting Requests to Locate Broadband Facilities in Rural America Supporting Our Veterans During Their Transition From Uniformed Ser vice to Civilian Life* Protecting America Through Lawful Detention of Terrorists* President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition 2018 Amendments to the Manual for Courts-Martial, United States Federal Interagency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry* (Continued)

Table 7.2 (Continued) E.O. 13827 E.O. 13828 E.O. 13829 E.O. 13830 E.O. 13831 E.O. 13832 E.O. 13833 E.O. 13834 E.O. 13835 E.O. 13836 E.O. 13837 E.O. 13838 E.O. 13839 E.O. 13840 E.O. 13841 E.O. 13842 E.O. 13843 E.O. 13844 E.O. 13845 E.O. 13846 E.O. 13847 E.O. 13848 E.O. 13849 E.O. 13850

Taking Additional Steps to Address the Situation in Venezuela* Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility* Task Force on the United States Postal System* Delegation of Authority To Approve Certain Military Decorations Establishment of a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative* Enhancing Noncompetitive Civil Ser vice Appointments of Military Spouses Enhancing the Effectiveness of Agency Chief Information Officers Efficient Federal Operations* Prohibiting Certain Additional Transactions With Respect to Venezuela* Developing Efficient, Effective, and Cost- Reducing Approaches To Federal Sector Collective Bargaining* Ensuring Transparency, Accountability, and Efficiency in Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Use* Exemption From Executive Order 13658 for Recreational Ser vices on Federal Lands* Promoting Accountability and Streamlining Removal Procedures Consistent With Merit System Principles* Ocean Policy To Advance the Economic, Security, and Environmental Interests of the United States Affording Congress an Opportunity To Address Family Separation Establishing an Exception to Competitive Examining Rules for Appointment to Certain Positions in the United States Marshals Ser vice, Department of Justice Excepting Administrative Law Judges From the Competitive Ser vice* Establishment of the Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud Establishing the President’s National Council for the American Worker Reimposing Certain Sanctions With Respect to Iran* Strengthening Retirement Security in America* Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election* Authorizing the Implementation of Certain Sanctions Set Forth in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act* Blocking Property of Additional Persons Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela*

Source: Federal Register, Executive Order Disposition Tables, 2017–2018. *Indicates priorities consistent with Reagan regime.

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presidential communication and reaches over the heads of Congress and the traditional media. Communicating directly to the public provides opportunities for presidential involvement in pushing policies a president desires, but as we know is in and of itself no guarantee of policy success.13 Trump’s extensive use of social media to communicate directly with the public has also backfired already on multiple occasions, with congressional Republicans finding themselves in the line of fire when they disagreed with elements of his health care agenda or disputed Trump’s positions on foreign policy questions, especially relating to Trump’s ties to Russia. Here, Trump is contending with committed regime supporters who are increasingly dissatisfied with his actions. Orthodox innovators always face the potential for creating divisions within the governing coalition, if the innovation swamps the orthodoxy. It is all too easy for presidents in this position, on the heels of an opposition presidency, to overreach in their attempts to restore the regime’s ideals.14 As someone with no previous governing experience, Trump may be especially prone to overreaching in the ser vice of satisfying the regime’s base as he contends with increasing opposition to his policies from Democrats.

Donald Trump: Disjunctive Leader I argue that we should view Trump as representing the end of the Reagan regime and as someone who is practicing the politics of disjunction. Disjunctive presidents who manage to get themselves elected (often in closely contested races) are in a uniquely difficult spot. They signal their loyalty to the regime’s founding ideals and policies but also recognize and publicly acknowledge the difficulties of governing that way in an era far removed from the original reconstruction. These presidents find themselves practicing highly personalized politics, as Franklin Pierce and Herbert Hoover both did at the end of their respective regimes. Disjunctive presidents can institute significant policies, nevertheless, but ultimately fail and “become the foils for reconstructive leadership” in their wake.15 If Trump is to be understood in this mode, it is likely his presidency would also match these characteristics. There is certainly reason to believe that he is already manifesting these particular qualities of leadership. As Skowronek has recently noted, there are significant parallels between Trump and another disjunctive leader, Jimmy Car ter:

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The most profound thing said by Donald Trump was at the Republican National Convention in July: “I alone can fix it.” That was a telltale sign of what kind of president he will be. He was saying, “I’m not going to rely on my own party to do this.” That smacks of Jimmy Carter, who distanced himself from his fellow Democrats by asking, “Why not the best?” The kind of president who reigns over the end of his party’s own orthodoxy is always a guy with no relationship to his party establishment, someone who catches popular mood and says he is going to do it all by himself. Someone like Herbert Hoover, who carefully cultivated his own political brand and image as a “wonder boy”—the guy who can fix anything. Disjunctive presidents are always loners.16 As someone who has expressed disagreements with important Reaganite ideological commitments, especially in the areas of immigration, trade, and foreign policy, Trump certainly resembles other presidents who have moved a significant distance from their party’s regular establishment. Julia Azari similarly notes that disjunctive presidents like Franklin Pierce and Jimmy Carter “didn’t have concrete political connections to the old administrations, and despite shared party labels, they weren’t true believers in the ideology.”17 Trump certainly has made his distance from Reagan-era orthodoxy clear in a variety of issue domains and has specifically noted that “it’s called the Republican Party, not the conservative party,” a line it is hard to imagine any other Republican running for president uttering.18 His connection to previous Republican administrations is also quite tenuous, as demonstrated by the difficulty he had in finding appointees for key executive branch positions. The so-called Never Trump group of Republicans has not remained as solidly in opposition to Trump in office as they did during the campaign, but remain a voice in resistance to President Trump, keeping him from truly consolidating Republican support behind his administration. In many respects, the “Never Trump” faction represents those who wanted a continued articulation of the Reagan regime and oppose Trump’s moves away from Reaganite orthodoxy (on issues such as trade and immigration). When Trump acts in ways consistent with the orthodoxy, such as by cutting taxes, attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and appointing conservative judges, these Republicans are pleased and cooperative; however, their effectiveness is limited in opposition to Trump as they have limited experience in mobilizing a coherent opposition strategy, caught between their support of his

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orthodox moves and resistance to his disjunctive departures. For example, a new group called “Checks and Balances” that was established as a splinter faction of the highly influential Federalist Society has as its goal to support conservative judicial appointments but also oppose Trump’s attacks on democratic institutions.19 However, the potential influence of such a group is less clear, as the Federalist Society has never enjoyed greater sway with an administration, and many conservatives are happy to accept the trade-off of a Trump presidency if they get conservative judges. The current political moment is also shaped by forces that have been at work since the start of Reagan’s presidency. Though Reagan was by and large able to reconstruct American political commitments and discourse in the terms he desired, even the strongest presidents face limits to their authority and often find their administrations filled with difficulty.20 Internal disagreements within the Republican Party over foreign policy issues (international engagement versus a libertarian withdrawal from the world), immigration (amnesty versus cracking down on immigrants), and even issues of taxing and spending (budget balancing versus more tax cuts) were always present and have been magnified as succeeding leaders within the regime have come and gone. George H. W. Bush fell prey to the issue of taxes, and George W. Bush was tripped up over immigration and his plan to reform Social Security. During his first two years, Trump had same-party majorities in Congress but not necessarily majorities willing to do his legislative bidding (as has been clear in 2017 with the failure of attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act). The personalization of issues by Trump also inhibits his ability to work with Republican congressional leaders and places policy in stark terms of loyalty to Trump himself, rather than a party-led agenda. As the party struggles over the terms this president wants to impose, its internal disagreements will likely be further highlighted and continue to weaken the regime’s foundations. To the extent that Trump behaves in highly personalized ways, he therefore operates within the disjunctive mode of presidential leadership. It is also worth noting, however, that as someone with a minimal political background in traditional terms, he represents the apotheosis of what Theodore Lowi termed “the personal president.”21 As a long-term trend, the reliance of the nation upon plebiscitary presidential leadership that Lowi identified during Reagan’s presidency has only accelerated due to the growth of new media forms, which Trump has been able to take advantage of quite successfully.22 Combined with the trend toward anti-intellectualism in the presidency,

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Trump’s presidency is therefore also the culmination of recent secular trends in presidential authority.23

Conclusion Donald Trump’s elevation to the presidency presents us with a variety of new questions about presidential leadership. Like all presidents, Trump will be constrained by the institutions surrounding him, though the extent to which those constraints will inhibit his ambitions remains to be seen.24 The power of the presidency to shape its surrounding environment remains resilient.25 Scholars can, however, build on the insights of APD scholarship and the concept of political time to develop working theories about how a Trump presidency may play out. I have argued here that Trump is a disjunctive leader: despite many similarities with Reaganite rhetoric and ideological commitments, his divisive departures from the regime’s model and his personalization of the presidency represent a weakening of the regime’s hold on power. The contradictions within the regime that are now coming to the forefront, given the temporal and ideological distance from Reagan’s reconstruction, will likely tear it apart and create the space for a new regime to emerge in its wake. Nevertheless, in concluding this chapter it may also be worth considering the ways in which Trump is an inflection point in political time and defies certain aspects of categorization. Barack Obama at one point may have had the opportunity to become a reconstructive leader, but ultimately he failed.26 In the wake of that failed reconstructive moment, we are left in an odd period where the previous regime’s strength has been significantly weakened but not completely mitigated. This points back to another insight of APD work, that we may be entering a moment where we are witnessing “the waning of political time” and therefore a “perpetual politics of preemption” in which presidents continually blame the previous administration but can themselves merely muddle through, without the ability to lay the foundation for new reconstructive possibilities.27 We have already seen the difficulties President Obama faced in his efforts to enact policies that would make lasting changes. Republicans may now feel triumphant, but their successes are likely to also be partial and temporary, as they face a thickened institutional environment where dramatic change becomes ever more difficult. Within the Republican coalition, fissures are already evident between those who favor classic Reagan-style conservatism and those who prefer the new,

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more populist brand manifested by Trump. It is possible, as Matthew Laing suggests, that “presidents no longer can rely on their location in political time to help them achieve change, but must negotiate and build short-term mandates using pragmatic reasoning” alone to achieve success.28 If so, we should expect Trump to make greater use of the plebiscitary presidency in his efforts to secure coherent governance, while he simultaneously struggles against the limits of his own powers.

Chapter 8

The Policy State and the Post-truth Presidency Philip Rocco

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly faced criticism for his lack of policy expertise and his obliviousness to the nuances of governance. While his political adversaries’ campaigns were awash in policy intellectuals and seasoned government officials, Trump employed a lean staff composed largely of fringe figures and longtime loyalists, including some he derided as being “[not] so smart.”1 Rather than defending himself for lacking what his opponents had, Trump went on the attack. Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in the spring of 2016, Trump exclaimed: “You look at what China’s doing in the South China Sea, and they say, ‘Oh, Trump doesn’t have experts.’ Let me tell you, I do have experts but I know what’s happening. And look at the experts we’ve had, OK? Look at the experts. All of these people have had experts. . . . I’ve never said this before with all the talking we all do—all of these experts, ‘Oh we need an expert—’ The experts are terrible. Look at the mess we’re in with all these experts that we have.”2 Criticism of elites, policy experts, and technocracy is a hallmark of populist rhetoric.3 Yet Trump has not limited his attacks to experts alone. He has also assailed the numbers that experts produce. His surrogates disputed the results of multiple independent analyses suggesting that his tax plan would largely benefit corporations and high-income Americans while reducing revenue by $6.2 trillion, but failed to provide any evidence to support their

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claims.4 Nineteen times during the campaign, and again without evidence, Trump said that unemployment figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics were “totally fiction.”5 As he put it during one of his New Hampshire rallies, “Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment. The number’s probably 28, 29, as high as 35.” 6 Even so, after the release of a positive February jobs report—just weeks after Trump took office—the president retweeted the Drudge Report’s headline “GREAT AGAIN.” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested that while the numbers were “fake before,” they were “real now.”7 More than a year into his presidency, Trump’s brawl with official statistics had not abated. In September 2018, Trump falsely claimed via Twitter that “3,000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico” in the previous year.8 Two months later, he repeatedly lied about the existence of voter fraud in the 2018 midterm elections.9 Trump’s apparent disregard for facts and numbers is not simply rhetorical bluster. Nor is his administration’s stance toward evidence, as journalist Michael Lewis suggests, merely the product of top advisers’ ignorance about government operations.10 As I argue in this chapter, Trump’s antagonistic relationship with expert knowledge exposes tensions in what Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek characterize as the American “policy state,” a thickly institutionalized world dominated by the idea that government can and should solve problems, empowered by a prodigious set of legislative and bureaucratic institutions.11 The Progressive Era ideas that underwrote the creation of the policy state emphasized expertise, rationality, and “trust in numbers” as tools for problem solving.12 Yet whereas other advanced democracies employ policy expertise as a means of building consensus, the diffuse, decentered character of American governing institutions has the opposite effect.13 The growth of government and the subsequent conservative countermobilization have created competing cadres of experts and analytical infrastructures. Rather than serving as a problem-solving tool, policy knowledge has become a weapon in political battles. Interested parties pit their preferred experts, studies, models, and assumptions against one another—raising the costs of comprehensive action. The chief good produced by this “marketplace of ideas” is not consensus, but doubt. In a 2017 survey, only 13  percent of political scientists agreed with the view that political leaders in the United States share a “common base of facts.”14 Gallup polls consistently reveal that a plurality of Americans do not trust federal statistics.15

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Within this fragmented institutional context, the president has incentives not merely to consume expert knowledge but also to produce, circulate, and contest it. As Walter Williams’s study of the “anti-analytic presidency” shows, the Reagan administration politicized and retrenched federal agencies that produced statistics that threatened to undermine its agenda.16 Facing similar pressures, Trump has created an organizational culture hostile to expert knowledge production in many federal agencies and has attempted to engineer significant cuts to the federal statistical system. He has also used the ad hoc production of new information to reinforce his view of political reality. To be sure, institutional fragmentation has not always worked in Trump’s favor; his efforts at analytic retrenchment have encountered pushback from other institutions within the policy state, including interest-group coalitions, congressional committees, and unions representing federal civil servants. Yet even if they do not result in comprehensive policy change, these actions—enabled by the policy state’s fragmented knowledge-production regime—may restructure the political environment in which the Trump presidency itself is judged.

The Policy State and the President’s Agenda Expertise and policy analysis have been central to the development of the American state. The emergence of American social science is itself closely linked to Progressive Era projects of “rationalizing” politics at the local, state, and national levels.17 As schools of public administration developed, a growing cadre of experts, many of whom came to staff the executive branch, agitated for significant policy changes based on evidence and impartial analysis and ultimately for reforms that increased their own authority within the national state.18 During the New Deal, economists played a critical role in restructuring employment policy.19 The development of Cold War systems analysis redefined how government planned and budgeted both defense and domestic programs.20 The growing ranks of policy analysts, both within government and at private think tanks, have altered public and elite perceptions of antipoverty efforts.21 The result of this process is that politics is often dominated by technical arguments about “means” rather than normative arguments about “ends.”22 In this context, policy victories are harder to claim. Contemporary progressives face difficulties defending the effectiveness of federal programs against an onslaught of “performance” initiatives.23 Simultaneously, conservatives find themselves at pains to justify their opposition to those programs in “policy rational” terms.24

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The presidency is exemplary of this trend. Beginning in the Progressive Era, the White House slowly transformed from a relatively minor player in American politics into an “institutional presidency,” buttressed by expert organizations—such as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), and the National Security Council (NSC)—that aid in the planning and development of White House policy.25 Yet while Progressives envisioned expert knowledge as a means of problemsolving, expertise has not always generated political dividends for presidents.26 Although Franklin Roosevelt legitimated his policy accomplishments by pointing to newly developed indicators of economic growth, sluggish gross domestic product (GDP) figures threatened the reputations of future administrations.27 Moreover, rather than generating consensus, expertise has often been used as a tool for institutional conflict. Plans for the Council of Economic Advisers emerged first from congressional opponents of fullemployment legislation, who aimed to subject Keynesian economic planning methods to greater public scrutiny.28 In response to Richard Nixon’s impoundment of funds, Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, enhancing its power over the budgetary process and creating the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).29 Ideological conflict has also stimulated the growth of private policy research organizations. Beginning in the 1970s, an orga nized conservative movement financed the creation of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation in part as a reaction to what it viewed as an “establishment” of liberal organizations like the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. While both government research organs and “establishment” think tanks remained, these new advocacy-oriented think tanks drew policy expertise and tacit knowledge away from government and toward the private sector. Their existence— supported primarily by private philanthropies rather than government contracts—helped to further undermine the authority of purportedly neutral, objective advice and fed a growing appetite among policy makers for knowledge that confirmed their preexisting beliefs.30 Compared with democracies like Germany or Denmark, where state institutions either mediate or coordinate the production of policy knowledge, public and private research organizations in the United States compete with one another to shape the policy agenda.31 As a result, no single set of organizations plays a dominant role in the formulation of presidential policy ideas.32 For example, despite the growth of the institutional presidency, the CBO plays an important role in evaluating the effects of presidential budget proposals.

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The CBO’s suggestion that only about 40  percent of the items in President Barack Obama’s 2010 stimulus plan would lead to economic growth by the end of the fiscal year led to significant changes in the package.33 The diffuse, disjointed nature of the American state has often made policy expertise a source of doubt rather than certainty or consensus.34 Especially as policy analysis became more precise, public problems revealed themselves as infinitely complex and ambiguous.35 Such ambiguity has allowed politicians to wield analysis to advance partial solutions that match their partisan or group identities.36 This practice is what Gabrielle Hecht calls techno-politics, the pursuit of political ends through technical means.37 For example, congressional scrutiny of presidential budgets has given the CBO the “capacity to embarrass and even destroy top-priority legislation of the president and Congress.”38 Presidents and others have struck back.39 The Reagan administration famously hid imaginary budget cuts in the small print of budget documents with the help of a “magic asterisk.” 40 The Clinton administration unsuccessfully lobbied the CBO to adjust its assumptions when projecting the costs of comprehensive health reform.41 To pay for a proposed tax cut, George W. Bush’s White House leveraged CBO’s politically impossible assumption that the alternative minimum tax would remain in place.42 In short, presidents operate in a highly fragmented and competitive context for policy knowledge. Conservatives’ countermobilization against government growth has also underwritten what Walter Williams refers to as the “anti-analytic presidency.” 43 This is a style of governance marked by severe retrenchment of the executive branch’s analytical capacities. Perhaps the most notable display of the anti-analytic governance style occurred during the Reagan administration, which gave the OMB tighter control of policymaking and enacted major cuts in evaluation and R&D units. The result was the increasing prevalence of “quick fixes” for policy problems rather than the evaluation of long-term solutions. Presidents have also leveraged the power of the institutional presidency to challenge the decision-making autonomy of career civil servants. Among other things, recent presidents have attempted to centralize control of high-level administrators in the Senior Executive Ser vice and have used cost-benefit analysis to block the development of new regulations.44 Whereas presidents have strengthened political control over knowledge production, Congress has often divested itself of analytical capacity to challenge the White House. In the 1990s, Congress eliminated analytical units like the Office of Technology Assessment and made significant cuts to the

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budget of support agencies like the Congressional Research Ser vice and the Government Accountability Office.45 These cuts are emblematic of a larger pattern of the deinstitutionalization of the legislative branch.46 In short, while Donald Trump may have invented his own brand of populist contempt for experts, he has inherited a set of institutional conditions that allow him to translate that contempt into consequential action.

The Politics of Analytic Retrenchment Since the moment he entered the presidential race, Donald Trump has been at odds with experts and official statistics. Yet has he been able to translate this rhetoric into analytic retrenchment, or what his one-time advisor Steve Bannon referred to as “the deconstruction of the administrative state”? The answer to this question depends in part on Trump’s ability to use the tools of the institutional presidency to defund key analytic agencies. Observers were thus rightly concerned when Trump’s OMB Director, Mick Mulvaney—a former member of the House Freedom Caucus—unveiled Trump’s initial budget proposal, titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness.” In addition to making deep cuts in social programs—including Medicaid and food stamps—the budget called for steep reductions in budget authority for government agencies devoted to statistical analysis, program evaluation, and scientific research.47 These cuts were about more than deregulation; even low-profile sources of government information found themselves on the chopping block. In June 2018, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality announced that, as a result of budget cuts, it was eliminating its National Guidelines Clearinghouse—a central repository for evidence-based clinical guidelines widely used by medical professionals around the country.48 A key site of the administration’s budgetary attack was the federal statistical system, a decentralized network of thirteen principal statistical agencies such as the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and more than one hundred statistical programs scattered across federal departments. This system produces the social and economic indicators on which the vast majority of federal policy is based. Prior to the Trump administration, statistical agencies were on a path of policy drift, with budgets and staffing flat for more than a decade and facing competition from universities and private research organizations, as well as rapid technological change.49 Yet as Table 8.1 suggests, Trump’s 2018 budget proposal both ignored agency requests to increase support of critical infrastructures and made cuts to the majority of

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Table 8.1. Proposed and Actual Changes in Funding for Principal Statistical Agencies, Fiscal Years 2016–2018

Agency Bureau of Economic Analysis Bureau of Justice Statistics Bureau of Labor Statistics Bureau of Transportation Statistics Census Bureau Energy Information Administration Economic Research Ser vice (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Ser vice National Center for Education Statistics National Center for Health Statistics National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (SSA) Statistics of Income (IRS)

Percent change versus FY 2016 (Trump proposal)

Percent change versus FY 2016 (approved by Congress in FY 2018 continuing resolution)

−7.71 0.00 −0.20 0.00 9.05 −3.28 −10.19 10.27

−5.80 17.07 0.49 0.00 105.40 2.46 1.64 13.84

−1.09

−5.66

−2.40 −3.37

175.13 0.00

19.69

19.69

−11.11

−7.41

Source: Author’s calculations based on Steve Pierson, “FY18 Statistical Agency Budget Developments,” ASA Community, March 16, 2017, http://community.amstat.org / blogs/steve -pierson/2017/03/16/fy18-statistical-agency-budget-developments; Steve Pierson, “FY19 Statistical Agency Budget Developments,” ASA Community, February 12, 2018, http:// community.amstat.org / blogs/steve-pierson/2018/02/12/fy19-statistical-agency-budget -developments. Note: Cells reflect percentage change in total funding for principal statistical agencies relative to FY 2016. The first number represents the percentage change requested in the president’s budget request for FY 2018; the second number represents the percentage change from FY 2016 to the FY 2018 continuing resolution level.

the principal statistical agencies. Outside the principal statistical agencies, agency-level statistical programs were also subjected to billions of dollars in cuts.50 A similar pattern can be observed in Trump’s proposals for more than $29 billion in cuts to federal R&D funding across all federal agencies.51 The proposed cuts sent shock waves through the bureaucracy and its core constituencies. Interest groups soon sprang into action to defend the system before federal officials and congressional appropriators. Likely as a result of

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their efforts, Congress increased funding relative to Trump’s budget for ten statistical agencies (see Table 8.1). Perhaps the most ardent defense of the federal statistical system came in the form of the Census Project—a broad coalition of business associations, social scientists, civil-rights groups, and state and local officials—which urged Congress to include funding for the development of a full advertising campaign, outreach efforts, field tests in rural areas, and new operations costs.52 As a result of these efforts, Congress’s final authorization for the census represented an improvement over the Trump administration’s proposal. Dodging this onslaught of interest-group constituencies proved difficult for the Trump administration. Yet, whether intentionally or not, even the president’s budget proposal had measurable effects on the administration of federal statistics. The census is a perfect example of this pattern. Fearing an inadequate congressional appropriation, the Census Bureau canceled its 2017 field test and drastically reduced the scope of its 2018 “End to End Test”— making it difficult to discover major operational problems and limiting opportunities to make operational improvements prior to the 2020 count.53 Further, a series of Government Accountability Office studies revealed that budgetary shortfalls limited the Bureau’s efforts to enumerate hard-tocount populations by offering non-English language response options and recruiting partner organizations in local communities.54 In 2019, the administration continued to look for ways to restrict funding available for census outreach activities.55 Concerned about the possibility of an undercount, state and local governments were forced to redouble their efforts at census outreach.56 The attack on the census was not limited to budget cuts alone, but also involved substantive policy changes that supported Trump’s restrictionist position on immigration. In March of 2018, the Census Bureau announced the addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 census form, despite Census Bureau research showing that the addition of such a question could cause an undercount among both documented and undocumented immigrant populations.57 And while Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross had testified under oath that the purpose of the question was to better enforce the Voting Rights Act, it later became clear that the White House surrogates had pushed for the inclusion of the question because they believed that undocumented immigrants should not be counted toward congressional apportionment.58 By the fall of 2018, the 2020 census was embroiled in a snarl of lawsuits regarding the addition of the question.59 As in other policy areas, this litigation

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created steep transaction costs for the Trump administration. Yet uncertainty about the status of the question placed severe strain on Census Bureau operations and enhanced public distrust of the census, especially among immigrant populations.60

De-skilling Federal Agencies Beyond budget cuts, the Trump administration has taken a number of actions to weaken the authority of policy experts in the federal civil ser vice. During Trump’s first State of the Union address, he asked Congress to enact legislation that would make it easier for him to fire career civil servants.61 Although Congress failed to act on this full-frontal assault on agency expertise, the administration leveraged the tools of the institutional presidency to the same end. In May 2018, Trump issued a suite of three executive orders intended to defang federal employee unions—rescinding collective bargaining agreements, curtailing union officials’ capacity to represent bargainingunit members, encouraging managers to authorize dismissals rather than suspension of employees, and weakening grievance procedures.62 Several months later, Trump issued another order allowing agency heads to pick whomever they wished to serve as administrative law judges (ALJs), shortcircuiting the Office of Personnel Management’s candidate-vetting process.63 Ambiguous legal authority—a hallmark of the policy state—made these executive orders possible. For example, Trump justified gutting collective bargaining in Executive Order 13836 by citing Title 5 of the United States Code, which requires the “Federal-Labor Management Relations Statute . . . to be interpreted in a manner consistent with the requirement of an effective and efficient government.” 64 Similarly, the administration justified its end run around the process for vetting ALJ candidates by pointing to the Supreme Court’s decision in Lucia v. Securities and Exchanges Commission, which held that the commission’s ALJs were officers of the United States and thus subject to the Appointments Clause.65 Further, while directed toward destabilizing agency expertise, the executive orders made strategic use of policy analysis within government, citing findings from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to argue that federal agency performance was “unacceptable . . . burden[ing] good performers with subpar colleagues.” 66 Alternatively, statutory ambiguity created opportunities for other branches of government to block Trump’s actions. Federal employee unions quickly sued to block Trump’s trio of executive orders on the workforce. By August

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2018, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the D.C. District Court struck down most provisions in the orders, concluding that they violated the 1978 Civil Ser vice Reform Act.67 Meanwhile, both the Association of Administrative Law Judges and the Congressional Research Ser vice raised doubts about the legality of Trump’s ALJ executive order.68 Before long, Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) had assembled a bipartisan coalition on legislation to reverse this order.69 Backlash notwithstanding, the administration engaged in more informal attacks on the civil ser vice. By 2018, numerous reports had surfaced detailing how high-level civil servants at key agencies had been reassigned to rudimentary work, a tactic known as sending civil servants to the “turkey farm.”70 To some extent, such efforts to intimidate career civil servants echo earlier conservative battles with the administrative state.71 Yet under Trump, these tactics had a harder edge. Civil servants’ appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board languished in cardboard boxes, as the administration failed to nominate the number of board members necessary to satisfy a quorum rule.72 Analytic retrenchment was also more successful when the experts in question did not enjoy union representation or civil-service protections. In May 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fired half of the members of an eighteen-person scientific advisory board that reviews the soundness of the agency’s research methodology.73 A week later, the Department of the Interior announced that it would suspend the operations of two hundred of its advisory panels.74 By the fall of 2018, the administration had dissolved the EPA’s Office of the Science Advisor.75 The Department of Justice also announced that it would cease to use scientific guidance documents written by other federal agencies to enforce laws.76 In June 2019, Trump took an even more dramatic step, issuing an executive order that required federal agencies to terminate “at least one third” of advisory committees created under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.77 The effects of these policy changes are difficult to trace at the individual level. In aggregate, however, the Trump administration appears to have had an impact on civil servants’ desire to remain in government. In 2017, more than fifteen hundred members of the Senior Executive Ser vice (SES) opted to leave during the presidential transition, an 82  percent increase from the prior year.78 During the first year of the Obama administration, just over a thousand senior executives departed, an increase of only 46 percent from the previous year.79 Given the high rate of turnover among Trump’s closest

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advisers and the relatively low level of competence among political appointees, a coherent plan to “deconstruct” the administrative state seems unlikely to emerge.80 A more likely scenario is persistent incremental efforts to de-skill the civil ser vice.

The Presidency of Alternative Facts A common misconception about anti-analytic governance is that it primarily involves fiscal retrenchment and the hollowing out of the professional civil ser vice.81 Yet recent presidents have done more, using the flexible structure of the executive branch to alter the informational landscape. White House staff coordinate the publication of high-profile policy reports, the convening of advisory panels and task forces, and the administration of important federal statistics.82 Like past presidents, Trump has leveraged these tools to support his agenda. Yet Trump’s White House has also gone further, using research to attack the legitimacy of official statistics and to undermine the credibility of policy experts and journalists. Under the leadership of conservative economist Keven Hassett, Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) has been especially productive in this regard. During the first two years of the Trump administration, the CEA produced sixteen major reports, a 200  percent increase from the George W. Bush administration, and a 23 percent increase from the Obama administration.83 To respond to criticisms that the Republican tax bill had not, as predicted, contributed to wage growth, the CEA released a thirty-two-page report that contradicted Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that average weekly earnings for American workers, adjusted for inflation, grew at 0.1 percent in 2017. Actual wages, the report argued, rose by 1.4 percent when taking into consideration, among other things, inflation, new workforce entrants, and employment benefits like health insurance.84 One month later, the CEA released a more outlandish report on the “Opportunity Costs of Socialism” that compared economists like Robert Frank and journalists like Sarah Kliff—both of whom argue that single-payer health-care systems are more efficient than the U.S. system—to “Lenin and Mao, who justified government takeovers on the basis of the virtues of single-payer programs.”85 Trump has also restructured the informational environment by signing a number of executive orders (see Table 8.2). In some respects, these efforts resemble the efforts of prior conservative administrations to use information as a tool of deregulation. Trump has restricted federal agencies’ use of

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existing policy analysis. Executive Order (EO) 13783, for example, directs the Environmental Protection Agency to ignore updated data on the “social cost of carbon” when scrutinizing regulations. This order parallels Trump’s disbanding of the advisory council for the National Climate Assessment and the halting of an Interior Department study on the health effects of coal mining.86 More important, Trump has used executive orders to remake the regulatory review process. EO 13771, the capstone of Trump’s deregulation initiative, will replace the traditional cost-benefit analysis of agency rulemaking with a new type of analysis that focuses on regulatory costs alone.87 In a major departure from regulatory review stretching back to the Reagan administration, agencies must now offset the costs of significant new rules by repealing a minimum of two existing rules. Because the monetized benefits of new rules are not taken into consideration in this process, some observers have referred to it as “cost-cost analysis.”88 By 2018, rulemaking and the imposition of regulatory costs had declined across the board.89 Trump has also leveraged executive orders to produce information that underwrites antidemocratic impulses, including Trump’s broadcasting of nativist myths about a torrent of immigrant crime.90 In an executive order titled “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” Trump created a new office for Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE). The order mandated VOICE to create quarterly reports on the effects of “victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States.” 91 Crime statistics released as a result of the order routinely included noncrimes and crimes committed by nonimmigrants.92 A similar pattern can be seen in Trump’s construction of ad hoc organizations for policy analysis. Most notable in this regard was the energetic but short-lived President’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PACEI), created to support Trump’s unfounded assertion that there had been massive voter fraud in the 2016 election.93 As the commission’s vice chair, Trump appointed Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach (R). Like Trump, Kobach had long made claims about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens in the United States, also without evidence. Like other commission members, he had also headed campaigns for tougher voter identification laws.94 During its short lifespan, the PACEI held a chaotic series of meetings, encountered widespread opposition from state election officials, and faced litigation alleging that the commission had violated the Fifth Amendment, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and numerous other laws.95 Yet although Trump disbanded the commission in early 2018, its existence ensured the continued

Table 8.2. Policy Analysis Provisions in Trump Executive Orders Orders altering use of policy analysis by federal agencies • E.O. 13766: Expedites environmental review of “high priority” infrastructure projects • E.O. 13783: Prohibits agencies from using the “social cost of carbon” to monetize the benefits of greenhouse gas emission reductions • E.O. 13807: Limits environmental review time for infrastructure projects to two years • E.O. 13874: Revises regulatory framework for evaluating risk of agricultural biotechnology products Orders requiring the production of new policy analyses • E.O. 13771: Requires agencies to identify two regulations to be repealed for every regulation they publish; requires agencies to annually submit costs of all regulations to OMB • E.O. 13780: Requires the Department of Homeland Security to report the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been charged or convicted of terrorism-related offenses, the number of foreign nationals who have “radicalized” after entry into the United States, the number of “honor killings” in the United States by foreign nationals, and other information • E.O. 13786: Requires omnibus report on trade deficits by U.S. trade representative • E.O. 13788: Requires heads of all agencies to review implementation of and compliance with “buy American” laws • E.O. 13789: Directs secretary of the treasury to identify regulations that place an undue burden on taxpayers, add undue complexity to federal laws, and exceed the statutory authority of the Internal Revenue Ser vice • E.O. 13792: Requires review of Department of Education regulations to ensure compliance with prohibitions on federal interference with state and local control over education • E.O. 13791: Requires review of national monument designations under the Antiquities Act • E.O. 13796: Requires performance review of international trade agreements • E.O. 13806: Requires comprehensive review of defense manufacturing capabilities • E.O. 13828: Requires comprehensive review of policies related to economic mobility • E.O. 13832: Requires comprehensive review of employment opportunities for Military spouses • E.O. 13834: Requires establishment of streamlined metrics to evaluate agency progress on energy and environmental performance standards • E.O. 13839: Requires agencies to report on employee removals, reprimands, and adverse personnel actions • E.O. 13847: Requires analysis of policy options to expand retirement security in small-business sector

• E.O. 13848: Requires federal agencies to assess, analyze, and report on possible foreign interference in U.S. elections • E.O. 13858: Requires report identifying tools and techniques to maximize the use of “buy American” principles • E.O. 13859: Requires agency investment in research and development of Artificial Intelligence • E.O. 13865: Requires research and development on resilience of critical infrastructure to electromagnetic pulses Orders creating or eliminating units for policy advice or analysis • E.O. 13776: Establishes a Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety • E.O. 13777: Requires agencies to create Regulatory Reform Task Forces to identify regulations for repeal, replacement, or modification • E.O. 13784: Establishes the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis • E.O. 13790: Establishes an Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity • E.O. 13797: Establishes Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy • E.O. 13799: Establishes Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity** • E.O. 13806: Revives National Space Council • E.O. 13805: Establishes Presidential Advisory Council on Infrastructure* • E.O. 13801: Establishes a Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion • E.O. 13824: Establishes President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition • E.O. 13826: Establishes Federal Interagency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry • E.O. 13829: Establishes Task Force on U.S. Postal Ser vice • E.O. 13831: Reorganizes White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, with emphasis on “leveling playing field” for faith-based organizations in grants, contracts, programs, and other federal funding opportunities • E.O. 13836: Establishes Interagency Labor Relations Working Group • E.O. 13840: Establishes Interagency Committee on Ocean Policy • E.O. 13844: Establishes Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud • E.O. 13845: Establishes President’s National Council for the American Worker • E.O. 13853: Establishes White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council • E.O. 13861: Establishes Veteran Wellness, Empowerment, and Suicide Prevention Task Force • E.O. 13873: Establishes President’s Advisory Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islanders • E.O. 13875: Requires agencies to eliminate one-third of advisory committees established under section 9(a)(2) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act Source: author’s analysis of all Executive Orders issued between January 20, 2017 and June 14, 2019 in the Federal Register. *Later rescinded. **Later rescinded and commission functions transferred to the Department of Homeland Security.

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salience of his allegations of voter fraud and is likely to embolden efforts to purge voter rolls and mar efforts to improve ballot access.96 The use of ad hoc institutions to undermine trust in elections sets Trump’s advisory institutions apart from the efforts of other contemporary presidents.97 Of course, Trump created other institutions—such as the Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis—that bear a closer resemblance to past presidential initiatives (e.g., the Obama administration’s White House Office of Health Reform or its Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform). Yet whereas past presidents used these institutions to drive comprehensive legislative reforms, the Trump White House has demonstrated less interest in spearheading such efforts. Trump’s opioid commission worked slowly and had minimal effects on public policy. Of its fifty-five recommendations, only six were addressed to Congress.98 Although the commission’s findings did support a presidential declaration of emergency on opioids, few resources followed to deal with the crisis.99 Energy behind significant policy changes related to opioid addiction came, instead, from the legislative branch.100

The Anti-analytic Presidency and “Post-truth” Politics From one vantage point, Donald Trump’s rhetorical war against experts, facts, and numbers has done him little good. During the fight over the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Trump surrogates repeatedly criticized CBO’s negative projections of the bill’s effects. As White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters: “I think I know the gospel pretty well. I would say the CBO is not the gospel. They have been wrong before. They can certainly be wrong again.”101 Civil society actors nevertheless continued to challenge the administration’s rosy evaluation of the legislation and ultimately helped to undermine it. Virtually every association of health-care professionals announced their opposition to the legislation. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel lit into supporters of repeal for lying and tweeted to his followers that they should call their senators to register their disappointment.102 Yet a developmental perspective reveals that there is more to Trump’s war with the experts than the rhetorical appeals alone. The Trump administration has borrowed from prior presidents’ playbooks of anti-analytic politics— coordinating a fiscal and organizational assault on executive-branch expertise. Trump’s success in promoting his version of reality, however, has depended

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on the fragmented and diffuse structures for knowledge production in the United States. The institutional presidency has given Trump a range of tools that allow him to both retrench knowledge production in federal agencies and to generate information that fits the administration’s preferred narrative. To be sure, institutional fragmentation has also made it difficult to fully deconstruct the administrative state. Federal statistical agencies have their own constituencies and resources that can be used to contest Trump’s decisions. Even so, by constraining the resources and authority of the public officials who produce government knowledge, the Trump administration has intensified the atmosphere of doubt and left the critical infrastructure of American democracy, including the census, in jeopardy. Newly created White House commissions and task forces have also promoted false information about climate change, immigration, and election integrity. Where immigration specifically is concerned, this information has contributed to an extraordinarily hostile—even violent—political climate. The consequences of the post-truth presidency are difficult to project. A single rhetorical attack on the Bureau of Labor Statistics may not move public opinion significantly. Yet the repetition and circulation of lies about unemployment figures and voter fraud, as well as efforts to retrench government knowledge production, should sound an alarm for observers of American democracy. If nothing else, Trump’s presidency should cause us to reflect on how public trust in facts and numbers—which helps to constitute democratic governance—can, over time, be strengthened.

Chapter 9

Finding Stability and Sustainability in the Trump Era: Medicare and the Affordable Care Act in Historical Perspective Andrew S. Kelly

In the aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 presidential election, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) declared that the Republicans’ policy intentions were to “go big” and “go bold.”1 There were few indications that any part of the social safety net, old or new, would be off limits to Republican efforts at retrenchment and privatization. Having voted more than sixty times over the previous six years to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Republican intentions to capitalize on the absence of a Democratic veto in the Oval Office were clear. In an interview on Fox News just two days after the election, Ryan was asked if repealing the ACA was high on the Republican legislative agenda. Ryan’s response: “It’s high. Absolutely.”2 The ACA, however, was not the only target of Republicans. Republican victories in the 2016 election breathed new life into Ryan’s policy agenda, including the long-held goal of privatizing Medicare. During the same Fox News interview, Ryan described the goal of restructuring Medicare as being inextricably and logically connected to the goal of repealing the ACA. In a hyperpartisan context in which Republicans controlled both the House and Senate, with a Republican president who is, perhaps, best known for the aggression with which he attacks political convention, there appeared to be few

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constraints on the boldness of Republican efforts to fundamentally alter American social policy. The Trump era, in many ways, poses an ultimate test of American policy stability. The combination of hyperpartisanship, a president intent on undermining his predecessor’s policy legacy, and Republican majorities in Congress intent on remaking American social policy appeared to create perfect storm for policy volatility. More simply, the initial concerns regarding the stability of American social policy in the Trump era arise from the fact that, traditionally, the greatest friend and ally of policy stability in the United States has been the status quo bias of the fragmented and super-majoritarian political structure. With the election of Donald Trump and Republican control of both houses of Congress, the primary institutional veto-players in the U.S. political system merged, or to use George Tsebelis’ terminology, were “absorbed” into a single veto-player. As a result, policy stability, at least theoretically, should decrease considerably.3 Looking only at the partisan control of Congress and the White House, however, provides an incomplete explanation of the direction and extent of policy change. Similarly, explanations of policy change that take a single, point-in-time snapshot of a policy and its political environment will underemphasize how longerrunning policy processes can dramatically alter the political landscape and the prospects and direction of future policy change.4 Both Medicare and the ACA demonstrate how a policy’s ability to remake politics, even in the short run, can create policy constraints strong enough to withstand the strongest of partisan pressures. Policy making, as Eric Patashnik has so aptly said, is less a destination than a journey.5 This journey transpires not only across political space, but also across time, making the qualitative and historical approach of American political development (APD) particularly well suited for studying and evaluating such processes. The qualitative and historical approach allows scholars to trace causal processes across multiple sites of political activity and over the course of decades or centuries. A historical approach, however, need not be restricted to explaining historical events. By examining the design of the various legislative attempts to repeal the ACA, as well as the longerrunning policy processes that culminated in their ultimate failures, we can uncover both the constraining power and the limitations of a policy’s ability to remake the political environment. More specifically, a historical account and comparison of the ACA and Medicare in the Trump era will show how past policies can reshape the interests, preferences, and expectations of elite

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and mass actors, thereby probabilistically constraining the path for future policy change. In addition to influencing future policy change through the allocation of resources to select groups, certain policies can also induce financial and infrastructure investments from both private and government actors—all of which place additional political constraints on the direction and extent of future policy change—regardless of who holds power. APD scholarship can, therefore, help us understand how despite unified control of government and a president unconstrained by traditional norms, a dense network of existing policies can constrain the boldness of Republican efforts to restructure, retrench, and repeal key pieces of American social policy.

Policy Design and the Path to Stability or Sustainability There is great variation in types of feedback effects and mechanisms of policy change.6 The challenge is to identify them, differentiate between them, and specify how they operate in different political and policy contexts.7 Daniel Galvin and Chloe N. Thurston’s chapter in this volume, for example, distinguishes between policy feedback effects that may support the continuation of a policy, but fail to create durable electoral support for the party that enacted the policy. Whereas Galvin and Thurston examine policy feedback as a party-building tool, I investigate the circumstances under which policy feedbacks can alter the policy preferences or constrain the policy choices of all political actors. Whether feedback effects are generated, through what mechanisms they operate, and how they influence future policy change or political success in any given instance is an empirical question—one that depends on the design of the policy, the nature of the political support it generates, and how these factors interact with the political, economic, and social context. These factors matter, because with different feedback effects come different potentialities for policy change. Critically important to the current discussion of American health-care policy is differentiating between the concepts of policy stability and policy sustainability. Policy stability is evidenced by the continued existence of a policy in its original structural form. Policy sustainability, on the other hand, refers not simply to the maintenance of a policy’s structural integrity, but also its ability to adapt and adjust to the inevitable emergence of new or intensifying pressures—and to do so along a path guided by the policy’s core principles.8 To be sustainable, a policy must, first, have the political support

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necessary so that reforms and recalibrations can be enacted that allow the policy to meet its commitments in the face of unexpected or newly emerging challenges. If policy recalibrations cannot be enacted, a policy will begin to drift.9 When drift occurs, a policy may become unable to meet its commitments and its support may erode. Second, for a policy to be sustainable, it must also possess the ability to defend against or withstand acts of policy sabotage. Drift is differentiated from policy sabotage in that drift is the product of strategic inaction by a policy’s opponents, whereas policy sabotage entails direct acts of administrative destruction that are meant to achieve a form of repeal or retrenchment through nonlegislative means. In the case of the Trump administration and the ACA, policy sabotage has included decisions to defund advertising and outreach efforts that were meant to boost enrollment in ACA marketplaces; the termination of the individual mandate; and the promotion of short-term, non-ACA compliant insurance plans. Although the infliction of harm through inaction or sabotage may not alter a policy’s structural form, both strategic inaction and policy sabotage will endanger a policy’s ability to adapt and respond to new pressures or threats and achieve sustainability. The threats to sustainability posed by strategic inaction and policy sabotage are particularly steep for younger policies like the ACA for two primary reasons. First, because the contemporary policy space is bedeviled by a patchwork of overlapping policies with authority divided between federal and state agencies, as well as between public and private actors, the complexity of new policies generates a greater need for policy recalibration. Second, the complexity that creates the need for recalibration also creates more choke points at which opponents can block recalibration efforts. The dense contemporary policy space requires that effective policy instruments must closely align with the preferences and interests of many divided actors, set payments levels appropriately across a diverse population and wide geographic territory, and interact smoothly with a web of existing policies. The high level of difficulty entailed in such policy endeavors means that policies often stumble out of the gate, and the need for policy adjustments should be expected. At the same time, however, as policy complexity increases, so also do the opportunities and openings for policy sabotage. If we imagine contemporary policies as resembling an increasingly complicated “Rube Goldberg machine,” with a growing number of interconnected partnerships and intricate processes required to deliver a par ticular public good, each additional connection or link in the policy process presents an opportunity for

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opponents to sabotage a policy. Therefore, the denser the policy space and the more complicated the policy design, the greater the challenge for achieving policy sustainability. In addition to facing greater threats of strategic inaction and sabotage, younger policies are also not as well defended as longerrunning policies. Defenses are weaker largely because younger policies often have not yet delivered enough benefits to generate a protective support constituency. The comparison of Medicare and the ACA will highlight the critical differences between policy stability and sustainability and allow us to begin to uncover the mechanisms responsible for the two phenomena. Whether a policy achieves sustainability and stability, or is repealed or retrenched, is therefore an empirical question that we can investigate in a theoretically informed way. This chapter takes a step toward theorizing how the feedback mechanisms generated by Medicare and the Affordable Care Act have responded to the early challenges of the Trump administration. By comparing Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, two critical pieces of American health-care policy, one old and one new, we can identify how differences in their internal designs have triggered different political processes. Because Republicans linked Medicare and the ACA together as part of an overarching reform strategy, the singular pressure exerted upon both policies by the election of Donald J. Trump provides a unique opportunity to examine how different policy structures and feedback mechanisms create different prospects for policy stability and sustainability.

Medicare and the Affordable Care Act: Two Different Paths to Policy Durability Medicare and the ACA were enacted at different times, in different political and fiscal contexts, with different policy tools, and the two pieces of legislation are grounded in different philosophies. Medicare was designed with a decidedly liberal philosophy and a social insurance structure.10 The collective responsibility and broad eligibility of Medicare were hallmarks of a social insurance structure that are described as establishing an “us-us” rather than “us-them” dynamic.11 When the ACA was enacted nearly a half century later, the political context had changed dramatically. American political discourse has become increasingly dominated by a philosophy of small government and a growing devotion to market-based policies.12 In the health-care arena, the popularity of such ideas is most clearly reflected in a shift toward individual responsibility and risk-bearing, with an emphasis on increasing

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private options within Medicare and Medicaid. Because of the different policy paradigms under which Medicare and the ACA were enacted, the two policies have produced different political effects and established different mechanisms of stability and sustainability. The comparison that follows will highlight how Medicare’s cohesive and easily mobilized constituency of beneficiaries has produced a level of sustainability that the ACA has thus far failed to develop. In generating feedback effects that primarily operate through hospitals, providers, and insurers, the ACA has, however, still achieved a greater stability than was predicted in the days following Trump’s election victory. Feedback effects of this type may, however, produce a less robust source of political support, drawing into question the ability to secure the ACA’s long-run sustainability in the absence of a broader and more easily mobilized constituency of beneficiaries. The ACA has, for example, succeeded in warding off large-scale repeal or dramatic restructuring, yet smaller-scale acts of sabotage continue to threaten its ability to deliver its promised public goods.

Medicare and the Politics of Sustainability In 2016, Medicare directly served more than fifty-five million Americans. It provided indirect benefits to millions more by reducing the financial and personal burden of caring for elderly and disabled family members. Beyond its size, the Medicare constituency’s cohesion, mobilization, and influence make it like few others in the United States. Medicare’s broad reach stretches across rural and urban American and into socioeconomically, racially, and ethnically diverse households. The provision of a strong benefit to an identifiable and cohesive constituency transformed Medicare from a program that Republicans once warned would erode American freedom into a policy with support across the ideological divide.13 As a result, for much of Medicare’s existence, even to hint at restructuring or reducing Medicare’s benefits was considered a politically suicidal act.14 While the danger of touching this “third rail” of American politics has receded, the attempts to radically restructure the program through a more complete privatization have remained highly constrained.15 In 2003, with Republican control of the House and Senate, the Bush administration perceived a unique opportunity to restructure Medicare and set it on a path toward further privatization. Despite Republican control of the White House and Congress, the opportunity to dramatically restructure of

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Medicare was, in the end, considerably narrower than initially believed. Bush’s initial proposal for the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) included a requirement that seniors enroll in a privately operated HMO or PPO in order to gain access to the MMA’s primary benefit—a comprehensive prescription drug benefit. This aggressive move by the Bush administration in the direction of premium support was met with a wave of resistance— including from inside the Republican Party. Representative Billy Tauzin (R-Louisiana), the Republican chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, expressed his opposition by alluding colorfully to his own mother’s love of Medicare: “You couldn’t move my mother out of Medicare with a bulldozer. She trusts it, believes in it. It has served her well.”16 Tauzin’s quip captures the political power of Medicare perfectly. The program effectively provides a strong and essential benefit, and, as a result, it continues to create a sense of trust and support among its influential constituency of beneficiaries. Even with the promise of a new prescription drug benefit, which was to act as a sizable policy carrot, there remained robust constraints on any significant restructuring of the Medicare program. Medicare’s support among its beneficiaries, therefore, creates a strong source of policy stability regardless of who occupies the White House and Congress. The reluctance to dramatically restructure Medicare, even among the supposed champions of premium support, was again visible during the debates over the ACA. Among its many reforms, the ACA sought to introduce some direct competition into Medicare Advantage, Medicare’s private plan option. In response to this proposed reform, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), warned of the “strong possibility” that Medicare Advantage beneficiaries would lose benefits under a competitive bidding structure.17 The appetite for competitive pricing and far-reaching market-based reforms proved to be considerably less robust once rhetoric met reality. This diminished appetite for market-based reforms became particularly clear in the late 1990s, when the Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA, now CMS) proposed a series of demonstration projects to test competitive bidding in a small number of Medicare markets. In each of the four cities where demonstrations were slated to run, a bipartisan coalition of elected officials, private insurers, and beneficiaries—all fearing the payment and benefit reductions that would result—fought successfully to block the demonstrations.18 The increasing distance between political rhetoric and policy reality that characterizes this part of the health-care debate is, in part, a product of a policy’s ability to remake the political landscape. Once a policy delivers concrete benefits to a

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highly mobilized constituency, the potential political cost of altering or reducing that benefit becomes prohibitive. Yet, despite continued bipartisan resistance to fundamentally restructuring Medicare, Paul Ryan’s reform rhetoric consistently portrays Medicare as requiring just such a reform. Speaking on Fox News just days after Trump’s victory, Ryan described Medicare as having “serious problems” because of Obamacare, promising that “those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.”19 Despite Ryan’s policy promises, the various iterations of “repeal and replace” legislation that were introduced between March and September 2017 did not propose to restructure Medicare.20 The American Health Care Act (AHCA) did propose to repeal an ACA-established surtax on higher earners that helped fund the Medicare Trust Fund, but this proposal was less a bold legislative act than an incremental, stealth strategy grounded in the hope that increased financial strain on Medicare might create a future opportunity for a more fundamental restructuring.21 Taking direct aim at this stealth strategy, the AARP criticized the AHCA as legislation that would “weaken Medicare, leaving the door open to a voucher program that shifts costs and risk to seniors.”22 The AHCA, therefore, offered only minor, nonstructural changes to Medicare, and even those proposed reforms met with strong resistance from the Medicare constituency. Indeed, a manager’s amendments to the initial version of the AHCA would have delayed the repeal of the surtax on high earners.23 Of critical importance to Medicare’s sustainability is the fact that its bipartisan political support not only protects it from retrenchment and restructuring, but also encourages the enactment of adjustments and recalibrations that allow Medicare to continually meet its policy commitments. When first enacted, Medicare had few mechanisms for cost control. Instead of causing additional harm through strategic inaction, policy makers, including many who initially opposed Medicare, worked to reform Medicare’s payment structures and secure its long-term viability. The introduction of diagnosis related groups (DRGs) during the Regan administration, for example, restructured how Medicare paid hospitals, increased efficiency, slowed spending, and placed Medicare on much-improved trajectory—all without changing the overall goals or philosophy of Medicare. The introduction of new policy instruments like DRGs demonstrated that although Medicare was not structurally stable, it was sustainable.24 Despite deep partisan conflict at the time of Medicare’s enactment and a sustained desire among many Republicans to introduce market-based

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reforms, the 1983 enactment of DRGs “breezed” through the political process.25 This recalibration of Medicare’s payment system was achieved with bipartisan efforts from a Republican White House, a Republican Senate, and Democratic House. The ability to develop, enact, and implement such payment reforms was based in a growing popularity that required policymakers to appear friendly, or at least not hostile, to Medicare.26 In the late 1990s, following successful efforts to update Medicare in response to the negative consequences of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Representative Bill Thomas (R-California) described the Republican Congress and Clinton White House as “partners in knocking the rough edges off” the earlier reforms. Chris Jennings, a senior White House health policy advisor, described the collaboration as an “honorable compromise” that laid the foundation for significant future reforms. Such bipartisan sentiment demonstrates how the growing popularity of a once-controversial program can transform that program into a joint project. It is Medicare’s status as a joint project between Republicans and Democrats that has encouraged policy updates instead of inaction and sabotage, thereby helping to secure its long-run sustainability.27

The Affordable Care Act: Private Partners and the Path to Policy Stability The ACA brought insurance to an estimated twenty million previously uninsured persons and helped millions more by strengthening regulatory protections against the loss or reduction of benefits.28 Yet, the absence of a Medicare-like constituency of beneficiaries has become a defining characteristic of the ACA. The absence has been particularly troubling to those who hoped the ACA would follow a similar trajectory to Social Security and Medicare—two programs that saw the divisiveness of enactment give way to cohesive support once concrete benefits were delivered.29 There are two primary structural explanations for the absence of an active and cohesive support constituency behind the ACA. Kent Weaver and Jonathan Oberlander have observed that the ACA is not a single program, but rather a collection of different programs and regulations, all providing benefits to different groups.30 Because of this design feature, the potential influence of these newly insured individuals is considerably fragmented. A second design feature that works against the development of a cohesive constituency is the ACA’s “submerged” or “delegated” structure.31 By relying on incentives and subsidies to promote the private delivery of public goods,

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submerged policies can obscure the government’s role in providing benefits. The political consequences of such policies include confusion among beneficiaries as to the source and nature of their benefits, as well as the atomization and demobilization of beneficiaries—all of which weaken the political influence of a policy’s beneficiaries. Because the ACA is grounded in a different policy paradigm and constructed with different policy tools than Medicare, it has produced a different type of political mobilization. Consequently, the ACA is protected by a different and potentially less robust constituency. Roughly eleven million Americans gained insurance through the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. Another two million secured insurance because of regulatory changes that allowed young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance until the age of twenty-six. An additional seven million gained insurance through the ACA-created marketplaces. A closer examination of the ACA’s various sources of insurance reveals still further divisions among the ACA’s beneficiaries. The eleven million new Medicaid enrollees, for example, are split among thirty-two different state programs, some of which further divide beneficiaries among private Medicaid plans. The seven million marketplace beneficiaries are even more atomized than their Medicaid counterparts and the source of the benefit they receive is even more obscured. Marketplace beneficiaries purchase health insurance as individuals from private insurance companies such as Anthem, Centene, or Molina. Marketplace participants with incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) receive premium subsidies from the federal government, while those with incomes below 250  percent FPL are eligible for cost-sharing subsidies to reduce out-of-pocket costs.32 Despite government outlays for premium subsidies of $27 billion and cost-sharing subsidies of $7 billion in 2016, the submerged structure of marketplace benefits does little to create a cohesive constituency that could be mobilized with a single voice to defend the ACA. Although the ACA may fragment beneficiaries and obscure the government’s role through tax subsidies and its public-private and federal-state structure, the electoral power of a program’s beneficiary class is not, however, the only source of political protection and support. Programs that are built around public-private and federal-state structures can create powerful constituencies among the private actors and state governments that operate and benefit financially from the program.33 Private insurance companies, hospitals, and providers are all integral to the operation and success of the ACA. The participation of private actors within the ACA

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framework required that they make significant operational changes and investments. To operate in the revamped individual marketplace, for example, insurance companies constructed new provider networks, invested in new technological capacity, created new marketing programs, and trained new staff. Of potentially greater significance, the ACA also incentivized a substantial reordering of the health insurance market. The New York Times reported that there were $270 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions announced in the health-care arena in the first nine months of 2015 alone. Driven in part by the incentives and imperatives created by the ACA, hospitals and insurers have both reembraced the idea that “bigger is better.” WellCare and Centene, two leading health insurers, purchased competing insurance companies for the specific purpose of boosting performance in both the newly expanded Medicaid market and the newly created marketplaces.34 Such mergers represent significant investments in the ACA, creating considerable sunk costs that insurers may not so easily walk away from.35 In response to the predicted market disruptions and instability that repeal efforts would cause, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurance industry’s largest trade association, lobbied against the Republican legislation. In a joint letter written with the President and CEO of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the president and CEO of AHIP warned Senators McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Schumer (D-New York) of the “widespread terminations” of marketplace coverage that would result from the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA).36 In an earlier letter to Congress, AHIP cautioned against passing the House’s repeal legislation—the American Health Care Act (AHCA)—stating that the proposed Medicaid restructuring would create unnecessary disruptions in coverage, while the replacement of the ACA’s marketplace subsidies with an age-based tax credit would undermine the effort to draw younger, healthier beneficiaries into the insurance pools. The absence of younger and healthier beneficiaries would drive up prices and drive away participants in the individual markets, leaving insurers with volatile markets and rising costs. The market destabilization that was predicted to occur in the wake of such ACA reforms caused insurers to warn of an “unworkable” environment in which competition, choice, and affordability would be threatened. Despite insurers’ concerns regarding market disruptions in the wake of a Republican repeal effort, hospitals and state governments were, perhaps, under greater financial threat from repeal efforts—a fact that was reflected in statements coming from hospitals and statehouses.37

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The American Hospital Association (AHA) was particularly outspoken in opposition to each version of the Republican repeal-and-replace legislation. In a letter to Congress, the AHA stated unequivocally that it could not support the AHCA. Both the AHA and America’s Essential Hospitals (AEH), the association of public and nonprofit hospitals, expressed concerns that the AHCA would increase uncompensated care and cause severe financial repercussions for hospitals.38 In response to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that twenty-four million fewer people will be insured in 2026 under the AHCA, Bruce Siegel, the president and CEO of AEH, warned that the AHCA’s “unprecedented” Medicaid cuts would “immediately weaken” hospitals and called on Congress to “halt” the repeal process.39 Rick Pollack, the president and CEO of the AHA, opposed the Graham-Cassidy repeal legislation by highlighting both the “devastating” cuts to Medicaid and the broader destabilizing effects on insurance markets.40 In addition, the ACA’s Medicaid expansion led to a significant reduction in uncompensated care, saving hospitals an estimated $6.2 billion from 2013 to 2015.41 It is not only the government’s private partners that stand to lose if the ACA is repealed or radically retrenched, however. As AEH’s Siegel also warned, “the cost shift will strain state and local government budgets.” 42 The ACA’s Medicaid expansion reduced the pressure on many states’ general revenue funds and boosted state economies. In Kentucky, the estimated cumulative economic impact of the expansion has been placed at $30 billion through 2021.43 In Colorado, the overall economy is projected to grow by $8.53 billion over the next two decades because of the Medicaid expansion.44 In those states that chose to expand Medicaid, uncompensated care fell by 26  percent in 2014, compared with a reduction of 16  percent in nonexpansion states. For expansion states, the drop in uncompensated care meant a savings of $5 billion, compared with $2.4 billion in nonexpansion states. Motivated in part by the economic benefits of the ACA to their states, Democratic and Republican governors were among the most outspoken critics of repealing the ACA—placing constraints on their states’ senators and providing highly visible public opposition.45 Describing the potential retrenchment of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion as “a serious matter,” Ohio governor John Kasich outlined his concerns in blunt terms: “Our hospitals needed Medicaid expansion. It has worked very well in this state.” 46 Like Kasich, Michigan governor Rick Snyder (R) also touted the Medicaid expansion’s success. “There has also been a huge drop in the number of people showing up in hospitals without insurance,” Snyder

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has said, “which is a positive trend that has saved millions of dollars in Michigan’s health-care system.” 47 In Ohio and Michigan, two rust-belt states that were critical to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, 700,000 and 642,000 residents, respectively, have gained insurance under the ACA.48 What the ACA may lack in a cohesive constituency of beneficiaries, it makes up for in the sheer influence and access of governors like Kasich and Snyder. In the days before Trump’s inauguration, Kasich, Snyder, and fellow Republican governor Brian Sandoval (Nevada), were in Washington, D.C., lobbying Congressional lawmakers on a potential ACA replacement. Following the meeting with Republican governors, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), the Senate’s second ranking Republican, acknowledged the governors’ Medicaid concerns: “Sure, we’re all concerned, but it ain’t going to happen.” 49 Lobbying of this kind from Republican governors helped to quickly constrain congressional Republicans’ path to repealing the ACA. Intergovernmental lobbying efforts continued to apply pressure throughout the course of Republicans’ 2017 repeal efforts. In response to the final repeal attempt of 2017, a bipartisan group of governors—five Democrats, four Republicans, and one Independent—urged Majority Leader McConnell (R-Kentucky) not to consider the Graham-Kassidy legislation.50 In place of Graham-Cassidy, the governors called for bipartisan legislation that would “bring stability and affordability” to the insurance markets. Such efforts began to gain steam following the failure of the Graham-Cassidy legislation, with Senators Murray (D-Washington) and Alexander (R-Tennessee) cosponsoring legislation aimed at stabilizing insurance markets by resecuring CSR payments. In a sign of the increasing intergovernmental pressure, the National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD), the organization that represents all fifty-six Medicaid directors, issued a statement that expressed the organization’s consensus that Graham-Cassidy would undermine efforts to operate Medicaid programs in a “thoughtful, deliberative, and responsible way.”51 The magnitude of the perceived threat to state Medicaid programs was evidenced in the ability of all Medicaid directors to reach a consensus on what had been such a divisive policy issue. NAMD’s statement was widely covered in the media—gaining particular attention exactly because it represented a policy consensus among red and blue state Medicaid directors. In addition to warning of the overwhelming infrastructural and capacity challenges that Graham-Cassidy would represent to the states, NAMD highlighted the unprecedented financial challenge that would befall states if Graham-Cassidy

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became law. NAMD described Graham-Cassidy’s per-capita cap—which was also a key component of the BCRA—as constituting the “largest intergovernmental transfer of financial risk from the federal government to the states in the country’s history.”52 Governors Kasich (R-Ohio), Sandoval (R-Nevada), and Walker (I-Alaska), as well as the AHA and AHIP, gave voice to policy concerns that were eventually reflected in the concessions made by Republicans in drafting the various versions of repeal-and-replace legislation. Nearly every iteration of the repeal legislation represented a clear compromise and pullback from seven years of Republicans promises to completely repeal the ACA. Perhaps the biggest compromise was the failure to immediately terminate the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. Under the AHCA and the BCRA, the Medicaid expansion would continue to operate until 2020, at which point the enhanced federal match would begin a multiyear drawdown process. In contrast to a promised immediate repeal, the AHCA and BCRA represented only a future promise to slowly draw down the Medicaid expansion. In addition, except for the Obamacare Repeal and Reconciliation Act (ORRA), each of the Republicans’ 2017 repeal efforts maintained a version of the ACA’s tax subsidies for purchasing health insurance in the ACA-created marketplaces.53 Hardline Republicans disparaged the failure to repeal all ACA-related taxes, describing the tax credits as a “new entitlement.” Republican opponents dubbed the AHCA’s continuous coverage requirements the “Republican individual mandate,” drawing parallels to the most hated aspect of the ACA.54 Justin Amash (R-Michigan), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, demonstrated the political damage of such concessions by describing the earlier version of the AHCA as “Obamacare 2.0.”55 Critical opposition to the initial design of the AHCA also came from conservative advocacy groups. Just days after the initial release of the AHCA, the Koch brothers–backed Americans for Prosperity (AFP) sponsored a “You Promised” rally in Washington, D.C. With signs emblazoned with “You Promised,” the AFP’s message to Congress was clear: “Now is the time to repeal Obamacare.”56 AFP and the Koch brothers went still further, establishing a special campaign fund for House members who voted against the AHCA.57 Heritage Action, the lobbying wing of the Heritage Foundation, offered an even stronger rebuke of the AHCA’s concessions to the ACA, stating flatly that Republicans should not accept the “flawed premises” of the ACA, but should “deliver on longstanding campaign promises” and fully repeal the law.58

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The AHCA’s subsequent shift rightward, a shift that was required to gain support from conservative activists and the House Freedom Caucus (HFC), demonstrates the continued influence that the “activist right” has over congressional politics.59 To gain the support necessary from the HFC to pass the House, the Republican leadership attached amendments to the AHCA that created avenues for states to waive key ACA provisions that required insurance plans to offer a set of essential health benefits and that forbade setting premiums based on health status. If enacted, such concessions would erode protections for people with preexisting conditions and allow insurance companies to offer bare-bones coverage. The amendments that facilitated the AHCA’s passage out of the House created additional political problems for centrist Republicans in the Senate. Most notably, the pressure from the HFC constrained the House leadership’s ability to address what promised to be the largest stumbling block in the Senate: the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. The path to repealing the ACA, which had already been narrowed from the political right by the HFC’s influence in the House, was further narrowed by pressure from moderate Republicans in the Senate to preserve key pieces of the ACA. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), and Cory Gardener (R-Colorado), all of whom represent states that expanded Medicaid, informed Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) that they would not vote for any legislation that eliminated the Medicaid expansion.60 Moderate members of the Republican Party, particularly those from expansion states, expressed opinions and concerns reflecting those of Governors Kasich, Snyder, and Sandoval. Senator Dean Heller (R-Nevada) stated simply, “I agree with Governor Sandoval. I do not support the House bill in its current form.” 61 The pushback from Republicans against Medicaid cuts might be expected in “ordinary” political times, but signs of Medicaid’s resilience during a hyperpartisan fight demonstrate an unexpected durability and a potential limit to the activist right’s influence—particularly in the Senate, where opposition to the Housepassed AHCA was quickly reaffirmed and resistance to Medicaid reductions acted as the greatest barrier to reform.62 Senator Portman (R-Ohio), who was named to the Senate’s working group on health reform, reiterated his opposition, citing his continued concerns “that [the AHCA] does not do enough to protect Ohio’s Medicaid expansion population, especially those who are receiving treatment for heroin and prescription drug abuse.” 63 Senator Capito warned again of the “tragic consequences” that could result from the termination of the ACA’s Medicaid

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expansion. In a joint statement with Portman announcing her opposition to the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), Capito described the reliance of West Virginians on Medicaid—including the ACA’s Medicaid expansion—highlighting the fact that West Virginia has the largest Medicaid population in the country.64 Senators Heller (R-Nevada) and Collins (R-Maine), both among the more moderate members of the Republican caucus, joined Capito and Portman in their opposition to the BCRA. The opposition from these four members—opposition that was generated by concerns about cutting Medicaid benefits in their states—was enough to kill this initial Senate version of repeal and replace legislation. But, in a demonstration of just how narrow the path to repeal was in the Senate, conservative Republican senators Paul (R-Kentucky), Johnson (R-Wisconsin), Cruz (R-Texas), and Lee (R-Utah) opposed the BCRA from the right—believing it did not do enough to fully repeal the ACA. Being squeezed from the right and left of the Republican caucus, the Republican leadership was unable to thread the policy needle and came up five votes short of passing the BCRA. In a subsequent op-ed, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) conceded that it was unclear whether it would be possible to bridge the distance between moderate and conservative Republicans on health policy. Although such divisions within the GOP are critical to understanding the failure to repeal the ACA, they were not sufficient for the ACA’s failure. Only with an understanding of how the design and benefits of the ACA remade the politics of health care are we able to understand just why it was so difficult to bridge the gap between GOP factions. When a modified version of the BCRA was later brought for a vote, it was defeated 57–43, with an even larger contingent of moderate and conservative Republicans joining every Democrat in voting no. Senator Paul then introduced the Obamacare Repeal and Reconciliation Act (ORRA), which sought to completely repeal the ACA, including the Medicaid expansion and individual and employer mandates. Paul’s more conservative repeal legislation satisfied his conservative allies, but as a result, lost even more moderate members of the Republican caucus, who feared the repercussions of terminating increasingly popular benefits.65 In recognition of the policy constraints acting upon the BCRA and ORRA, Republican leadership pursued a lastditch effort to pass the Health Care Freedom Act—the most modest repeal legislation to date. Referred to as the “skinny” repeal, the legislation proposed only to repeal the ACA’s individual and employer mandates for eight years, the medical device tax for three years, eliminate funding for Planned

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Parenthood for one year, and introduce increased flexibility on innovation waivers and health savings accounts. The skinny repeal failed in dramatic fashion, as Senator McCain returned from a brain cancer diagnosis to join Senators Collins and Murkowski in thwarting Republican efforts with a surprising thumbs-down vote. Although the exact outcome of Collins, Murkowski, and McCain’s headline-grabbing votes could not be predicted on the basis of an existing policy’s power to constrain the direction and extent of future policy change, the very fact that the legislation in question was a highly constrained repeal effort—far from the boldness promised—can be understood in the context of the ACA’s ability to remake the political context in its favor.66 Despite the Republicans’ inability to repeal the ACA in 2017, the law continues to be institutionally brittle. Political stalemate over the ACA will continue to make it difficult to enact reforms in response to unforeseen, unexpected, or newly emerging challenges. When private insurers began a quasi-exodus from the ACA’s marketplaces in 2016, for example, there were no bipartisan efforts like those seen in the case of Medicare to work together to “knock off the rough edges.” Instead, the ACA was left to drift. The marketplaces were not only damaged by the strategic inaction of Republicans, however; Republicans also engaged in policy sabotage by maneuvering to block the implementation of provisions in the ACA that were specifically designed to assist insurers in coping with early market uncertainties. Efforts by Republicans to undermine the ACA through inaction and policy sabotage have continued simulta neously alongside the larger and more direct efforts to directly repeal the ACA through legislative means. The Trump administration, for example, thrust considerable uncertainty into the marketplace with intimations that it would no longer pay for the ACA’s cost sharing reductions (CSRs)—a threat that the administration ultimately followed through on in October 2017. CSRs are a mechanism to make marketplace insurance more affordable by reducing the out-of-pocket (OOP) costs of deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance for lower-income individuals. Without the CSR payments, insurers have been forced to choose between absorbing the financial burden of covering these OOP costs, increasing premiums, or leaving the market.67 This is precisely the type of vulnerability that threatens the long-run sustainability of the ACA. The decision by the Trump administration to end CSR payments represents a transition from the realm of policy inaction to more clear and direct acts of policy sabotage. In terminating CSR payments, the Trump administration

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was not failing to adjust an ACA provision to meet the new demands of a changing social context, but rather reneging on a policy promise made to insurers. The decision not to fund CSRs comports with a larger strategy of policy sabotage that is aimed at achieving repeal through incremental acts of administrative destruction. In September  2017, the Trump administration slashed the budget supporting ACA sign-ups by 72  percent.68 The ACA advertising budget was cut from $100 million to $10 million, while spending for in-person outreach was cut from roughly $62 million to $36 million. The Trump administration initially signaled that it would not vigorously enforce the individual mandate—a signal that was soon followed by a complete termination of the mandate as part of the administration’s 2018 tax reform. Taken together with reductions in outreach resources, it was feared that the termination of the individual mandate would reduce the number of new enrollees and make the ACA marketplaces less robust and subject to higher premium increases.69 Additional administrative steps have been taken by the Trump administration to weaken regulations on the provision of essential health benefits and to promote short-term, non-ACA compliant health plans—maneuvers that will fracture the health insurance market between sick and healthy beneficiaries and drive marketplace premiums higher. With the fragmentation of the ACA’s constituencies, an “us-us” mentality among beneficiaries has yet to emerge, and there is no widely held belief that the ACA, like Medicare, has become a joint project. Because the ACA was so completely associated with Democrats, there was little evidence that Republicans believed there would be a political cost for failing to work with Democrats to maintain or improve the ACA over its first seven years of existence. Public opinion on the ACA, for example, has been sharply divided along partisan lines.70 Indeed, even individual decisions to sign up for the ACA have been influenced by partisanship, with Republicans less likely than Democrats to sign up for insurance through state or federal exchanges.71 Jonathan Oberlander’s observation that the politics of Medicare required policy makers to appear friendly, or at least not hostile, to Medicare is clearly not yet applicable to the ACA, which has suffered from strategic inaction, policy sabotage, and outright attempts to repeal the entire law.72 The ability for Republicans to directly or indirectly attack the ACA without political repercussions may change in time. The pressure for Republicans to appear friendly toward the ACA may increase as more red and purple states adopt the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. Republican governors who had previously elected not to expand Medicaid under the ACA may become more

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willing to consider expansion following the Republican failures to repeal the ACA at the federal level. If the law appears stable at the federal level, there may be little reason for Republican governors to continue to turn their backs on the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and the considerable federal dollars that go with it. Even if Republican governors are slow to embrace the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, the success of Maine’s Medicaid expansion by ballot initiative has provided an alternative path for red-state Medicaid expansion. Indeed, the 2018 elections saw Medicaid expansion ballot initiatives pass in Utah, Idaho, and Nebraska. Having now fully embraced health-care reform, Republicans could also face mounting pressure on health care if they are saddled with the blame for policy failures associated with, among other things, terminating CSR payments, or if Republicans are punished for attempts to erode popular protections like those for persons with preexisting conditions. Polling done by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) during the fight over repeal showed some early evidence that Republican strategies to undermine the ACA could backfire, with 60 percent believing that Republicans were now responsible for the ACA and its associated problems.73 Additional evidence from the 2018 midterms suggests that Republicans did, indeed, become concerned about the negative electoral repercussions of targeting the ACA’s popu lar protections for elimination. Just prior to the 2018 midterm elections, President Trump tweeted, “All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions. And if they don’t they will after I speak to them.”74 Democratic electoral strategies, which placed a considerable emphasis on health care, also demonstrated a belief that Republicans could be forced to pay a steep price for their healthcare votes. According to the Wesleyan Media Project, 41  percent of all ads and 50 percent of pro-Democratic ads in September 2018 mentioned health care.75 Interestingly, however, only 8 percent of all ads and 10 percent of proDemocratic ads made direct reference to the ACA. This data suggests that while health care, in general, might be perceived as beneficial to Democrats and harmful to Republican electoral chances, the ACA, specifically, still does not generate strong political support for Democrats. The continued partisan divisions may temper the potential negative consequences of the Trump administration’s strategies of inaction and sabotage, providing a potential incentive for the administration to continue such strategies and for Republicans in the House and Senate to remain silent, even while the negative consequences disproportionately fall on Republican constituencies.76 When answering questions in the Oval Office after the initial

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failure of the AHCA, President Trump bluntly stated that “the best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode.”77 While this sentiment may not be as strongly held after Democratic gains in the 2018 midterms, the Trump administration’s continued effort to undermine the ACA and erode its most popular protections continues unabated—for now.

Conclusion For congressional Republicans, Donald Trump’s 2016 victory appeared to provide a window of opportunity for “going big” to repeal and replace the ACA. In the year that followed, we witnessed the strength and limitations of an existing policy’s ability to constrain future policy making. In the course of its implementation, the ACA unleashed political forces that ensnared advocates of retrenchment. Yet, as this chapter has shown, policy stability and sustainability are not the same thing. The mobilization of a cross-cutting coalition of policy advocates— including health-care providers, insurance companies, Republican governors, and patient advocates—narrowed Republican leaders’ policy options. As these groups made the potential effects of ACA retrenchment more visible than ever, Republican leaders were forced to adopt an approach that maintained marketplace tax credits, left Medicare largely untouched, and kept the termination of Medicaid expansion off the table. While leadership’s proposals would have significantly undermined the ACA as well as traditional Medicaid, these proposals nevertheless caused a revolt on the GOP’s right flank. Once repeal and replace efforts entered the Senate, the simultaneous mobilization of the ACA’s supporters and hardline conservatives made the legislative calculus virtually impossible. Thus, although the ACA has not yet achieved the vaunted political position of Medicare—and its fragmented and submerged structure creates the possibility that it never will—the ACA has sustained itself by driving a wedge between moderate and conservative Republicans. In the face of these legislative challenges, the Trump administration has embraced a plan B: undermining and eroding the ACA through inaction and sabotage.78 To the extent that Democrats retain ownership of the ACA’s problems, the strategy may be successful. This approach has clear limits, however. First, with control of the House, Senate, and White House, Republicans may face difficulties shifting responsibility and blame for ACA-related policy-making failures to the Democrats. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll from August 2017 showed that

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61  percent of Americans would now hold Republicans responsible for any future ACA problems.79 Second, the ACA and Medicare will continue to threaten a larger rift between Paul Ryan’s “Ayn Rand” wing of the Republican Party and the Trumpian right-wing populists, with their partial embrace of the American welfare state. Trump’s flirtations with universal health insurance and his repeated campaign promises about the security of major entitlements could lead to a tentative partnership with Democrats to further secure Medicare and improve the ACA. Third, because Medicaid expansion is the largest source of health insurance under the ACA, the administrative levers to undermine the law, while still capable of producing harmful results in the marketplaces, can go only so far. Finally, because Republicans in Congress were not able to overcome the steep hurdles to repeal, Republican governors in states that have not yet expanded Medicaid may ultimately decide to embrace the expansion and its tremendous financial resources. This decision would create a potentially more robust constituency behind the ACA—one that might be capable of securing not only the law’s stability, but also its sustainability.

Chapter 10

State-Building as Parlor Trick: Trump, the Executive Branch, and the Politics of Deconstruction Zachary Callen

If nothing else, Donald Trump is a president with baggage. Among the things he carried to the White House, three have shaped his administration most profoundly: his outsider status, his outsized promise to “make America great again,” and (initially) unified party control of government.1 As with conservative administrations in the past, Trump’s administration held out the possibility of a major attempt to shrink the size of the federal government—dismantling federal agencies and devolving authority to states and localities. Certainly, a number of Trump’s promises as candidate, president-elect, and nascent chief executive suggested a significantly stripped-down federal state. Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington, D.C. insiders channeled an animosity to “business as usual” in national politics. More explicitly, he suggested radically shrinking the size of the Environmental Protection Agency.2 In addition, Trump has argued that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) should not be engaged in climate change science, and should have a narrower mission that focuses only on space travel and research.3 Finally, Trump proposed that if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, which is his stated preference, that abortion law would return to the states.4 Before his departure from the administration, White House strategist Steve

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Bannon argued that the “deconstruction of the administrative state” was one of the White House’s top three priorities.5 Of course, Trump’s dedication to dismantling the federal state is undeniably contextual: while Trump may target education or environmental programs, his administration is building the federal state’s policing apparatus. But, even with that admission, this sampling of Trump’s policy preferences nonetheless reveal a preference for a smaller, less active federal state. On the surface, Trump promised to durably return governing authority to “the people.” As American political development (APD) scholarship reveals, this claim is not uncommon in presidential rhetoric. The American state is, after all, the product of political conflicts over how power should be distributed among both branches and levels of government, and the symbolic role of “the people” in governing these institutions.6 The size and scope of the federal government figure prominently in these debates.7 However, despite Trump’s claims, the administration has not considered serious changes in the distribution of power between state and federal governments, nor has it been especially successful in retrenching the scope of federal authority. Instead, the Trump administration’s primary goals appear to be focused on using state power for private gain, which is a marked shift in how American elites at the highest levels make use of state power and one that APD scholars have not frequently considered.8 There is certainly some overlap between changing the way the federal state functions and changing the nature of the state. However, I argue that Trump and his congressional allies are currently engaging in merely the redistribution of resources, and not a change to the scope of the federal state’s authority. Trump has gladly decimated the funding of policies with which he disagrees, but he has little interest in pursuing changes that will restrict his capacity to direct the flow of government resources.9 Yet while the Trump presidency has not resulted in a significant devolution of governing authority, it is already producing new levels of personalized centralization in the executive branch, with a particular focus on Trump gathering more power to himself at the cost of the professional bureaucracy. This personalized centralization is occurring through informal means, especially via Trump’s reliance on his family and fame to accomplish political goals. Significantly, this concentration comes at the cost of traditional checks on executive power. In addition, the Trump presidency has resulted in a more hollowed-out state, where departments and ser vices appear to exist but in actuality are severely underfunded and unable to serve their function as a

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result. In some cases, this hollowing out appears to be intentional, while other instances are the result of oversight and negligence. Regardless of the cause, however, Trump’s actions as president have weakened government’s ability to address citizen demands. Thus, despite stability in the size and scope of government, Trump has unleashed a qualitative shift in the use of state capacity.

The Allure of Deconstruction During the campaign, Trump promised his supporters a new kind of American state, with a smaller role for the federal government and a greater role for local actors. Trump not only pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he proposed an infrastructure plan that shifted more authority and funding responsibility back to states.10 During his first one hundred days in office, Trump seemed intent on honoring his pledge to reduce the size of the federal government. Among other things, Trump failed to appoint people to more than four hundred key positions in the government, largely in the state and defense departments.11 In many cases, the administration failed even to put forward names for these positions. Similarly, the first draft of Trump’s proposed federal budget involved massive cuts to federal agencies, including considerable dollars being removed from Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Health and Human Ser vices, Education, and the Environmental Protection Agency.12 While at times held back by the legislative process, Trump’s initial actions certainly seem in line with his campaign promise to both radically reduce the size and alter the functioning of the American federal state. Interestingly, it seemed that very early in his presidency Trump could have received the support necessary to make devolution to the states happen, albeit from a surprising source: Democrats who have traditionally supported a more robust central state. After Trump’s election, Democrats across the United States showed renewed interest in classic dual federalism, with distinct roles for federal and state actors as well as a reduced role for national political institutions.13 This liberal interest in local government was not wholly new: stricter state environmental laws as well as marijuana legalization both predated this renewed interest.14 But Trump’s election took this nascent interest and enhanced it. Of course, in practice, American federalism was never a simple dual-layer structure. The federal state frequently pushed into novel, local policy areas from very early in American history.15 However, with a

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Trump presidency threatening recent advancements on civil rights and health-care policy, American liberals expressed an interest in using both state and local governments both to block Trump’s policies and to provide the rights, goods, and ser vices that liberals fervently believed were critical state responsibilities. This revitalized liberal interest in dual federalism was especially clear when major cities around the nation declared themselves sanctuary cities, promising to protect immigrants by refusing to help federal agents identify or arrest undocumented residents.16 Deep-blue state governments have mirrored this discourse, with states like California promising to continue to press for gender equality, diversity, and new environmental regulations in an act of overt resistance to Trump’s policy agenda.17 For instance, states such as California have recently passed legislation to protect Internet neutrality, as a result of Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) overturning existing Internet neutrality provisions.18 Following Trump’s victory, states and cities appeared to begin developing policies that reflected their own interests, and moving away from suddenly antagonistic federal policies. For progressives under Trump, the attraction of dual federalism is obvious. Dual federalism allows states, and to a lesser degree municipalities, to pursue political agendas that more closely reflect their constituents’ preferences. Dual federalism keeps democracy close to citizens, while curtailing the impact of a more distant federal state. In this spirit, American conservatives have long called for a reduction in federal power.19 However, liberal flirtation with the idea of dual federalism is of a more recent vintage.20 American liberals have largely embraced federal power as a means to overcome both local resource limitations in the pursuit of grand schemes and also parochial biases that limit freedoms for the marginalized. But with a potentially ascendant right, the political context has changed. By removing power from the federal government’s hands, Trump’s ability to pursue policies that harm the environment, legalize discriminatory practices, or undo critical pieces of the social safety net would be hampered. Furthermore, dual federalism is attractive because it creates a political marketplace that allows citizens to select a community that reflects their values, rather than forcing Americans to accept a national regime that they might find personally distasteful.21 In a nation that is increasingly polarizing, returning to dual federalism could allow Americans who vociferously disagree with one another to better coexist. Under this system, the scope of the national state would be restricted to a handful of broad issues on which

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consensus is more easily established, while the fifty states would handle the bulk of (more controversial) governance. Although the emergence of a full-bodied dual federalism is unlikely, the emergence of state and local governments as a base of progressive power is not out of the question. States have historically been powerful political actors, providing a wide array of goods and ser vices to citizens.22 Even in the present day, states are often policy leaders in a range of arenas.23 Hence, with a Republican desire for a smaller government on one side and liberal unease with Trump helming the federal state on the other, it seems at least plausible that a modern great compromise could have begun to emerge to reconfigure American federalism by returning more political power back to the states while at the same time trimming the political power and authority of the federal state.

Deconstruction in Theory Only Yet the political realities of downsizing are more complicated than the sudden, superficial alignment we currently observe between Democrats and Republicans in their distrust of the central state. To begin, it is worth noting that Trump’s position on the proper scope of the federal state is more complicated than a mere preference for downsizing. A party’s support for a strong central government depends in large part on whether that party controls the central government.24 As Richard Bensel illustrates, while antebellum Democrats claimed to be wary of centralized control, their consolidation of power in the Confederate States of America enabled the creation of a robust central state.25 Thus at the same time that Trump has proffered a number of policies that would limit federal power, he has also advocated policies that would maintain or even expand federal power. Given Trump’s often militant language around American power and immigrants, it is not surprising that he could use such rhetoric to enhance some elements of executive authority.26 Much of Trump’s economic policy—such as his plan to label China a currency manipulator and to impose tariffs—envisions a strong, protectionist role for government. More concretely, Trump has expanded the powers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. For example, as a result of Trump’s executive orders, ICE now targets immigrants for minor offenses. This is a stark change in policy from Barack Obama’s administration, during which ICE agents were directed to target only serious criminal offenders.27 Of course,

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the Obama administration was also aggressive in deporting immigrants: the Obama administration deported more people than any other previous administration.28 But even with that caveat, the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration efforts still mark a real shift in deportation policing. As a consequence of Trump’s more aggressive policies, more than twenty thousand people have been arrested for immigration violations since the beginning of the year. This uptick in arrests marks a 33  percent increase over arrests during the same period last year, and an 18  percent increase from two years ago.29 The Trump administration has also begun shifting more federal funds to ICE, transferring dollars away from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).30 Most harmfully, the Trump administration also began separating parents from their children when families were detained by border agents for illegally crossing the border. As of September 2018, more than twelve thousand children remained in custody, separated from their parents, in reprehensible conditions.31 These policies directly connect with Trump’s xenophobic campaign pledges to crack down on immigration by turning state power against (primarily) nonwhite residents who are not citizens, and reflect a shift from Obama’s usage of state power. In this same vein of a greater reliance on federal policing powers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatened to eliminate federal funding for cities that attempt to defy the Trump administration and offer sanctuary to residents who are in the country without proper documentation.32 This strong interest in policing is also evident in the Trump administration’s approach to drug policy, where again Sessions promised to both bring back tougher minimum sentencing requirements for drug laws as well as to challenge state laws allowing for more liberal marijuana usage, including for medical purposes.33 The latter move, in par ticu lar, underscores that conservatives are more than happy to use federal power to achieve their political ends regardless of local preferences. Finally, the Trump administration is also pushing for policies to increase penalties for violence against police officers, including making harming or killing a police office a federal offense.34 When viewed all together, these actions suggest a federal state that will be much more active in domestic policing than the previous administration.35 Trump’s stance vis-à-vis the administrative state, then, is a mixed bag. Given the budget cuts mentioned previously, there is a clear intention to reduce federal activity, while in other circumstances Trump’s policies are strengthening federal power. There is not a simple trajectory at work, but rather a complex position

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reflecting a range of political interests. Certainly, some of the policy positions of Trump and his cabinet are just rhetorical, aimed at appeasing Trump’s core constituents. But many of his statements have translated into real, impactful policy changes, notably around ICE and immigration. Thus, taken as a whole, these policies reflect less of a desire for dismantling the federal state, and more of a preference for using that state in new ways. To be sure, Trump has attempted to fulfill campaign promises that would reduce the scope of federal government activity. As Andrew S. Kelly’s chapter in this volume suggests, Trump’s major priority on domestic policy— dismantling the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—has faced opposition from a phalanx of powerful interest groups and internal dissent from the congressional Republican Party. Nevertheless, Trump has helped to destabilize the individual marketplace created by the ACA through a combination of executive orders altering the types of plans sold in these marketplaces, refusing to make cost sharing reduction payments to insurers, and directing the Department of Health and Human Ser vices to take actions limiting enrollment.36 Even if these actions “sabotage” the ACA, they are not likely to result in a durable shift in governing authority on their own. Indeed, if public reaction to Republican efforts to repeal and replace the ACA is any indication, Trump’s executive orders may result in a public backlash that justifies later expansions of federal authority over health policy.37 At the same time, Trump is unlikely to find converted Democratic allies suddenly in favor of curtailing federal power. Fundamentally, Democrats’ goals are very different from Trump’s in pursuing a more local political agenda. A progressive local agenda aims to both resist federal incursions that threaten marginalized groups, such as immigrants, while at the same time filling ser vice gaps that would arise following federal retrenchment. Furthermore, devolving to a new era of dual federalism would not come without serious costs to Democratic constituencies. From Democrats’ perspective, a reduction in federal authority would almost certainly lead to a decline in policy quality. This decline would come in two forms. The first problem with replacing federal power with more local control would be concerns with negative externalities. Simply put, large policies, with national implications, are not always easily implemented at the local level. One obvious example of this difficulty is in using local actors for large-scale projects in transportation infrastructure. In the nineteenth century, internal improvements were a state issue. However, states regularly lacked the resources and planning foresight to build a national infrastructure system on their own.38 The flip side of this

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coin is that some problems of interest to Democrats, such as pollution, inherently do not respect state borders. The creeping nature of these problems makes attribution of political responsibility difficult. Because of negative externalities, some policy problems are simply handled better by a large, overarching body such as the federal state. The second problem for Democrats is that of local bias. Reducing federal oversight of any number of policy areas, from environmental protection to hate crime laws, could lead to those policies being addressed in a less aggressive manner. A case in point is that historically certain forms of welfare were provided by local rather than federal offices. The result of this delivery method was that African Americans in the South were denied access to benefits.39 Democrats would, rightfully, balk at creating conditions that would allow these kinds of problems to recur. Therefore, I would argue that initial Democratic flirtations with dual federalism after Trump’s victory were nothing more than wishful thinking and possessed no real political traction. Liberal policies simply hinge too much on a large, regulatory state that ensures fair treatment for all citizens, and Democratic politicians remain wary of parochial biases creating unequal treatment for marginalized groups. Thus, given both Trump’s interest in using federal power to pursue his own goals, and also the limits of dual federalism in solving many policy problems, it seems unlikely Trump would find staunch Democratic allies in Congress to push through an agenda that radically stripped back the federal state.

Remaking the Rules of the Game Although Trump’s policies may not dislodge the authority of the central state apparatus, Trump may nevertheless alter how state authority is used. Evidence from the first two years of the administration suggest that Trump is producing two critical, if unintentional, changes to the state: a personalized concentration of executive power, notably in Trump’s own personage, and a hollowing out of federal agencies. As a candidate, Trump violated a range of traditional American political norms. These violations ranged from threatening to jail his opponent should he win the presidency to challenging the validity of both news organizations and even the electoral process itself. With this kind of beginning, it is not surprising that President Trump continues to transgress governing norms about the distinction between public ser vice and private life. At the heart of

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this transgression is Trump’s personal brand and his corporation, the Trump Organization. During the presidential transition, Trump has defied the convention of presidents’ placing their financial holdings in a blind trust for the duration of their terms in office.40 The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., has also led to numerous concerns as foreign officials have sought to build a relationship with the Trump administration by booking large events at the hotel. For example, shortly after the 2016 election, the hotel organized an event attended by nearly one hundred foreign diplomats from around the world.41 Although the Trump Organization suggested it would donate profits earned from foreign officials’ stays at Trump hotels to charity, the corporation later retracted this promise—suggesting it would begin to do so in 2017 at the earliest.42 The presence of Trump’s children on his transition team raised real questions about nepotism and the presidency acting as a kleptocratic body.43 Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has carved out a space as one of Trump’s top advisers, providing input on a range of policy issues from Iraq and the Middle East to the America’s opioid crisis.44 At the same time, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, has taken on a formal, though unpaid, advisory role, complete with an office in the White House.45 In practice, these actions do little to build actual executive power. However, these practices are placing more power directly in Trump’s hands, building his political strength independent of formal checks against that power. In this context, Trump is freer from the constraints imposed by political allies, policy experts, and his own party than other recent presidents. Ultimately, Trump acts with minimal, informal checks from prior presidential norms or advice from the “adults in the room.” These actions reveal a Trump presidency dedicated to expanding executive authority, including via more informal means rarely seen before in contemporary American politics. On the surface, some of Trump’s norm violations have taken on the sheen of other conservative political figures. During the 2016 campaign, Trump leaned heavily on his image as a “successful businessman.”46 Yet while his emphasis on market-oriented solutions and public-private partnerships is not surprising, Trump has taken numerous public actions whose benefits accrue to his personal financial interests. Shortly after his inauguration, Trump issued an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review and either rescind or revise regulations pertaining to the Clean Water Act. The EPA’s proposal for regulatory reform included provisions that had been lobbied for by golf-course industry groups and have been projected to provide substantial economic benefits for twelve golf courses

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owned by the Trump Organization.47 Trump also leveraged the appointments power in a kleptocratic fashion. Early in his administration, he nominated Lynne Patton, an event planner and friend of the Trump family, as a regional director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Patton’s region, which includes New Jersey and New York, has the capacity to disburse billions of dollars in housing grants to properties owned by the Trump Organization.48 To oversee a council involved with planning a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, Trump selected Steven Roth, a former business partner. The Trump Organization was reported to be heavi ly invested in Roth’s real-estate development company, and received $22.7 million annually from an ownership stake in two of Roth’s buildings.49 Trump’s informal network for carry ing out his policy agenda enhances preexisting information asymmetries in the executive branch and strains Congress’s already limited oversight capacities.50 Thus under Trump’s leadership, distinctions among the public, the personal, and the private have become increasingly obfuscated. This muddying, however, is not a weakening of the state. Rather, what is happening under Trump is a new concentration of state power in the executive branch. More precisely, power is increasingly held in the hands of the president. The concentration of political power is, of course, a hallmark of state-building and can at times lead to more effective, nimble governance.51 Yet the state can also be a powerful tool for rent extraction and coercion.52 The danger of rent extraction is heightened when state power is exercised in a “submerged” manner—through delegation to nonstate actors.53 Trump’s consolidation of power through familial and financial ties, partisanship, and the presidency’s institutional capacity will mean fewer meaningful formal or informal checks to challenge his power. In effect, Trump is relying on his wealth, celebrity, and familial ties to overwhelm and evade checks on his power, concentrating more authority in his own hands.54 When Trump’s closest advisers are his own family members and business partners, who will benefit from the president’s actions, there is little space to challenge or correct him. The removal of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey brought together all of these anxieties into a singular political moment. Comey was in the process of investigating Trump over allegations of improper collusion with Russian authorities during the 2016 election. Current evidence seems to indicate that Trump’s anxiety over this investigation— materialized in a demand, which Comey refused, that he express explicit loyalty to Trump—led to Comey’s sudden removal.55 The Comey case

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highlights Trump’s refusal to abide by criticism, and the possibility of Trump now appointing a loyalist to an office that is currently overseeing an investigation of the White House suggests a disconcerting concentration of political power. Similarly, it was this fear that a loyalist would oversee Trump’s investigations that caused so much consternation when Jeff Sessions was removed as attorney general, only to be replaced by Matthew Whitaker—who has speculated that investigations into Trump’s Russian ties need to be constrained.56 In addition to challenging the separation between private and public life, Trump has begun to hollow out federal agencies. Most strikingly, Trump has left agencies vastly understaffed. Two years into Trump’s administration, around 30  percent of key positions in the administration lacked Senateconfirmed appointees or even nominees.57 As a result, organizations like the White House Office of Science and Technology remained without directors for nearly two years, and there has been a sharp decline in the hiring of key agency staff, including workplace safety inspectors at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.58 More broadly, under Trump, around thirteen thousand federal jobs have been cut. Although other recent presidents have cut more jobs, Trump’s job cuts combined with his failure to fill important administrative posts is both impressive and worrisome.59 Additionally, Trump has appointed cabinet heads who either lacked clear prior qualifications or were committed to undermining agency missions. For instance, under Ben Carson, HUD has begun to wither. Carson has failed to protest significant cuts in his department’s budget. He has also brought in family members and other inexperienced people to help him lead the organization.60 Carson’s work at HUD, of course, is hardly the only example of Trump’s use of appointments to gut federal agencies. One of Trump’s most fraught political battles was his appointment of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education. DeVos had never worked in education, and her core policy program was a stance against public education in favor of charter schools.61 DeVos is currently overseeing a department facing massive budget cuts, and she is generally supportive of that position, as in her mind larger budgets rarely solve problems in schools.62 In a similar vein as DeVos’s appointment, Trump placed former Texas governor Rick Perry in the leadership role at the Department of Energy (DOE), an organization Perry famously wanted to eliminate but the name of which he could not recall in a 2011 presidential debate. Perry’s work thus far in his role as secretary of energy is a perfect example of how the hollowed-out state has enabled Trump to accomplish his goals.63 Perry has brought a number of clean-energy opponents into leadership roles in the

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DOE, essentially handing over influence to corporations that the department would normally be regulating.64 Similarly, Trump placed Ajit Pai in control of the FCC, where Pai quickly moved to undo net neutrality protections.65 An alternative explanation for Trump’s appointments that Trump is merely giving positions to his friends and allies. Even if that is the case, however, the issue of competence remains. Regardless of motivation, Trump has used his appointments not just to move these organizations closer to his own preferences, but really to reduce their effectiveness in implementing any policy at all. Trump’s appointment of department heads who strangle their own departments recalls familiar conservative plans to “starve the beast” of the federal government by cutting taxes. Yet Trump’s approach is nevertheless distinctive. In the past, conservative administrations have called for ending various programs and departments, making it clear to citizens that certain ser vices and protections would no longer be provided by federal agencies. Trump’s strategy, though, resembles a kind of parlor trick. On the surface, no major retrenchment in governing authority occurs. Yet a combination of mismanagement, unfilled positions, and disruptions in the operating routines of federal agencies impede government’s ability to provide public goods. Rather, governing authority is repurposed toward a personalistic form of rent extraction. After all, entirely eliminating some of these departments would be unpopular, even with Trump supporters, since these agencies provide numerous ser vices to many Americans. By carefully hollowing out the state, Trump can appear to still be meeting Americans’ needs while at the same time actually undermining effective administration.

Conclusion The Trump administration is building a federal state that is increasingly concentrated, but also substantively weaker, than in the past. Notably, Trump has not ushered in a fundamental reworking of American federalism: power has not been shifted from the center to the periphery. Instead, power has either been concentrated in the executive branch or allowed to dissipate. However, this change is by no means insignificant for American political institutions. The American state that Trump is building, intentionally or not, will be one that is less responsive to voters, both in terms of coalescing power in the hands of a few executive office members and in terms of lacking the capacity to perform functions that voters expect of government. With the

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Trump administration, there will be a growing gap between what government is expected to provide and what it actually can provide. This gap undermines government legitimacy and ultimately the health of democracy. As the Trump administration turns governance into show business, all smoke and mirrors rather than substantive action, citizens may find themselves increasingly on their own and uncertain why that is the case. An administrative state is not necessary for democracy, but the appearance of an administrative state when one does not exist may further undermine Americans’ trust in government.

Chapter 11

Donald Trump and the End of American Politics Adam Sheingate

The election of Donald Trump has raised concerns about the health of American democracy. As a candidate for president, Trump called for his rival to be jailed, incited violence among his supporters, and repeatedly questioned the integrity of the electoral process. As president, Trump’s behavior frequently violates the norms and expectations of the office as he displays characteristics associated with autocratic leaders. Trump has used the presidency to enrich his family business, and he fired the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for investigating whether his presidential campaign colluded with a foreign power. Trump frequently denigrates the press as purveyors of “fake news,” and he panders to white supremacists and other right-wing extremists emboldened by his victory. To scholars who have devoted their careers to the study of regime breakdown in places such as Europe or Latin America, Trump’s actions are consistent with a process of democratic backsliding.1 Concerns about a creeping authoritarianism have even prompted a group of political scientists to field an expert survey designed to “monitor democratic practices and call attention to threats to American democracy” under Trump.2 There is another side to the Trump presidency that many will recognize as a characteristic feature of American politics. Despite unified party control of the White House and Congress, the legislative accomplishments of the Trump presidency are decidedly mixed. Republicans passed a signature tax cut but were unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act or agree to a funding package

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for a border wall. The return to divided government following the 2018 election, with a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, will produce more legislative stalemate and an increase in congressional oversight and investigations.3 Efforts to impose a travel ban on citizens from certain majorityMuslim nations twice ran aground in the federal courts (although the Supreme Court approved a modified version), and an attempt by the Trump administration to place a question about citizenship on the 2020 census remains in legal limbo. These examples suggest that for all the powers of the modern presidency, the judicial branch still provides something of a check on executive action. Finally, the high rate of staff turnover and lack of coordination in the Trump White House point to the enduring challenge of presidential leadership. Individual characteristics of presidents matter in so far as they influence the organization and execution of White House tasks. Presidents who lack emotional intelligence or display a peripatetic cognitive style weaken the institutional performance of the office, especially in moments of crisis.4 These two perspectives on the Trump presidency say as much about the discipline of political science as they do about the condition of American democracy. On the one hand, scholars of comparative politics point to a disturbing resemblance between the contemporary United States and hybrid regimes that are nominally democratic but also display the characteristic abuses of an authoritarian leader.5 On the other hand, from an American politics perspective we see the institutional realities of a separated system and the limits of presidential leadership playing out in familiar ways. Putting these disciplinary perspectives side by side, one is left wondering whether Trump is really a threat to democracy, or whether his administration provides reassuring evidence that our checks and balances are working as the framers intended. Are American institutions too unwieldly to become autocratic? To answer this question, scholars must confront the silos of academic subfields that impede the accumulation of knowledge. These disciplinary divisions are an artifact of a distinctly American path of academic professionalization. From its inception in the late nineteenth century, political science devoted itself to the study of American democracy: the operation of its institutions, the formation of organized interests, and the behavior of individual voters. A U.S.-centric perspective remained central to the discipline, as comparative politics, international relations, and political theory became distinct fields of their own. Efforts to understand the functioning of democracy at home and the threats to democracy abroad encouraged the study of politics in other countries, the causes of war and peace, and the philosophical underpinnings

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of democracy and dictatorship. After World War II, the organization of knowledge in political science replicated the division of political affairs into domestic and foreign policy, a binary that separated the study of the United States from everything else. This separation has come at a cost, particularly for those who study the United States. Today, the American politics field is organized into subspecialties of specific institutions, such as Congress; the field’s focus is overwhelmingly on national politics (relegating federalism and subnational politics to the disciplinary margins); and the study of political behavior is organized around a master concept of partisan identification that reflects unique aspects of the U.S. party system. The result is a parochialism that limits our ability to understand contemporary features of American democracy. In this respect, Trump offers scholars of the United States an opportunity and a challenge. Understanding the quality and character of American democracy requires a richer form of cross-disciplinary engagement. As Robert Lieberman and coauthors correctly point out, “a comparative and historical perspective on contemporary American politics enables us to diagnose the current challenges facing American politics as symptoms of larger historical processes that have analogues in cross-national experiences.” 6 Put differently, the illiberal tendencies of the Trump administration resemble similar developments around the world, but they are playing out in a par ticular institutional and historical context specific to the United States. Scholars of American political development (APD) are particularly well positioned to explain a presidency that appears at once dangerous and dysfunctional. After all, the APD research tradition originated in a broader institutional turn in political science that embraced a comparative-historical perspective.7 As I discuss in this chapter, recent APD scholarship that examines the United States through the lenses of inequality and partial democratization offers important insights on the contemporary moment. In addition, APD scholars must pay greater attention to informal institutions and norms, as well as the influence of global trends and the transnational movement of ideas, if these scholars are to provide a fuller understanding of American politics in the time of Trump.

Inequality and American Democracy It is common to think of the United States as a mature democracy when, in fact, it is a country characterized by an ongoing and uneven process of democratization. This is a crucial insight of several important works in American

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political development.8 Assumptions of a uniformly liberal democracy overlook the coercive powers of the American state, especially as it operates in poor communities of color. As Joe Soss and Vesla Weaver point out, this oversight creates scholarly blind spots that limit our ability to understand important aspects of the contemporary condition, such as rising inequality and the growth of the carceral state (see also Galvin and Thurston and Francis in this volume).9 This oversight also produces a tendency to treat race or class as discrete variables rather than mutually constituted social constructs in which the American state plays a central role in formation and political articulation.10 Consequently, as Soss and Weaver argue, research traditions based on “images of the American polity as a representative democracy” keeps scholarly energies focused on questions of participation and interest group struggle rather than paying greater attention to instruments of social control—from policing to social welfare programs—that are the principal ways marginalized populations interact with the state.11 These insights have implications for how we understand the Trump administration’s pursuit of a more punitive immigration policy (a subject addressed in several contributions to this volume). The coercive state capacity witnessed in family separation and deportation is part a longer history of racial politics in the United States, one in which muscular state action against marginal populations was often grounded in racialized appeals to a white political base.12 Pushing Soss and Weaver’s critique even further, scholars interested in how race and class interact with the American state would benefit from greater engagement with comparative literatures, such as work on the institutional correlates of inequality. As Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan have written, countries like the United States with multiple veto points tend to have higher Gini coefficients and less generous social safety nets.13 Duane Swank has argued further that institutional fragmentation not only limits the initial expansion of the welfare state but also exacerbates divisions in society that weaken support for universalist social programs that can attenuate extreme gaps in wealth.14 From this perspective, Donald Trump’s embrace of ethno-nationalism is both a particular instance of American racial politics and a more general reminder that political institutions establish boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within political communities that determine who has access to the rights of citizenship, including the social benefits at the heart of modern welfare states.15 Placing the institutional features of the United States in a broader comparative perspective also offers additional leverage on the role federalism

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played in shaping the legacies of slavery and southern apartheid.16 For example, Robert Mickey’s work on the gradual demise of authoritarian enclaves in the American South during the twentieth century explores how federalism both perpetuated a racial caste system and shaped the paths of different Deep South states toward formal democratic rule.17 Mickey approaches the United States as a late democratizer rather than a precocious one, allowing him to draw on a vibrant literature of comparative historical analysis, much of it focused on Latin America. As Mickey shows, the relevant comparative reference for understanding APD may be a hemispheric one rather than the traditional focus on European trajectories of state-building.

Informal Institutions and Democratic Norms The rich scholarship on Latin American politics, especially on regime breakdown, suggests that scholars of APD should focus more explicitly on the historical evolution of informal institutions and democratic norms (see also Lieberman, this volume). As noted previously, Donald Trump resembles other strongman leaders in his willingness to flout unwritten rules and conventions. A key point underlying this comparison is that informal institutions play a critical role in the performance and durability of democratic regimes. In par ticular, comparative historical research on Latin America has found that informal institutions support key elements of democratic politics such as representation, accountability, and the rule of law. Particularly where formal institutions are weak or ineffective, informal institutions can serve as an important bulwark of democratic stability.18 Scholars of U.S. politics have also noted the importance of informal rules and conventions, but few have connected this observation to the broader literature in comparative politics. An impor tant exception is work by Julia Azari and Jennifer Smith, who discuss several examples of informal institutions in the United States, such as the presidential nominating process or Senate obstruction using the filibuster.19 These informal rules and conventions operate in conjunction with formal institutions in ways that “embody and reconcile core democratic concerns” such as balancing majority rule and minority rights.20 As Azari and Smith conclude, violations of these informal rules can have destabilizing effects, particularly in periods of widening polarization. The reason is that informal rules help attenuate the intensity of conflict. As Levitsky and Ziblatt put it, informal institutions operate as “guardrails” that prevent political competition from spiraling out of control.

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Democratic norms and conventions operate as restraints on no-holds-barred political conflicts.21 This is the reason that the erosion of these norms of restraint often accompany regime breakdown and that their deterioration in the United States is so troubling. A more direct engagement between comparative scholarship on informal institutions and the APD literature would further our understanding of how democratic norms function in the United States and the possible sources of their resilience. As Joseph Cooper argues, the secular rise in presidential power, along with the attendant decline in congressional dominance over national affairs, reflects important changes in norms and doctrine regarding the executive and legislative branches.22 Because APD scholars are typically focused on long-term trends, they are perhaps better able to trace the gradual evolution of ideas that inform institutional practice than are empirical approaches focused on snapshots in time. In particular, historical episodes of norm transgression may be especially enlightening in understanding the role of informal institutions in American political development. As Nicole Mellow and Jeffrey Tulis point out, actions that first appear as costly political gambits can have lasting effects.23 In the case of Andrew Johnson, for example, his demagogic appeals and inflammatory rhetoric violated proscriptions against presidential advocacy of a policy agenda and even became grounds for impeachment. In the words of one historian, Johnson displayed a “want of dignity . . . insensibility to decorum, [and] . . . eagerness to exchange repartee with any opponent no matter how low.”24 Yet, as Mellow and Tulis argue, these norm violations contributed to long-term changes in American politics: although Johnson was “rightly ridiculed as a demagogue,” the practice of “going public” to generate public support is today considered “a prescribed norm, not a deviant exercise.”25 The point is not that one can draw a straight line from Johnson to Trump, but rather that APD scholars should further explore how norm transgressions establish precedents for future presidents. As we contemplate Trump’s behav ior in office, such questions take on particular relevance.

Ethno-nationalism and Right-Wing Populism The 2016 election laid bare a nativist strain that has existed in our politics since the nineteenth century. As scholars of American political behavior point out, this racial resentment and xenophobia is often tinged with authoritarian tendencies and populist hostility toward a supposedly corrupt elite.26 This

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is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Research on European right-wing populism finds the same mixture of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism that is evident in the United States. According to Cas Mudde, the reason is that right-wing populism is an extreme (and extremist) expression of views common to most Western democracies: a racialized view of political community, a belief in an ordered society, and a valorization of vox populi.27 Right-wing populism is not a difference in kind, but a difference in degree. As Mudde also points out, right-wing populism tends to focus on a trinity of issues—immigration, security, and corruption—that mobilize voters fearful of outsiders, who see “traditional” values under threat and are suspicious of experts and elites. Right-wing populists are defenders of an ideology they believe has been “betrayed or diluted.”28 All of this is of a piece with Donald Trump’s pledge to “build a wall,” “drain the swamp,” and “make America great again.” Although the 2016 election focused attention on some of the excellent attitudinal and ethnographic work that exists on the white working class, this work tends to overlook the global economic transformation whose ripple effects are evident across Europe and the United States. Trump’s supporters in the Upper Midwest have more in common with voters in the British Midlands than those in the upper reaches of Manhattan. What Mark Blyth refers to as “global Trumpism” is the product of a common set of economic causes marked by deindustrialization and rising inequality.29 It is also a harbinger of an emergent “neonationalism” that rejects the neoliberal orthodoxy of a technocratic elite who for decades touted the benefits of free movement of people, capital, and goods. The victories for Brexit and Trump reveal more than a failure of polling; they also highlight the cost of treating elements of a global phenomenon as isolated cases.30 Here, too, APD scholars have an opportunity to contribute to comparative studies of right-wing populism by exploring how national variation in ideas and institutions both reflect and refract these global trends.

Toward a Broader Understanding of the Trump Presidency As a research tradition, APD excavates macrohistorical trends in American democracy. Attention to the interplay between race and class forces us to confront the Janus-faced character of the American polity and the way representative institutions coexist with a highly coercive state whose powers are disproportionately felt by poor people of color. Similarly, a focus on

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democratic norms and informal institutions challenges assumptions about the exceptional nature of the United States or the linear progression of our democracy. Recent manifestations of right-wing populism in American politics reveal a deep reservoir of resentment that is not unique to the United States but is expressed through a set of tropes specific to our history and context. As these examples show, APD scholars can both contribute to and benefit from comparative and historical work on the institutional correlates of inequality, the operation of informal institutions, and the interplay between right-wing populism and contemporary capitalism. Bridging historical and comparative perspectives is about more than making sense of Trump. As a research enterprise, APD raises a fundamental question, one that speaks to the concerns of those who see in our present moment both a threat to democracy and a deepening spiral of dysfunction. What actually holds a large, diverse republic like the United States together (or not, as the U.S. Civil War reminds us)? This was a central preoccupation of the framers and it inspired them to design a Constitution that, they hoped, would prove durable and long-lasting. The result is a constitutional system of redundancies and overlapping authority that favors resilience over efficiency of governing. Trump’s presidency thus far suggests that the system is holding together, but for reasons that go beyond institutional design. True, the separation of powers and especially an independent judiciary can dampen the effects of presidential impulses to refashion politics.31 However, judicial independence is a good example of how formal institutions rest upon informal norms. Widely shared beliefs about the role of courts in a democracy may stiffen judges’ resolve against the Trump administration. From a historical perspective, Trump’s bluster about “breaking up the Ninth Circuit” is of a piece with earlier challenges to judicial independence like FDR’s ill-fated court-packing plan. Attention to the role of norms may offer a new perspective on these earlier episodes when the judiciary served as a check on presidential overreach. What, exactly, kept these destabilizing forces at bay? This is where a comparative perspective has the advantage of incorporating cases in which attacks on the courts have eroded their independence.32 The role of the judiciary in democratic consolidation and breakdown may help scholars of APD better understand the conditions under which an independent judiciary can provide a bulwark against authoritarian tendencies.33 In a similar fashion, greater emphasis on a comparative perspective in APD yields fresh insights on polarization, arguably the central question of

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American politics. As Juan Linz pointed out in an influential article on the “perils of presidentialism,” the institutional features of a separated system can undermine regime stability when mixed with extreme polarization.34 According to Linz, the reason is that separate elections for the executive and legislative branches generate rival sources of democratic legitimacy, as presidents and legislative majorities each claim to be the one, true voice of “the people.” This is a recipe for conflict when the two branches are controlled by ideologically polarized parties that represent distinct economic, racial, or geographic constituencies, and it is compounded by the president’s fixed term in office, which allows an incumbent to remain in power without popu lar support. Following Linz, we can expect a deepening of these tendencies in advance of the next U.S. presidential election as the Democratic Party takes control of the House in 2019. Experiences in Latin American presidential systems suggest that democracy becomes more fragile as partisan conflicts turn into constitutional standoffs. The risk is heightened when presidents respond by exercising greater unilateral authority.35 The potential for unraveling is enhanced by the fact that Trump’s political lodestar is a virulent ethno-nationalism that embraces white supremacy. Apart from the moral implications of his stance, Trump’s political strategy is both a reflection of and an accelerant to a U.S. party system that is polarizing along racial lines. Trump’s insistence on the existence of widespread election fraud and his effort (albeit unsuccessful) to create an “election integrity commission” are more than rhetorical moves to mobilize his political base. They are part of a broader campaign to consolidate and protect Republican electoral gains through gerrymandering, voter registration rules, and overt voter suppression that disproportionately affects African Americans. These developments have deep historical roots, as APD scholars instruct us, but they also raise comparative questions concerning how and when racial or ethnic cleavages undermine regime stability. Although a great deal separates today’s polarized party system from the racial and sectional crisis of the 1850s, our tragic past is instructive nevertheless for what it tells us about American democracy. The fusion of political party and the nineteenth-century state meant that those on the losing end of the 1860 ballot saw institutional control by their opponent as an existential threat to their way of life.36 Once elections no longer served as a viable form of power-sharing, secession led to a civil war that in terms of bloodshed is the most catastrophic episode in U.S. history. The movement for African American rights after World War II is different in many ways from this earlier

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period of upheaval, but it is worth noting that throughout the struggle both progressive and reactionary forces largely worked through the party system even as their fortunes at the ballot box waxed and waned. This difference points, once again, to the importance of democratic norms, especially a belief in the integrity of the electoral process and a willingness to abide by the results. With the exception of the Civil War, elections have long been a source of stability in the American political system, especially when compared to shorter-lived democratic regimes. This is one reason Trump’s willingness to question the legitimacy of the electoral process and his own campaign’s complicity with Russian meddling in the 2016 election pose such a threat to the resilience of American democracy. Indeed, a widespread belief on both the political left and right that elections are no longer free or fair in the United States could be one of Trump’s lasting legacies.

Democratic Careening in the United States It is an old saw that where you stand depends on where you sit. Yet this cliché captures something of political scientists’ evaluations of the Trump presidency. Whereas several literatures in comparative politics suggest Trump is a threat to democratic stability in the United States, a perspective rooted in the American politics literature might point out that the accomplishments of the Trump administration are consistent with a separated system designed to frustrate action. Both perspectives capture an aspect of our reality. The firing of the FBI director and attorney general, the disparaging of mainstream journalists as “enemies of the people,” and signs a family business is being run from the White House suggest the United States is tending toward something between an autocracy and a kleptocracy. These actions are significant departures from the past, transgressions even, but they also provoked organized protest, electoral success for the opposition party, and a steady supply of media criticism and satire that are hallmarks of a healthy democracy. The very fact that political scientists have divergent views on Trump’s presidency tells us something important about our current moment and about politics more generally. Democracy is not a binary but exists along a continuum. Nor is democratization a story of steady advance, in the United States or elsewhere.37 Instead, the United States, like other democratic regimes, is frequently “careening,” buffeted by what Daniel Slater describes as competing impulses of democratic responsiveness and elite accountability.38 The separation of powers is designed to ensure ambition checks ambition, but the

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separation of powers does not prevent elite collusion. High levels of political corruption fuel populist movements, but efforts to return power to the people often give rise to a charismatic leader. According to Slater, democracies lurch back and forth between these Madisonian and Machiavellian poles; failed democracies deteriorate into their oligarchic and authoritarian alternatives. The question is not whether democracies careen between competing impulses, but the scale and frequency of the shifts. Trump’s rhetoric and the actions of his administration are understandable in terms of a populist-fueled contempt for a system seen by many as furthering the interests of a corrupt elite. Equally understandable is the reaction to Trump as a demagogue whose actions call for a restoration of constitutional balance. Trump’s attempts to push the boundaries (a concern for comparativists) and the capacity of the system to push back (as Americanists expect) are part and parcel of democratic careening. Reassuring as this statement may sound, one wonders whether this bandying back and forth could eventually weaken the restraints that keep our politics from deteriorating into something less democratic. Once again we are left relying on the norms, practices, conventions, and beliefs that sustain a democracy. The election of Donald Trump and his behavior thus far as president underscore the challenges we face as a nation beset by an increasingly divisive politics, a racially polarized electorate, extreme inequality, and growing ethno-nationalist impulses. It is hyperbole to suggest that Trump signals the end of American politics as we know it. There are some encouraging signs regarding the resilience of American democracy. However, in order to understand the sources of this resilience, scholars must embrace a deeper historical and comparative perspective on the United States. In this respect, Trump may contribute to a lasting and positive change in American politics as we study it.

Chapter 12

Trumpism and the Future of American Political Development Robert C. Lieberman

The election of Donald Trump has occasioned much hand-wringing among political scientists and other observers of American politics. This anxiety has taken several forms, from worry about the fragility of democracy and the peril of the global liberal order to dismay about the stretching of American political and legal institutions, the apparent bankruptcy of American conservatism, and the coarsening of public discourse.1 But the Trump presidency has also opened a window onto important aspects of American politics that have tended to remain hidden as the discipline has evolved, and it has already proven very generative for political science, as the essays in this volume, among other works, show. The country may (or may not) be in crisis—and there is substantial disagreement on this point—but, to paraphrase former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, we should not let a good crisis go to waste. Rather, scholars of American politics should seize the opportunity to delve even deeper into some of the more hidden aspects of American politics and in particular to consider how we can reconsider American political development as a central pillar of the American politics subfield. How does the Trump election help us understand American political development anew? And how might the phenomenon of Trumpism call our attention to facts, patterns, and features of American political life that we

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might have overlooked or understudied? To begin, we should not overstate the crisis of knowledge. Its unexpected result notwithstanding, the 2016 election was not, in fact, a par ticular anomaly; rather, the election affirmed some of the basic electoral patterns that have governed American national elections for decades and that political scientists have come to understand well and measure with fair precision. Despite the gloominess over the failure of state-by-state polling models to correctly predict the winner of the election, political scientists’ forecasting models—based on a set of “fundamental” electoral factors, including economic performance, incumbency, presidential approval, and public opinion—performed very well in forecasting the national popular vote.2 Of nine forecasts published by teams of political scientists in October 2016, all but two correctly predicted that Hillary Clinton would win a majority of the two-party vote. Moreover, patterns of voting were entirely consistent with the recent run of national elections.3 As is typical for the Republican nominee, Trump won majorities of white (57  percent) and male (52  percent) voters and also prevailed among older, evangelical Christian, and higher-income voters. Clinton took traditionally Democratic constituencies; she won among nonwhite voters (74  percent) and dominated among African American voters (89 percent), and she gained pluralities of educated voters, union members, and city dwellers. Above all, partisanship remained the single best predictor of vote choice: 89 percent of Democrats voted for Clinton and 88 percent of Republicans voted for Trump (independents broke slightly for Trump). All in all, a fairly conventional election, and not one that is likely to fundamentally alter our understanding of American electoral behav ior or dynamics. There is, perhaps, more of interest to say about Trump’s conduct of the presidency and its implications for understanding American governing institutions. On the one hand, his administration has undertaken a lot of executive action and overseen policy direction consistent with his campaign rhetoric in areas such as trade, immigration, energy, and the environment. He has overseen a dramatic rollback in regulations, removing the Federal Communications Commission’s “net neutrality” rule, for example, extending oil and gas drilling rights on federal land, preparing to unravel the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon-emissions framework, aggressively expanding rules limiting family planning and abortion in the United States and abroad, and imposing or increasing tariffs on imports, among other things. While these actions are extensive and consequential, they do not depart in fundamental ways from the long-brewing trend toward governance by executive action in

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the face of congressional inaction, dysfunction, and gridlock.4 Trump has also taken advantage of Republican control of the Senate to appoint federal judges at a faster pace than many of his recent predecessors.5 At the same time, he has failed to claim some of the presidency’s most powerful assets. More than two years into his term, an unprecedented number of high-level executive-branch positions remain unfilled, apparently through a combination of inattention and a determination to subvert the “policy state” and its reliance on expertise, as Philip Rocco shows, in favor of a standard of personal loyalty to the president.6 He has been largely absent from central policy debates, either unwilling or unable to engage on policy issues beyond crude and often self-contradictory sloganeering. On topic after topic—from health care to immigration to gun control—he has tended to sow confusion, even among his partisan allies, rather than define clear positions and drive legislative bargains. Even on the signature legislative accomplishment of his first year as president, tax reform, he was essentially a sideline player, and he gives every impression of being neither interested nor engaged in policy matters. And, of course, all the while he has kept up his steady barrage of tweets, self-serving falsehoods, and confusing (yet oddly mesmerizing) utterances that have long been his signature mode of public communication. Despite all of this feverish activity, however, it remains unclear whether Trump’s presidency signals a fundamental shift in the structure or operation of American political institutions or merely an extreme case of an unusually partisan administration that is within the bounds of what we might consider “normal” democratic politics. On the one hand, as many have pointed out, the character and quality of American governance have been in decline for some time. This decline is perhaps especially marked in Congress, which seemed to have reached new depths of sclerosis and dysfunction well before Trump’s ascendancy.7 But it might also be said of the policy apparatus, which is increasingly fraying and showing its age, and the bureaucracy, which has come to resemble an assemblage of ill-fitting parts that is constantly on the verge of breaking down.8 At the same time, other observers might point out that American institutions have been strained and stretched before but have always recalibrated themselves.

Trump and the Limits of American Politics More pointedly, however, the Trump presidency has focused attention on a set of questions about American politics that the subfield of American

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politics has not generally been equipped to ask. This is so largely because of the relatively artificial division of the discipline of political science by geography, between Americanists and those who study the rest of the world under the rubric (in the United States) of comparative politics. Whereas comparative politics has evolved into a broad field that encompasses a very wide range of political forms and possibilities and exploits cross-national differences to make inferences about politics at the national level around the world, the subfield of American politics—perhaps one of the last respectable bastions of area studies in the social sciences—has generally traded breadth for depth, exploiting variations across time, place, and context within American history and often focusing on ever-smaller pieces of the American political system rather than exploring the function of the system as a whole (with varying degrees of self-awareness about the implications of these choices).9 But Trump’s emergence on the American political scene has led many to question aspects of American politics that have, generally speaking, been outside of the discipline’s depiction of the American experience. The stability and survival of the American regime seem to be at stake in ways that many scholars of American politics have not previously explored. Liberal democracy in the United States seems to be in peril, and its sustainability a matter of question. And the homeostatic view of self-regulating institutions seems no longer adequate to account for a tattered and overloaded political system. These are things for which the subfield of American politics has a somewhat impoverished vocabulary. To be sure, there have been works in American politics that have explicitly treated American democracy as limited and incomplete, and many scholars of race, gender, and identity in American politics have taken a more critical approach to the regime, but in the subfield as a whole these have been the exception rather than the rule.10 By contrast, from its very emergence in the post–World War II era, the field of comparative politics has concerned itself above all with precisely these questions—from early modernization theory to more recent literature on democratic transitions and breakdown. Spanning a world where democracy has often been fragile, intermittent, or altogether nonexistent, comparative scholars have taken the emergence, stability, and demise of democratic regimes as a central theme, exploiting the rich variation of regime types and developmental processes around the world to build a powerful body of theory, observation, and inference about what makes democracies rise and fall. It should not surprise us, then, that comparativists have offered the first and most prominent wave of responses to the Trump presidency, generally

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expressing degrees of alarm at the condition of American democratic practices and institutions when viewed from a comparative perspective.11 Political theorists, too, who often take a wider view of democracy that stretches across national borders, have also weighed in about democracy’s fragility.12 At the same time, the American subfield, generally stuck in one of a number of methodological ruts that tend to limit its freedom to roam beyond the alreadyworn tracks, has not yet found an effective vantage point from which to view these challenges. In this vein, numerous scholars of American politics have tried to be reassuring, suggesting that although things look bad, American democratic institutions are basically intact and are already, in their creaky way, working toward reestablishing some kind of stable democratic equilibrium.13 To be sure, scholars of American politics have already begun to construct a solid understanding of recent events, particularly both the ordinary and the extraordinary features of the 2016 election and the continuing dysfunction of the national policy-making apparatus. Aside from the (surprisingly) successful election forecasts to which I have already alluded, students of electoral behavior public opinion have already begun carefully to excavate voting patterns to understand the role that, for example, race and gender, geography, political economy, and cultural values played in shaping vote choices and determining the election’s outcome.14 And scholars of political institutions have sensibly located the Trump administration squarely within recent developments in the evolution of Congress and partisan polarization.15 But these perspectives understand the Trump presidency primarily as an incrementally altered—or perhaps distorted—version of the recent American democratic past. These investigations do not really yield any clear analytical perspective on the question whether American democracy is truly at risk. How, then, do we get ourselves out of this disciplinary trap? In many ways, American political development (APD) is well situated to provide analytical leverage on the Trumpism phenomenon.16 For one thing, APD offers a historical perspective that allows us to investigate the hypothesis that something fundamental in American politics has changed, that certain basic features of American political life are at risk, and that their continuation should not be taken for granted. This observation leads us to historical inquiry for at least two reasons. First, we can potentially learn something about the current state of American politics by comparing and contrasting it with earlier patterns of politics, to identify what is new about the current moment and how it might reflect or recapitulate things that have happened before. Second, it will be

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helpful to understand the processes of change (and the forces for stability) that are at work in the current moment and will shape the course of American politics as the Trump administration unfolds.17 Moreover, American political development is an essential hinge between American politics and comparative politics. As Kimberly Morgan has shown, the fields of APD and comparative politics emerged out of common origins and share methodological tools and orientations.18 APD has its roots in a set of observations and questions about a set of comparatively distinctive characteristics of American politics: its core electoral and governing institutions (separated powers, federalism, and other features of the constitutional system), patterns of political contestation (such as political parties and the party system), and public policies (the welfare state, for example). Many of the foundational works in the subfield were quite pointedly and explicitly comparative, questioning how to categorize and explain the seemingly anomalous American state or why the American welfare state seemed less generous and comprehensive than its European counterparts. Although APD and comparative politics have largely diverged in recent decades, scholars are increasingly incorporating the United States into historically aware comparative studies in areas such as state-building, democratization, and race and ethnicity to powerful effect, with impor tant and often surprising results. This trend toward the merger of comparative and historical methods highlights the potential power of APD as a window onto the current predicament of American democracy that is punctuated by the Trump presidency. A historical perspective on Trumpism can help make sense of the contemporary political circumstance by illuminating historical parallels and processes, showing both what is distinctive (and familiar) about this moment and how we have arrived here, as the essays collected here do so well.

The Trump Era and American Political Development But at the same time, the Trump presidency offers us an important opportunity to probe several key questions at the frontier of APD scholarship and to advance inquiry both by understanding past episodes of democratic challenge and fragility in American history and by identifying the processes of change that have led American politics into this current situation. In par ticu lar, four critical trends in American politics seem particularly central to Trumpism and its genesis.19 First, not only the extent but also the nature of partisan polarization have changed to the degree that politics has become

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almost a tribal battle rather than a process of competition and, ultimately, of mutual accommodation. Second, the operation of American governing institutions has changed, particularly the steady accretion of executive power in the face of congressional dysfunction and retreat. Third, the interlocking dynamics of racial and economic inequality have raised the stakes for questions about membership and belonging in American politics. And fourth, adherence to democratic norms has eroded. None of these trends is new, and in fact each has a long lineage in American political history. But they appear now in a new and distinctive configuration, which not only poses a substantial challenge to American democracy but also promises new insights about the core analytical challenge of American political development: how to describe and understand the complex and multilayered processes of political change in the United States.20

Tribal Polarization For some time now, political scientists have measured, chronicled, and argued about partisan and ideological polarization, the extent to which both political elites and the mass public are either evenly distributed across an ideological spectrum or clustered in opposing groups that do not overlap. Despite substantial uncertainty and disagreement about the causes of polarization, there is wide consensus that Americans have been drifting toward greater polarization since the 1970s or so. Scholars agree that ideological and partisan polarization has increased dramatically, to the point that, at least among political elites, the two parties are farther apart than at any time since the Gilded Age, and partisan identities have become essentially tribal. 21 Observers also differ about the consequences of polarization, although there is general agreement that it has changed the nature of American politics and policy making in a variety of ways—inducing not just gridlock but also heightened partisanship, distributive blackmail, and the proliferation of strategic disagreement.22 High levels of polarization certainly have systemic effects that influence campaigns and elections, the policy process, patterns of public opinion and political communication, and other aspects of American politics in ways that have become the subject of much study and speculation. But specialists in American politics have generally understood fluctuating polarization as a feature of American politics, and not necessarily as a bug. Although some have reacted with alarm to the rise of partisan and ideological extremism in American politics, especially on the

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right, few have suggested that polarization poses an existential threat to American democratic institutions.23 In this view, polarization is, rather, an element of American politics that fluctuates in response to other aspects of the system, and to which other systemic elements are expected to respond in predictable ways. In one sense, polarization has fulfilled a longtime fantasy of American political science, from Woodrow Wilson’s power ful advocacy of a parliamentary system, to the American Political Science Association’s brief for more programmatically distinct and electorally responsible parties.24 But a historical and comparative look at polarization brings an entirely different perspective to American political development by widening the angle of vision to look not just at the internal dynamics of the system but rather at the role of ideology, partisanship, and polarization in either stabilizing or undermining the democratic regime. In comparative and historical terms, political scientists have long noted that American political institutions are unusual, particularly the American brand of presidential government. As Juan Linz has argued, presidential systems like the United States tend to be unstable because they are susceptible to intractable conflict between separately elected and independently accountable executive and legislative branches.25 For Linz, what saved the American political regime from the characteristic fragility of presidentialism was the system of two large “catchall” parties (a consequence of single-member legislative districts and winner-take-all elections) that tended, at least for much of the twentieth century, toward centrism. In this partisan context, Congress has historically acted as a substantial check on executive authority, which is formally limited under the U.S. Constitution, especially relative to other presidential systems. Finally, for much of the twentieth century, the American party system essentially consisted of three parties: Republicans, northern Democrats, and southern Democrats (who broke from their northern copartisans on a range of issues touching particularly on race and labor).26 The shifting alliances among these three factions critically protected segregation and white supremacy, but also inadvertently added another layer of checks and balances to those inherent in the separation of powers and federalism. From this point of view, the relative partisan overlap and ideological compression of the midtwentieth century was not just a characteristic of an era that featured relatively functional and stable pluralist policy-making institutions that by and large promoted a centrist vision of global liberalism.27 Rather, this partisan overlap was critical to protecting the American political system from the

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worst tendencies of its own institutional architecture that threatened under the surface to pull the regime apart. This approach to polarization in American political history, and the regime perspective the approach suggests, in turn imply that we ought to be asking new questions about the role of ideology, political parties, and political fragmentation more generally in the structure and functioning of American democracy.

Institutional Conflict and Executive Power A second institutional trend that has contributed to the particular characteristics of the Trump ascendancy is the growth in recent decades of executive power, largely at Congress’s expense, a development that has eroded one of the distinctive equilibrating features of American presidentialism. This shift toward executive power in American national governance has several roots. One is growing congressional dysfunction, which is itself tightly connected to partisan polarization in Congress. For decades in the mid-twentieth century, congressional behavior exhibited a high degree of mutual respect and cooperation across party lines that facilitated the formation of cross-partisan lawmaking coalitions in the presence of comparative party weakness and relatively diffuse partisan identity among voters, who rewarded tangible legislative results or position-taking over pure partisanship.28 This pattern has been eroding for several decades, beginning with the election to Congress in the 1990s of a group of young conservative Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, who sought to vault their long-suffering party into congressional majorities. They surmised that to achieve this goal, the party had to distinguish itself more effectively from the long-dominant Democrats. The strategy worked. Republicans successfully challenged Democratic congressional dominance by moving sharply to the right in order to distinguish themselves from Democrats and increasingly capturing the votes and seats of the white South, long the traditional Democratic core but an increasingly uneasy part of the Democratic coalition.29 This new division, between two increasingly homogeneous and unified parties, fostered what Frances Lee has called “teamsmanship,” an approach to legislating that places a high premium on tight cooperation and loyalty among copartisans in order to wage effective battle against the other team.30 The habits of this kind of tribal partisanship have become increasingly entrenched in Congress, particularly as Republicans have sought to shift away from policy making that caters to the median voter and have instead been especially responsive to donors and wealthy

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constituents and used public relations efforts (fueled by spectacular amounts of post–Citizens United money) to activate their base and frame their policy preferences in ways voters would accept.31 The entrenchment of the teamsmanship approach to congressional organization has produced numerous legislative and political consequences in recent years: the increasing use of the filibuster, once a rare event, as a routine tactic to block legislation; regular standoffs over such basic matters as funding the government and agreeing to repay the government’s debt; and unprecedented levels of minority obstruction, extending even to Senate Republicans’ yearlong refusal to entertain President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The breakdown of such norms of legislative structure and process risk the possibility of legislative illegitimacy and the further strengthening of the executive branch, as presidents have tried to overcome political and policymaking gridlock by acting unilaterally through executive orders, regulatory direction, and other means; as Zachary Callen observes, this trend risks substantially attenuating both the capacity and the responsiveness of American governance.32 If we are, as Julia Azari posits, in an era of “perpetual disjunction” between presidents and their partisan coalitions, these robust tools of presidential power may be harbingers of a growing threat to the democratic regime.33 A second impetus for the growth of executive power has been the rise of the capacity and justification for internal surveillance of American citizens and the suppression of apparently subversive political activity, often directed at immigrants and people of color. In the years during and after World War I, for example, nativist fear of the suspected political loyalties of many immigrants thought to be the bearers of “foreign” ideologies such as anarchism and communism led to a wave of political repression that included strikebreaking, orga nized racial violence, a coordinated series of federal raids against suspected radicals (the so-called Palmer Raids, after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who orchestrated them), and the birth of what became the Federal Bureau of Investigation (under twenty-four-year-old J. Edgar Hoover, who would go on to lead the bureau for nearly half a century). In the wake of World War II, the Cold War and the rise of the national security state tended to augment presidential power, both to deploy American military force and to command a growing and largely opaque intelligence apparatus. Often these means were deployed to attack and undermine domestic dissent, as in the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which targeted, among other groups, the civil-rights and anti–Vietnam War movements. These

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trends have only accelerated since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and through the longest continuous period of war in American history (which may itself provide significant impetus for a critical reordering of American politics).34 Donald Trump’s political emergence in this historical context of executive aggrandizement and polarization should lead us to pose new questions about the institutional structure of American governance and the apparent protections that the constitutional architecture of separated powers offers against concentrated power. Trump’s approach to campaigning and governing is populist and personalistic: “I am your voice,” he told his fellow partisans at the Republican National Convention in 2016. “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” His success suggests that the seemingly self-regulating features of the American political system can be thrown dangerously out of equilibrium. These observations lead us to the regime question that Linz and other comparative observers pose about the United States. Perhaps the special conditions that have fostered stability in the American presidential regime are at risk; if so, what becomes of the American constitutional system in their absence?

Race and Inequality Trump’s rise to power also comes at a moment of historically high and rising economic inequality as well as inflamed racial and ethnic tensions in the United States over issues such as policing, voting rights, and immigration, among others. Trump himself has both capitalized on and inflamed political tensions around these sources of inequality, tapping into a generations-old strain of Republican rhetoric, as Gwendoline Alphonso notes.35 As a candidate and now as president, he has consistently tailored his rhetoric to a disaffected white working class (even as his electoral coalition skewed heavily toward upper-income voters, as is customary for Republican candidates; his cabinet toward billionaires; and his policy accomplishments toward benefits for business and wealthy people).36 In his campaign and presidential rhetoric, he has frequently skirted perilously close to the kind of racism, anti-Semitism, and nativism that were long understood as taboo in respectable political life. It was his embrace of the “birther” my thology about Barack Obama that fueled his political rise. Trump launched his 2016 campaign with a racist broadside against Mexican immigrants and went on to attack the loyalty of a Mexican American federal judge and the Pakistani American family of

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a soldier killed in the Iraq War. Trump’s campaign was built on nativist and xenophobic appeals on issues such as immigration and trade, and his presidency has followed suit. His frequent invocation of the slogan “America First” echoes the xenophobic rhetoric of opponents of American entry into World War II. One of his first acts as president was to issue a ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries that was widely understood, including by federal courts, to be improperly discriminatory toward Muslims. And he has repeatedly stoked irrational fear of immigrants, as in his fulminations about the dangers of Central American migrants seeking refuge from desperate conditions at home or his threats to challenge birthright citizenship as guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.37 Trump’s political ascendency has also coincided with a rise in overt racial antagonism and conflict, and he has clearly emboldened white-supremacist hate groups, as the events in Charlottesville and elsewhere attest. But while overt racism has resurfaced in ugly ways, other structural factors are also at play. This apparent appeal to racial animosity and anti-immigrant anxiety appears to be a consequence of a generation of structural trends in racial and ethnic politics in the United States, rather than simply a projection of Trump’s own idiosyncrasies or prejudices, or an expression of some kind of fundamental underlying racism among white Americans. His appeal to predominantly white voters in the industrial Midwest and rural communities around the country seems to have activated and energized not racism per se (although palpable indicators of more virulent racism, such as frequent display of the Confederate battle flag, were not uncommon at Trump rallies and among his supporters, even outside the South). Rather, President Trump tapped a deep well of alienation from and resentment of a more cosmopolitan political establishment and a perception, as Arlie Hochschild has so aptly described, that others—African Americans, immigrants, women—were “cutting in line” to claim benefits that rightly belonged to Trump’s voters.38And he spoke to a sense of lost privilege and status. that, while not always rooted in explicit racist attitudes, was built on generations of preferential policies and practices that favored the interests of white Americans over others and fostered political linkages between communities of color and policies such as welfare, health care, and criminal justice, underscoring Daniel Galvin and Chloe Thurston’s observations about the limits of policy feedback as an effective partisan or electoral tool.39 As places that long reaped the privileges of these structural advantages decline, these communities are particularly susceptible to the kind of racialized and nativist partisan appeals that form such a large part of

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Trumpism’s core. The rising salience of Americans who sometimes literally speak a different language and who are often not Christian has opened the door to a populist leader who will draw the definition of who “the people” are in a way that mobilizes resentment and licenses disenfranchisement. Trump also tapped into discontent that emerges from the slow growth or deterioration of wages and opportunities among most lower- and middleincome Americans. The cleavages caused by rising economic inequality interact with the racial and ethnic structure of American society, feeding political alienation and polarization. Racial inequality is closely connected to rising overall levels of wage and wealth inequality, fueled by spectacular growth at the top end and stagnation particularly among those in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution. In the early 1970s, decades of high economic growth came to an end, and economic inequality began to escalate in the United States as incomes stagnated particularly among men with less education. The Trump campaign and presidency have effectively tapped into and validated this white working-class despair. The divisiveness of the Trump era also raises comparatively informed questions about how conflicts over the boundaries of the American political community might affect our understanding of American democracy. In a foundational article, Dankwart Rustow overturned the prevailing consensus about the preconditions for democracy.40 Rather than looking for particular configurations of mass public opinion, socioeconomic conditions, or political institutions, as modernization theory suggested, he proposed that democratic transitions depended on a single precondition: national unity, or broad agreement about the boundaries of the political community. At the same time, as Robert Dahl has shown, inclusive citizenship itself is not a sufficient condition for democracy; many authoritarian regimes have expansive notions of citizenship and invite participation from all segments of society, in regimes that Dahl calls “inclusive hegemonies.” 41 In countries where the legitimacy of broad citizenship and political equality is challenged, democracy tends to be at risk, and in many such instances would-be authoritarian leaders justify these restrictive moves by claiming that the exercise of democratic rights by suspect groups itself undermines national unity, and by challenging the legitimate participation rights of groups deemed dangerous to the regime. Some of the most profound conflicts in American politics have unfolded precisely over these boundaries of legitimacy and participation, from battles over voting rights for African Americans and women to contemporary clashes over the political incorporation of immigrants.42 Again,

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the Trump moment suggests a new set of comparatively informed questions about how we might understand the history of political exclusion in the United States and the resilience of the American democratic regime.

Democratic Norms Finally, perhaps the most readily striking aspect of the Trump presidency is the apparent decay in recent decades of long-standing political norms that support democracy—a set of shared understandings and common standards of behav ior that regulate the operation of political institutions and keep political competition within a set of well-understood boundaries.43 For example, norms regarding the legitimacy of political opposition, the independence of the press, and the importance of cross-partisan comity and mutual respect in Congress have long been essential to the stability and continuity of American democracy. The Trump presidency has already generated impor tant scholarship on the deterioration of these “guardrails of democracy” in the United States. In How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt show how mutual toleration (accepting the legitimacy of opposing parties and voices) and forbearance (self-regulation, or essentially not exercising all the power one has at any given moment) have helped preserve democratic regimes in the United States and elsewhere.44 When these norms falter, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, democracy is in peril, and they paint a chilling picture of the state of these norms in Trump’s America. A notorious and flagrant norm-breaker himself, Trump is a symptom, not a cause, of a political system in distress. But this is not the first time these norms have been challenged or attenuated in American political history; in the republic’s first decade, for example, norms of political competition were in their infancy as American politics erupted into their first wave of bitter partisan competition. In 1791, an armed insurrection arose to resist the imposition of a tax on distilled spirits; President Washington himself led troops into battle to suppress what we now know as the Whiskey Rebellion. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 sought to delegitimize and even criminalize political opposition. And the partisan press of the 1790s makes the cable news wars and presidential tweetstorms of the twenty-first century look more like a polite garden party.45 During the battles over slavery in the decades leading up to the Civil War, physical violence was commonplace in Congress as debates became heated on questions that seemed to pose existential threats to different regions of the country, and the

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line between democratic deliberation and outright conflict blurred (and ultimately dissolved altogether in the Civil War).46 Democratic norms and practices were painstakingly reconstituted after the Civil War, although the reassembly of norms of mutual toleration and forbearance in the twentieth century went hand-in-hand with a process of de-democratization, as African Americans were systematically (and often violently) excluded from democratic rights around the turn of the twentieth century.47 It seems clear that democratic norms have been volatile and perpetually fragile in the United States over the centuries. The history of the creation, degradation, and reconstruction of democratic norms, and their interaction with other aspects of democracy, also bear careful historical and comparative scrutiny and provide another dimension along which the Trump presidency can be fruitful for the study of American political development.

Trumpism and the Possibilities of American Political Development We do not need political science to point out that the Trump era is, as the editors of this book have suggested, an unsettled time. But it is worth reflecting a bit on what this phrase might mean. One sense of unsettled is simply the opposite of calm and tranquil, and the time of Trump is certainly that. American politics in the Trump era is unusually raucous and fast-moving (even for the accelerated era of twenty-four-hour news and social media). The presidency is in the hands of someone who fails to play by any established rule book, and he has left participants, observers, and citizens alike scrambling week by week—even hour by hour—to keep up and to make sense not just of his own behav ior and utterances but also of the new modes and patterns of politics he seems to have unleashed. But it seems unlikely that any successor will be able to replicate Donald Trump’s personal and political idiosyncrasies, and in that sense we can perhaps reasonably expect American politics, at some time in the near-ish future, to settle back into more ordinary patterns of political communication and policy-making discourse and behav ior. But there is another sense of the word unsettled that should command our attention, referring to a state of affairs that is fundamentally undetermined and remains to be worked out. It is in this sense that the Trump era provides a critical window onto the deeper workings of American politics, and the processes and pathways of change that have always characterized its

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evolution. None of the elements of the Trump era this volume has described is new, of course. Americans have experienced all of these things before— extreme partisan and ideological polarization; institutional conflict and executive overreach; dramatic income inequality; racial antagonism and resentment; fraying or underdeveloped democratic norms; and more. What is new, perhaps, and especially unsettled (and unsettling, or disorienting, to use yet another sense of the word) is the combination of these elements all present at a single moment, a configuration that is unprecedented in recent memory and possibly has no referent in American political history since the mid-nineteenth-century crisis of secession and civil war. I point this out not simply to raise an alarm about the apparent fragility of the American regime but to draw attention to the kind of analysis for which this kind of unsettled moment calls. Each of these elements of contemporary American politics operates according to its own logic and temporal scale, as many analysts of each have clearly shown. What American political development brings to the table, as the essays in this volume show, is an analytical framework that considers the connections among these elements, the intricate and unexpected ways they combine and intertwine, and the causal importance of the configuration beyond the individual elements that compose it.48 Whatever becomes of President Trump and his administration in the coming years, the Trump era will have punctuated once again the importance of what has become one of American political development’s signal disciplinary contributions: understanding American politics in terms of multiple, simultaneous, and often clashing orders whose cacophony and friction propel political development forward.49 And we can hope that the impulse to explore and understand American politics more deeply in these terms will outlast this presidency.

Notes

Introduction 1. Donald J. Trump, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2017. 2. See, e.g., David Frum, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (New York: Harper Collins, 2018); Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right (New York: Liveright, 2018). 3. See Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, Thomas B. Pepinsky, Kenneth M. Roberts, and Richard Valelly, “The Trump Presidency and American Democracy: A Historical and Comparative Analysis,” Perspectives on Politics, October  29, 2018, https://doi.org /10.1017 /S1537592718003286 4. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, “Pathways to the Present: Political Development in America,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, ed. Richard M. Valelly, Suzanne Mettler, and Robert Lieberman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 27–47. 5. Richard Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Strug gle for Racial Enfranchisement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 6. Robert Mickey, Paths out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in Amer ica’s Deep South, 1944–1972 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 7. Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013). 8. Elizabeth F. Cohen, The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1. 9. Orren and Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development, 20. 10. Stephen Skowronek and Matthew Glassman, eds., Formative Acts: American Politics in the Making (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Gerald Berk, Dennis C. Galvan, and Victoria Hattam, eds., Political Creativity: Reconfiguring Institutional Order and Change (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, eds., Explaining Institutional Change Ambiguity, Agency, and Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 11. Jason Ross Arnold, Secrecy in the Sunshine Era: The Promise and Failures of US Open Government Laws (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014).

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12. Frances  E. Lee, Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 13. James M. Curry, Legislating in the Dark: Information and Power in the House of Representatives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 14. Keith G. Bentele and Erin E. O’Brien, “Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies,” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 4 (2013): 1088–116. 15. Quoted in Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Doron Taussig, “Disruption, Demonization, Deliverance, and Norm Destruction: The Rhetorical Signature of Donald J. Trump,” Political Science Quarterly 132, no. 4 (2017): 623. 16. Jamieson and Taussig, “Disruption, Demonization, Deliverance, and Norm Destruction,” 623. 17. See, e.g., Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Desmond King and Rogers  M. Smith, Still a House Divided (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 18. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013); U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006, H.R. Rep. No. 109-478 (2006). 19. Elaine Kamarck, John Hudak, and Christine Stenglein, “Immigration by the Numbers,” Brookings Institution, August  15, 2017, https://www.brookings.edu /interactives /immigration-by-the-numbers/. 20. Adam Liptak and Michael D. Shear, “Trump’s Travel Ban Is Upheld by Supreme Court,” New York Times, June 26, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/politics/supreme-court -trump-travel-ban.html. 21. Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. __, 138 S. Ct. 2392 (2018). 22. Mary Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 23. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 24. David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow, eds., The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 25. Chapters 2, 8, 9, and 10 include material from articles featured as a symposium on the Trump presidency and American political development in the Forum. Permission to use material from the following publications is gratefully acknowledged: Zachary Callen, “Repurposing the Administrative State,”  Forum 15, no.  2 (2017): 379–93; Daniel  J. Galvin and Chloe N. Thurston, “The Democrats’ Misplaced Faith in Policy Feedback,” Forum 15, no. 2 (2017): 333–43; Andrew  S. Kelly, “Health Reform in the Trump Era: Will Politics Unmake Policy?,” Forum 15, no. 2 (2017): 345–62; Philip Rocco, “The Anti-analytic Presidency Revisited,” Forum 15, no. 2 (2017): 363–78. 26. Daniel J. Galvin, “Political Parties in American Politics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism, ed. Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia  G. Falleti, and Adam Sheingate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 310–24. 27. Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 28. Valelly, Two Reconstructions. 29. Philip A. Klinkner and Rogers M. Smith, The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

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30. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Policy State: An American Dilemma (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).

Chapter 1 1. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1997); Corey Robin, “The Politics Trump Makes,” New Left Review, January 11, 2017; Scott Lemieux, “Is Donald Trump the Next Jimmy Carter?,” New Republic, January 23, 2017; Julia Azari, “Trump’s Presidency Signals the End of the Reagan Era,” Mischiefs of Faction (blog), December 1, 2016, https://www.vox.com/mischiefs -of-faction/2016/12/1/13794680/trump-presidency-reagan-era-end; William Adler, “Donald Trump Will Follow a Failed Political Transformation, Just Like Benjamin Harrison,” Mischiefs of Faction (blog), December 19, 2016, https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2016/12 /19/14010172/trump-transformation-harrison. 2. Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011); Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make. 3. David Edward Tabachnick, “Four Characteristics of Trumpism,” The Hill, January 5, 2016, https://thehill.com/ blogs/congress-blog /presidential-campaign/264746-the-four -characteristics-of-trumpism; Ross Douthat, “Trump Needs a Brain,” New York Times, April  1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com /2017/04/01 /opinion /sunday/trump-needs-a-brain .html; John Gerring, Party Ideologies in America, 1828–1996 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Julia Azari, “The ‘First 100 Days’ Concept Ties Presidents to History. That’s Difficult with Trump,” Mischiefs of Faction (blog), May 1, 2017, https://www.vox .com /mischiefs -of-faction/2017/5/1/15501820/first-100-days-trump-history; Victor Davis Hanson, “What Exactly Is Trumpism?,” National Review, January 10, 2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017 /01/trumpism-tradition-populism-american-greatness-strong-military/. 4. Julia  R. Azari and Jennifer  K. Smith, “Unwritten Rules: Informal Institutions in Advanced Democracies,” Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 1 (2012): 37–55; Michael J. Korzi, Presidential Term Limits in American History: Power, Principles, and Politics (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011); Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make. 5. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 57. 6. Curt Nichols, “Reagan Reorders the Political Regime: A Historical-Institutional Approach to Political Change,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 46, no. 4 (2015): 703–26. 7. Sophie Tatum, Daniella Diaz, and Dan Merica, “Trump, Dems Move Closer to a Deal on DACA,” CNN, September 14, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/politics/chuck-schumer - nancy-pelosi-donald-trump/index.html. 8. David R Mayhew, Electoral Realignments: a Critique of an American Genre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Arthur C. Paulson, Electoral Realignment and the Outlook for American Democracy (Boston: University Press of New England, 2007). 9. James  L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983); Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics, 1st ed. (New York: Norton, 1970); V. O. Key, “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics 17, no. 1 (1955): 3–18. 10. Julia Azari, Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).

198 Notes to Pages 17–23 11. John F. Harris, “ ‘04 Voting: Realignment—or a Tilt?,” Washington Post, November 28, 2004. 12. Julia Azari, “Trump May Bring a Recalibration, Not a Realignment,” FiveThirtyEight .com, September 7, 2016, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-may-bring-a-republican -recalibration-not a-realignment/. 13. Alec Tyson and Shiva Maniam, Behind Trump’s Victory: Divisions by Race, Gender, and Education, Pew Research Center, November  9, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org /fact -tank /2016/11/09/ behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/. 14. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make. 15. Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time. 16. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: Norton, 2005). 17. Sidney Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009). 18. Daniel DiSalvo, Engines of Change: Party Factions in American Politics, 1868–2010 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 19. Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nomination Before and After Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 20. Julia Azari, “Weak Parties and Strong Partisanship Are a Bad Combination,” Mischiefs of Faction (blog), November 3, 2016, https://www.vox .com /mischiefs-of-faction/2016 /11/3/13512362/weak-parties-strong-partisanship-bad-combination. 21. Geoffrey Kabaser vice, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, Eisenhower to the Tea Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 22. Republican Party Platform, The American Presidency Project, July 18, 2016, http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​117718; Julia Azari, “2016 GOP Candidates Grappling with Gay Marriage Ruling,” NBC News, July  8, 2015, http://www.nbcnews.com /politics/2016-election/2016-gop-candidates-grappling-gay-marriage-ruling-n388661. 23. Perry Bacon, Jr., “The Arpaio Pardon Encapsulates Trump’s Identity Politics,” FiveThirtyEight.com, August  26, 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-arpaio-pardon-encapsu lates-trumps-identity-politics/. 24. “Against Trump,” National Review, January  21, 2016, https://www.nationalreview .com/2016/01/donald-trump-conservative-movement-menace/. 25. Pew Research Center, “Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage,” Religion and Public Life, June 26, 2017, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing -attitudes-on-gay-marriage/. 26. Daniel J. Tichenor, “Navigating an American Minefield: The Politics of Illegal Immigration,” Forum 7, no 3 (2009), https://doi.org /10.2202/1540-8884.1325. 27. Geoffrey C. Layman and Thomas M. Carsey, “Party Polarization and ‘Conflict Extension’ in the American Electorate,” American Journal of Political Science 46, no.  4 (2002): 786–802. 28. Azari, “Trump May Bring a Calibration, Not a Realignment”; Sam Rosenfeld and Daniel Schlozman, “The Hollow Parties,” in Can Amer ica Govern Itself?, ed. Frances Lee and Nolan McCarty (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 120–52. 29. Daniel Galvin, Presidential Party Building: From Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

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30. Eric Schickler, Racial Realignment: the Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932– 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Hans Noel, Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Edward G. Carmines and James  A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). 31. Daniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time. 32. Philip A. Klinkner and Rogers M. Smith, The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990). 33. Megan Ming Francis, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 34. Ange-Marie Hancock, The Politics of Disgust: the Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (New York: New York University Press, 2004); Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan Hajnal, White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). 35. Terry Golway, Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics (New York: Liveright, 2014); Gerring, Party Ideologies in Amer ica, 1828–1996. 36. Vincent L. Hutchings and Nicholas A. Valentino, “The Centrality of Race in American Politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 7 (2004): 383–408; Michael Tesler, Post-Racial or Most Racial? Race and Politics in the Obama Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Jonathan Knuckey and Myunghee Kim, “Evaluations of Michelle Obama as First Lady: The Role of Racial Resentment,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 46, no. 3 (2016): 365–86. 37. Michael Tesler, “Views About Race Mattered More in Electing Trump than Electing Obama,” Monkey Cage, Washington Post, November 22, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost . com /news /monkey - cage / wp / 2016 / 11 / 22 /peoples -views - about -race -mattered -more -in -electing-trump-than-in-electing-obama/. 38. Bacon Jr., “The Arpaio Pardon Encapsulates Trump’s Identity Politics”; Eugene Scott, “Trump’s Problem Isn’t with Athletes Being Political. It’s with Athletes Speaking Out Against Racism,” Washington Post, September  25, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the -fix /wp /2017/09/25 /trumps -problem -isnt-with -athletes -being -political -its -with -athletes -speaking-out-against-racism.

Chapter 2 Acknowledgments: Authors are listed alphabetically; both contributed equally to this article. We would like to thank Andrew Kelly, Matthew Lacombe, Phil Rocco, and Mara Suttmann-Lea for comments on an earlier version of this paper, as well as Sean Diament and Ariel Sheffey for assistance on this version of the manuscript. 1. Donald  J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter, February  18, 2018, http://trumptwitterarchive.com/archive. 2. Sean McElwee, “Hope for 2017: Six Policy Ideas That Can Lay the Groundwork for a More Progressive America,” Salon.com, January  1, 2017, https://www.salon.com/2017/01/01 / hope -for -2017- six-policy -ideas -that - can - lay -the - groundwork-for - a -more -progressive -america/.

200

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3. Bill Kristol, “Defeating President Clinton’s Health Care Proposal,” December 2, 1993, http://delong . typepad . com /egregious _ moderation / 2009 /03 / william - kristol - defeating -president-clintons-health-care-proposal.html. 4. E.  E. Schattschneider, Politics, Pressures, and the Tariff (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1935); Theda Skocpol, “America’s First Social Security System: The Expansion of Benefits for Civil War Veterans,” Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 1 (1993): 85–116; Larry Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 5. Schattschneider, Politics, Pressures, and the Tariff; Theodore  J. Lowi, “American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory,” World Politics 16, no.  4 (1964): 67–715; Paul Pierson, “When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change,” World Politics 45, no. 4 (1993): 595–628; Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review 94, no. 2 (2000): 251–267; Theda Skocpol, “Is the Time Finally Ripe? Health Insurance Reforms in the 1990s,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 18, no. 3 (1993): 531–50; Suzanne Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 6. Sarah F. Anzia and Terry M. Moe, “Do Politicians Use Policy to Make Politics? The Case of Public-Sector Labor Laws,” American Political Science Review 110, no. 4 (2016): 775, 766. 7. Ibid., 773. 8. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, “Policy Feedback as Political Weapon: Conservative Advocacy and the Demobilization of the Public Sector Labor Movement,” Perspectives on Politics 16, no. 2 (2018): 375. 9. Suzanne Mettler and Mallory SoRelle, “Policy Feedback Theory,” in Theories of the Policy Process, eds. Paul A. Sabatier and Christopher M. Weible, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014), 141. 10. Eric M. Patashnik and Julian E. Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics: Liberal Reform and the Limits of Policy Feedback in the Contemporary American State,” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 4 (2013): 1071–72. 11. Jonathan Oberlander and R. Kent Weaver, “Unraveling from Within? The Affordable Care Act and Self-Undermining Policy Feedbacks,” Forum 13, no.  1 (2015): 37–62; R. Kent Weaver, “Paths and Forks or Chutes and Ladders? Negative Feedbacks and Policy Regime Change,” Journal of Public Policy 30, no. 2 (2010): 137–62; David Dagan and Steven M. Teles, “The Social Construction of Policy Feedback: Incarceration, Conservatism, and Ideological Change,” Studies in American Political Development 29, no.  2 (2015): 127–53; Andrea  L. Campbell, “Policy Makes Mass Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 15 (2012): 333–51; Eric M. Patashnik, Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Patashnik and Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics.” 12. Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics”; David R. Mayhew, Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Forrest Maltzman and Charles R. Shipan, “Change, Continuity, and the Evolution of the Law,” American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (2008): 252–67; Christopher R. Berry, Barry C. Burden, and William G. Howell, “After Enactment: The Lives and Deaths of Federal Programs,” American Journal of Political Science 54, no.  1 (2010): 1–17; Campbell, “Policy Makes Mass Politics”; Oberlander and Weaver, “Unraveling from

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Within?”; Patashnik and Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics”; Lawrence Jacobs and Suzanne Mettler, “When and How New Policy Creates New Politics: Examining the Feedback Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Public Opinion,” Perspectives on Politics 16, no. 2 (2017): 345–63. 13. Suzanne Mettler, “The Policyscape and the Challenges of Contemporary Politics to Policy Maintenance,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 2 (2016): 369–90. 14. R. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Kimberly J. Morgan and Andrea Louise Campbell, The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of Social Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); but see also Chloe N. Thurston, “Policy Feedback in the Public-Private Welfare State: Citizens Advocacy Groups and the Expansion of Access to Government Homeownership Programs,” Studies in American Political Development 29, no.  2 (2015): 250–67, and Chloe  N. Thurston, At the Bound aries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 15. Kelly L. Russell, “The Politics of Hidden Policy: Feedback Effects and the Charitable Contributions Deduction,” Politics & Society 46, no. 1 (2018): 53. 16. Andrew  S. Kelly, “Finding Stability and Sustainability in the Trump Era: Medicare and the Affordable Care Act in Historical Perspective,” this volume. 17. Jamila Michener, “People, Places, Power: Medicaid Concentration and Local Political Participation,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 42, no. 5 (2017): 865–900. 18. Joe Soss, “Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action,” American Political Science Review 93, no. 2 (1999): 363–80; Joe Soss, Unwanted Claims: The Politics of Participation in the U.S. Welfare System (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002); Vesla M. Weaver and Amy E. Lerman, “Political Consequences of the Carceral State,” American Political Science Review 104, no. 4 (2010): 817–33. 19. Joe Soss and Sanford  F. Schram, “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 1 (2007): 111–27. 20. Eric M. Patashnik, Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes are Enacted. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Patashnik and Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics.” 21. David Plotz, “The New New Deal,” Slate, August  14, 2012, https://slate.com/news -and -politics /2012 /08 /the -new-new- deal -a -book-argues -that-president- obamas -stimulus -has-been-an-astonishing-success.html. 22. Andy Barr, “Poll: Stimulus Didn’t Help,” Politico, April 29, 2010, https://www.politico .com/story/2010/04/poll-stimulus-didnt-help-036544. 23. Philip E. Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” Critical Review 18, nos. 1–3 (2006 [1964]):1–74; Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder, News That Matters: Television and American Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know About Politics and Why it Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Mettler, The Submerged State. 24. Arthur Lupia, “Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behav ior in California Insurance Reform Elections,” American Political Science Review 88, no. 1 (1994):

202 Notes to Pages 33–34 63–76; Arthur Lupia and Matt McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); James  H. Kuklinski, Paul  J. Quirk, Jennifer Jerit, David Schweider, and Robert F. Rich, “Misinformation and the Currency of Democratic Citizenship,” Journal of Politics 62, no. 3 (2000): 790–816; Richard Lau and David P. Redlawsk, “Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making,” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 4 (2001): 951–71; James Druckman, “Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects,” American Political Science Review 98, no. 4 (2004): 671–86; James Druckman, Erik Peterson, and Rune Slothuus, “How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 1 (2013): 57–79. 25. Ziva Kunda, “The Case for Motivated Reasoning,” Psychological Bulletin 108, no.  3 (1990): 480–98; Charles S. Taber and Milton Lodge, “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 3 (2006): 755–69; Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 26. Donald Green, Brian Palmquist, and Eric Schickler. Partisan Hearts and Minds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Brian J. Gaines, James H. Kuklinski, Paul J. Quirk, Buddy Peyton, and Jay Verkuilen, “Same Facts, Different Interpretations: Partisan Motivation and Opinion on Iraq,” Journal of Politics 69, no. 4 (2007): 957–74; Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus, “How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation”; Douglas  L. Kriner and Andrew Reeves, “Responsive Partisanship: Public Support for the Clinton and Obama Health Care Plans,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 39, no. 4 (2014): 717–49. 27. Angus Campbell, Phillip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 151. 28. Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954); Steven J. Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen, Mobilization, Participation, and American Democracy (New York: MacMillan, 1993). 29. Eric Schickler, Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932– 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 30. Vladimir Kogan, “Do Welfare Benefits Pay Electoral Dividends? Evidence from the Food Stamp Program Rollout” (working paper, Ohio State University, May 23, 2019), http://dx .doi.org /10.2139/ssrn.2874410. 31. AARP Press Center, “AARP Survey: Needs on Key Issues Trump Partisan Divisions for Voters Age 50+,” October 13, 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20101019161740/http://www .aarp.org /about-aarp/press-center/info-10-2010/voter_ survey_ release.html. 32. See also Andrew Kelly’s discussion (in this volume) of how Medicare generated a bipartisan supportive constituency to defend against restructuring. 33. Jessica Ravitz, “Where Trump Support and Obamacare Use Soar Together,” CNN Health, January  24, 2017, http://www.cnn.com /2017/01 /24/ health/nebraska-trump-obamacare-aca -eprise/; Sarah Kliff, “Why Obamacare Enrollees Voted for Trump,” Vox, December  13, 2016, http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/13/13848794/kentucky-obamacare-trump. 34. Joshua D. Clinton and Michael W. Sances, “The Politics of Policy: The Initial Mass Political Effects of Medicaid Expansion in the States,” American Political Science Review 112, no. 1 (2017): 167–85.

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35. Amy E. Lerman and Katherine T. McCabe, “Personal Experience and Public Opinion: A Theory and Test of Conditional Policy Feedback,” Journal of Politics 79, no. 2 (2017): 624–41. 36. Steven Shepard, “Poll: Voters Resist Pre-existing Condition Opt-Out,” May  3, 2017, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/03/obamacare-repeal-preexisting-conditions-237902. 37. Daniel J. Galvin, Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 38. “Full Transcript: David Axelrod Interviews President Barack Obama for The Axe Files,” CNN, December 26, 2016, http://www.cnn.com /2016/12/26/politics/axe-files-obama -transcript/. 39. Leon  D. Epstein, Political Parties in the American Mold (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986); John Aldrich, Why Parties? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 40. Philip  A. Klinkner, The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956–1993 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); Daniel J. Galvin, “The Transformation of Political Institutions: Investments in Institutional Resources and Gradual Change in the National Party Committees,” Studies in American Political Development 26, no. 1 (2012): 50–70; Boris Heersink, “Party Leaders and Electoral Realignment: Democratic and Republican Southern Strategies, 1948–1968,” Forum 15, no. 4 (2017): 631–53. 41. Jessie Hellman, “Reid: DNC was ‘worthless’ under Wasserman Schultz,” The Hill, December  22, 2016, http://thehill.com / homenews/campaign /311506-reid-dnc-was-worthless -under-wasserman-schultz. 42. Aldrich, Why Parties?; Kathleen Bawn, Martin Cohen, David Karol, Seth Masket, Hans Noel, and John Zaller, “A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics,” Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 3 (2012): 571–97. 43. David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974). 44. “ ‘This Week’ Transcript: President Barack Obama,” ABC News, January 8, 2017, http:// abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-president-barack-obama/story?id​= ​44630949. 45. Daniel J. Galvin, “Obama Built a Policy Legacy: But He Didn’t Do Enough to Build the Democratic Party,” Monkey Cage, Washington Post, November  16, 2016, https://www .washingtonpost .com /news /monkey- cage /wp/2016/11 /16/obama-built-a-policy-legacy-but -didnt-do-enough-to-build-the-democratic-party/?utm _term​=​.ba5b8e85ffcd; Sidney Milkis and John Warren York, “Barack Obama, Organizing for Action, and Executive-Centered Partisanship,” Studies in American Political Development 31, no. 1 (2017): 1–23. 46. Joshua Green, “The Rove Presidency: Karl Rove Had the Plan, the Power, and the Historic Chance to Remake American Politics—What Went Wrong?,” Atlantic, September 2007, https://www.theatlantic .com /magazine/archive/2007/09/the-rove-presidency/306132/. 47. Jonathan Chait, “The Trump Tax Cuts Are Going to Hurt the Republican Party,” New York Magazine, September  27, 2017, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/the-trump -tax-cuts-are-going-to-hurt-the-republican-party.html. 48. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); David Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 49. Schickler, Racial Realignment, 14.

204 Notes to Pages 38–42 50. Drew S. Days III, “Turning Back the Clock: The Reagan Administration and Civil Rights,” 19 Harvard Civil Rights— Civil Liberties Law Review 309 (1984); Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013). 51. David  R. Mayhew, “Observations on Congress: The Electoral Connection a Quarter Century After Writing It,” PS: Political Science and Politics 34, no. 2 (2001): 251.

Chapter 3 Acknowledgments: For helpful comments, I thank Trevor Johnston, Angela Markle, and Phil Rocco. Additional thanks to the archivists at the Library of Congress for research assistance and to the University of Massachusetts Boston for financial support. 1. After the turbulent 1968 Democratic National Convention, Democrats empowered the McGovern-Fraser Commission to establish new guidelines for promoting accountability and greater participation. See Democratic National Committee, Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection (DNC), Mandate for Reform (Washington, DC: Democratic National Committee, 1970). 2. See David Weigel, “Once in Control of Their Party, Conservatives Agonize over the Election and Beyond,” Washington Post, August 13, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com /politics /once -in - control - of -their -party - conservatives - agonize - over -the - election - and -beyond/2016/08/13/e2655710-6157-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_ story.html. 3. Following its 2016 victory, the Republican Party has exhibited little interest in considering significant reform before 2020. That said, the GOP case remains relevant to counterfactual thought experiments. The Republican Party has been less inclined to regularly modify its rules. Yet, given the degree of intraparty opposition that Trump faced in both the primary and the general election, GOP activists seemed poised to use their next annual convention to reform the party’s nomination process. With firm control over many state legislatures, Republicans would have been institutionally positioned to radically reform the process, but face little incentive to do so in the foreseeable future. 4. Kate Aronoff, “Superdelegate Showdown: Round One Goes to the Democratic National Committee,” In These Times, July 23, 2016, http://inthesetimes.com/article/19321/superdelegates -showdown-round-one-goes-to-the-democratic-national-committee. 5. See Philip A. Klinkner, The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956–1993 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); Elaine C. Kamarck, Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates its Presidential Candidates, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2016). 6. Byron E. Shafer, Quiet Revolution: Strug gle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1983). 7. Eric Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the US Congress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 8. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 9. Nelson W. Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). 10. Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller, The Party Decides (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 11. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, “After the Master Theory: Downs, Schattschneider, and the Rebirth of Policy-Focused Analysis,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no.  3 (2014): 643–62.

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12. Polsby, Consequences, 9–10. 13. Kamarck, Primary Politics. 14. Prior to the convention, supporters of Senator Eugene McCarthy documented a series of episodes in which state party officials refused to engage or acknowledge the McCarthy campaign. Their report, The Democratic Choice, provided a blueprint of sorts for the McGovern-Fraser Commission. See Polsby, Consequences, 26–29. 15. See DNC, Mandate; Shafer, Quiet Revolution. 16. Polsby, Consequences. 17. Shafer, Quiet Revolution. 18. Pierson, Politics in Time. 19. DNC, Mandate. 20. John H. Aldrich, Before the Convention: Strategies and Choices in Presidential Nomination Campaigns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 21. President Car ter was, as Hunt Commissioner Austin Ranney observed, “more of an outsider, more of an unknown than any candidate who has ever received the nomination of either major party, and . . . his [1976] nomination at least would not have been possible under the old rules.” Ranney went on to explain that “with all of his strengths and weaknesses, Jimmy Car ter as the incumbent President was a very heavy favorite, particularly after the seizure of the hostages, to become renominated. It is a very unusual thing not to renominate a President.” See Democratic National Committee (DNC), Commission on Presidential Nominations, “Transcript of Proceedings,” August 20, 1981, 61. 22. Robert N. Levin, “Letter to Carol Williams,” November 12, 1980, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 23. “The Democrats’ Task,” New Republic, November 22, 1980. 24. David S. Broder, “But Will They Change Those Rules?,” Washington Post, March 1, 1981. 25. DNC, “Transcript of Proceedings,” August 20, 1981, 63. 26. Ibid., 51. 27. The commission’s initial proposal to assign 30  percent of convention delegates to superdelegates was later revised down. See Shafer, Quiet Revolution. 28. DNC, “Transcript of Proceedings,” August 20, 1981, 151. 29. Democratic National Committee, Commission on Presidential Nomination (DNC), Final Report (Washington, DC: Democratic National Committee, 1982), 16. 30. Anticipating a victory in the California primary, the Walter Mondale campaign announced a deadline by which Mondale would have locked up the nomination. When Gary Hart appeared likely to win the race, Mondale lobbied superdelegates to reach the requisite number of delegates and avoid a public relations disaster; see Kamarck, Primary Politics, 162–64. 31. Kamarck, Primary Politics. 32. Barbara Norrander, The Imperfect Primary: Oddities, Biases, and Strengths of U.S. Presidential Nomination Politics (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2015). 33. Although initially based on relatively innocuous public comments by the DNC, the charges of bias increased considerably in response to private emails released by Wikileaks. The emails documented the Democratic National Committee’s contempt for the Sanders campaign. These attacks culminated in the ouster of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz in July 2016. 34. Daniel Strauss, “Sanders, Clinton Teams Create ‘Unity Commission’ to Examine Overhauling Superdelegates,” Politico, July 23, 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07 /sanders-clinton-teams-comprise-on-creating-unity-commission-226077.

206 Notes to Pages 47–50 35. For more on recent reform proposals, see William G. Mayer and Andrew E. Busch, The Front-Loading Problem in Presidential Nominations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003); John H. Aldrich, “The Invisible Primary and its Effects on Democratic Choice,” PS: Political Science & Politics 42, no. 1 (2009): 33–38; Lonna Rae Atkeson and Cherie  D. Maestas, “Meaningful Participation and the Evolution of the Reformed Presidential Nominating System,” PS: Political Science & Politics 42, no. 1 (2009): 59–64. 36. Quoted in Ben Kamisar, “Unity Commission Another Challenge for Democrats,” The Hill, March 14, 2017, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/323805-unity-commission -another-challenge-for-democrats. 37. These numbers improved for Democrats after the 2018 midterm elections, but remain a far cry from the days of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. It would be wholly unrealistic for the DNC to mandate that local parties change their respective state laws, particularly in regions where Democrats have long strug gled to overcome their minority status. 38. Jennifer O’Malley Dillon rose to prominence through her work on Obama’s campaigns. In 2016, she advised the Clinton campaign. 39. While the newly created post did not carry any formal powers, it provided the DNC with a path for reaching out to the grassroots, as Perez acknowledged at the time of Ellison’s resignation to serve as Minnesota’s Attorney General. See John Bowden, “Ellison Resigns from DNC After Winning Minnesota Attorney General Race,” The Hill, November 8, 2018, https://thehill .com / homenews /campaign /415835 - ellison-resigns -from- dnc-after-winning -minnesota-election. 40. Michael Sainato, “Lobbyists and Superdelegates Corrupt DNC Unity Commission,” Observer.com, May 8, 2017, https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-unity-commission-lobbyists-super delegates/. 41. See, e.g., Todd S. Purdum, “The Death of Clintonism,” Politico, December 30, 2016, https://www.politico .com /magazine /story /2016 / 12 / hillary - clinton -2016 -loss - democrats -214570. 42. See appendix for full analysis. 43. The CCES is a nationally representative, online sample. For more on the CCES in general, see https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/. The questions used to create these figures were included on a single module (UMB), and thus have a much smaller sample size. The exact wording of the question was “Do you think the Democratic Party will be stronger or weaker for having selected Hillary Clinton as its presidential nominee?” 44. These data are cross-sectional, not from a panel of the same individuals giving preand post-evaluations. 45. Democratic National Committee (DNC), “DNC Summer Meeting,” (video), C-SPAN, August 25, 2018, https://www.c-span.org/video/?450273-1/dnc-votes-limit-role-superdelegates -presidential-nominations-. 46. David Siders, “ ‘We’re Going to Fight It Like Hell’: Democrats Feud over Superdelegate Overhaul,” Politico, August  23, 2018, https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/23/democrats -superdelegates-overhaul-tensions-794977. 47. Democratic National Committee (DNC), “Call for the 2020 Democratic National Convention,” (Washington, DC: Democratic National Committee: 2018), 16–17. 48. In the event that a candidate does not possess an outright majority of the total number of delegates (pledged and automatic), then automatic delegates are allowed to vote on the second ballot and can play a pivotal role in such an instance.

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49. Rules and Bylaws Committee, Democratic National Committee (RBC), “Letter to DNC Members,” July  24, 2018, https://www.demrulz .org /wp-content /files/RBC _Cover _ Letter_7.24.18_ 1.pdf. 50. Cohen et al., Party Decides. 51. DNC, “Call for the 2020 Democratic National Convention,” 8. 52. David Siders, “DNC Rule Change Angers Sanders Supporters,” Politico, June 8, 2018, https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/08/dnc-rule-change-sanders-supporters-634998. 53. Klinkner, The Losing Parties. 54. See Paul S. Hernson, “National Party Organizations at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” In The Parties Respond: Changes in the American Parties and Campaigns, ed. Mark Brewer and L. Sandy Maisel (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002): 47–78; Cohen et al., Party Decides. 55. In many regards, this postelection battle for DNC control mirrors the path taken by progressive Republicans following the nomination of Barry Goldwater. See Ripon Society, From Disaster to Distinction: A Republican Rebirth (New York: Pocket Books, 1966). On the recent Democratic struggle, see Tim Murphy, “The DNC Chair Race Is Over: Now Comes the Real Battle,” Mother Jones, February 25, 2017. 56. See, e.g., Paul Fymer, Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Travis M. Johnston, “A Crowded Agenda: Labor Reform and Coalition Politics During the Great Society,” Studies in American Political Development 29, no. 1 (2015): 89–105; Ruth Bloch-Rubin, Building the Bloc: Intraparty Organization in the US Congress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 57. For more in-depth discussions, see chapters by Julia Azari and Daniel Galvin and Chloe Thurston in this volume.

Chapter 4 1. Economist, “Trumponomics: Cooking Up an Economic Policy,” Briefing, May 13, 2017, http://www.economist .com /news / briefing /21721937- donald -trumps - economic -strategy unimaginative-and-incoherent-cooking-up-economic-policy; McCay Coppins, “The Republican Identity Crisis,” Atlantic, April  1, 2017, https://www.theatlantic .com /politics/archive /2017/04/the-gops-ideological-identity-crisis/521316/. 2. John Gerring, Party Ideologies in America, 1828–1996 (New York: Cambridge University Press), 289–91; Rogers M. Smith, Political Peoplehood: The Roles of Values, Interests, and Identities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Campaign rhetoric in general but also stories of peoplehood and nation in particu lar are vital mechanisms by which political parties attract, maintain, and foreground distinct coalitional groups over others within their ranks. 3. Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of U.S. History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Stephen Skowronek, “The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American Political Tradition,” American Political Science Review 100, no. 3 (2006): 385–401; Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan: The Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987); Charles Williams, “The Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism: New Deal Liberalism and the Subordination of Black Workers in the UAW,” Studies in American Political Development 19, no.  1 (2005): 75–97. Following Rogers Smith’s work, liberalism and ascriptivism are typically approached as alternative traditions that are antithetical to one another particularly insofar

208 Notes to Pages 56–58 as one rejects or embraces, respectively, the maintenance of racial hierarchies as a desirable political end. Several works however point to the ongoing tradition of incorporating ascriptive ideals within American liberalism. For example, Michael Rogin has demonstrated how American liberalism incorporates the practice of political demonology that presents ascriptive, often racial, minorities as subversives in order to reject demands for social change. In analyzing how late twentieth-century Republican neoliberalism blends liberal and ascriptive principles, the analysis in this chapter follows in the tradition of Rogin and others. 4. Skowronek, “The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes”; Rogin, Ronald Reagan. 5. Geoffery Kabaser vice, Rule to Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Joshua D. Farrington, Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). 6. Ian Haney-López, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). The phrase dog whistle politics has been suggested to refer to the strategic manipulation of coded racial signals by Republican partisans to leverage political power in the late twentieth century. Unlike the scholarship on dog whistles that focuses on the mechanism of how ideas of race are strategically presented (as coded dog whistles to the middle class), however, my analysis is focused on the content of Republican market-centered ideas and their substantive blending of liberal and ascriptive political traditions. I should note that Trump is distinctive insofar as his rhetoric is more explicitly racial in comparison with previous Republicans, i.e., less “coded.” I would assert that this difference is primarily one of volume and less of content; the latter of these is the focus of this inquiry. Nevertheless, the distinction in audibility implies the possibility of a cultural change under way insofar as the current political time is evidently more accommodating of such explicitly racial political rhetoric. 7. Adam Sheingate, “Institutional Dynamics of American Political Development,” Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014): 473. 8. Victoria Hattam and Joseph Lowndes, “The Ground Beneath Our Feet,” in Formative Acts, ed. Stephen Skowronek and Matthew Glassman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 204. 9. Smith, Political Peoplehood, 29; Vivien  A. Schmidt, “Reconciling Ideas and Institutions through Discursive Institutionalism,” in Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, ed. Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 47–64. 10. Gerring, Party Ideologies in America; Hans Noel, Political Ideologies and Political Parties in Amer ica (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 11. The chapter makes the claim that Trump’s nationalist discourse deploys the substantive essence and strains of late twentieth-century Republican ascriptive neoliberal ideology. In so doing, I do not suggest that Trump himself evidences a coherent political ideology, only that his rhetoric draws on and builds upon existing ideologies within the GOP. 12. Smith, Civic Ideals; Robert  C. Lieberman, “Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change,” American Political Science Review 96, no.  4 (2002): 697–712; Aziz Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith, “ ‘Without Regard to Race’: Critical Ideational Development in Modern American Politics,” Journal of Politics 76, no.  4 (2014):

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958–71; Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith, Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s Amer ica (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 13. Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Wendy Brown, “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and Dedemocratization,” Political Theory 34, no.  6 (2006): 690–714. Neoliberalism is the intellectual and political movement that emerged in the late twentieth century; advances a market-centered agenda in global and domestic policies; and, like all forms of liberalism, privileges the individual, emphasizing above all else the economic freedoms associated with private property, market relations, and trade across nations. However, unlike nineteenth-century “laissez-faire,” which focused on “rolling back” state involvement in the markets, neoliberalism looks to the state to create market-centered economic rationality and systems of government. 14. Marc Stears, “The Liberal Tradition and the Politics of Exclusion,” Annual Review of Political Science 10 (2007): 89–90, 93–96. See also Skowronek, “The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes,” 385, 389. There is debate on the usefulness of “generic labels” (such as liberalism and ascriptivism), with some claiming, for example, that such labels minimize the formative quality of distinct ideational development; others return to liberalism as the dominant and all-prevailing, albeit evolving, tradition, placing it back at the center of American political development despite its episodic merging with inegalitarianism and racial exclusion. Regardless of labeling, however, both approaches highlight the ideational overlaps, intermingling, and intertwining that form the crux of the argument here. 15. Skowronek, “The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes”; Williams, “The Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism”; Rogin, Ronald Reagan. 16. Smith, Political Peoplehood, 273. 17. Wacquant, Punishing the Poor; Vesla Weaver, “Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy,” Studies in American Political Development 34, no. 1 (2007): 230–65; Andrew Dilts, Just Ideas: Punishment and Inclusion: Race, Membership, and the Limits of American Liberalism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014). 18. Soss, Fording, and Schram, Disciplining the Poor, 53. 19. Mary Fainsod Katzenstein,, Leila Mohsen Ibrahim and Katherine D. Rubin, “The Dark Side of American Liberalism and Felony Disenfranchisement,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 4 (2010): 1044–45. 20. King and Smith, “Without Regard to Race,” 967; James Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 20–21; HaneyLópez, Dog Whistle Politics, 94–98. 21. Byron Shafer, The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003); Mark D. Brewer and Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Dynamics of American Political Parties (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Gwendoline Alphonso, Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Economic and Social Values in American Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). 22. Weaver, “Frontlash,” 240–42; Haney-López, Dog Whistle Politics, 38, 50, 52. 23. Kabaser vice, Rule to Ruin; Kevin  D. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015 [1969]).

210

Notes to Pages 60–62

24. Richard M. Nixon, “Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida,” August 8, 1968, http://www.presidency .ucsb.edu/ws/?pid​=​25968. 25. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority; Haney-López, Dog Whistle Politics, 26–34. 26. Kabaser vice, Rule to Ruin; Farrington, Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP. 27. Gerring, Party Ideologies in Amer ica. Gerring categorizes “neoliberalism” as dominant in Republican Party ideology since at least 1928. This characterization is also compatible with party histories on the internal development of the Republican Party, away from moderate, nonascriptive northeastern conservative principles to southern-based ascriptive ones. See Kabaser vice, Rule to Ruin; Farrington, Black Republicans. 28. See Nolette, “Trumpism and the Dual Tracks of American Polarization,” this volume; Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 54–56; Brewer and Stonecash, Dynamics of American Political Parties, 4–5, 8–9; Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010); Sean  P. Cunningham, American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt: Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Matthew Levendusky, The Partisan Sort (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Daniel DiSalvo, Engines of Change: Party Factions in American Politics, 1868–2010 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); David Karol, Party Position Change in American Politics: Coalition Management (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 29. Haney-López, Dog Whistle Politics; Gwendoline Alphonso, “Resurgent Parenthood: Organic Domestic Ideals and the Southern Family Roots of Conservative Ascendancy, 1980–2005.” Polity 48, no. 2: 2016 205–23; Dan T. Car ter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race and the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963–1994 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999); Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of the Southern Republicans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Joseph Aistrup, The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996); Eva Bertram, The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from the New Deal to the New Democrats (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015); Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013). 30. King and Smith, “ ‘Without Regard to Race,’ ” 963. 31. Ibid., 958. 32. Ibid., 967; Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right, 141, 161; Hattam and Lowndes, “The Ground Beneath Our Feet.” 33. Dorothy Roberts, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (New York: Civitas Books, 2002), 64–65; Wahneema Lubiano, “Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means,” in Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 323–63. 34. Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Notes to Pages 62–65 211 35. 2016 Republican National Convention, Republican Platform 2016, accessed February  27, 2019, https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/documents/DRAFT_ 12_ FINAL[1]-ben _ 1468872234.pdf. 36. Donald  J. Trump, “Remarks to the 11th  Annual Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C. Omni Shoreham Hotel,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​119194; Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy in Cleveland, Ohio,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​119195 37. Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy.” 38. Matthew  D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 39. Holly Allen, Forgotten Men and Fallen Women: The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 11–13. 40. Ibid. 41. Nixon, “Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination.” 42. Lassiter, Silent Majority, 237. 43. Ibid. 44. Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at the US Cellular Center in Asheville, North Carolina,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.presidency.ucsb .edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​119178. 45. Ibid. (emphasis added). 46. Donald J. Trump, “Remarks on Immigration at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November  10, 2018, http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​119805; Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at Luedecke Arena in Austin, Texas,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2018, http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​119176; Fox News Sunday, “Kellyanne Conway on Alt-Right, Keeping Trump on Message,” August 28, 2016, http://www.foxnews.com/transcript /2016/08/28/ kellyanne -conway- on-alt-right-keeping-trump - on-message -gary-johnson- on -push-to/. 47. Donald  J. Trump, “Remarks Announcing Candidacy for President in New York City,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.presidency .ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​110306 (emphasis added). 48. Quoted in Victoria Defrancesco Soto, “Trump Praised It Without Naming It: What Was ‘Operation Wetback?,’ ” NBC News, December 4, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/news /latino/trump-praised-it-without-naming-it-what-was-operation-wetback-n461666 (emphasis added). 49. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 177. 50. Louis Hyman and Natasha Iskander, “What Mass Deportation of Immigrants Might Look Like,” Slate, November  16, 2016, http://www.slate.com /articles/news _ and _ politics / history/2016/11 /donald _trump_ mass _ deportation _ and _the _tragic _ history_of _operation _wetback .html. 51. Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at Seven Flags Event Center in Des Moines, Iowa,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November  10, 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu /ws/index.php?pid​=​119206.

212 Notes to Pages 65–71 52. Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb .edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​117775. 53. Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at the Detroit Economic Club, Detroit, Michigan,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2017, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu /documents/remarks-the-detroit-economic-club-1. 54. Trump, “Remarks Announcing Candidacy.” 55. Calculated by author through content analysis of all executive orders listed on the American Presidency Project from January  20 to May  1, 2017, available at http://www .presidency.ucsb.edu/executive_orders.php. Other issue categories analyzed were “immigration regulation” and “constituent” policies; the latter refers to those policies that primarily deal with constituting and organizing the executive branch and associated government offices. 56. Trump, “Remarks Announcing Candidacy.” 57. Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at Trump SoHo in New York City,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​ =​117790; Donald J. Trump, “Remarks to the Economic Club of New York at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2018, http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​119209.

Chapter 5 1. James  E. Campbell, Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided Amer ica (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 2. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in Amer ica: An Interpretation of American Political Tradition Since the Revolution (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1955). 3. Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of U.S. History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). 4. Gwendoline Alphonso, “ ‘One People, Under One God, Saluting One American Flag’: Trump, the Republican Party, and the Construction of American Nationalism,” this volume. 5. Nolan McCarty, Keith  T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America, 2nd  ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016). 6. Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005). 7. Morris  P. Fiorina and Samuel  J. Abrams, “Americans Aren’t Polarized, Just Better Sorted,” Monkey Cage, Washington Post, January  21, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost .com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/21/americans-arent-polarized-just-better-sorted/. 8. James Q. Wilson, “How Divided Are We?,” Commentary 121, no. 2 (2006): 15. 9. Ibid. 10. Philip Moeller, “How Would Social Security Fare Under Trump or Clinton?,” Time, July 21, 2016, http://money.com/money/4417524/social-security-trump-clinton/. 11. Nick Corasantini, Alexander Burns, and Binyamin Appelbaum, “Donald Trump Vows to Rip Up Trade Deals and Confront China,” New York Times, June 28, 2016, https:// www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/us/politics/donald-trump-trade-speech.html. 12. Danielle Paquette, “Donald Trump’s Incredibly Bizarre Relationship with Planned Parenthood,” Washington Post, March 2, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk /wp/2016/03/02/donald-trumps-incredibly-bizarre-relationship-with-planned-parenthood/.

Notes to Pages 72–76

213

13. Joseph Bafumi and Michael C. Herron, “Leapfrog Representation and Extremism: A Study of American Voters and Their Members in Congress,” American Political Science Review 104, no. 3 (2010): 519–42. 14. Jose  A. DelReal and Katie Zezima, “Trump’s Personal, Racially Tinged Attacks on Federal Judge Alarm Legal Experts,” Washington Post, June 1, 2016, https://www.washington post .com /politics/2016/06/01 /437ccae6-280b-11e6-a3c4-0724e8e24f3f _ story.html?utm _term​ =​.14dfa75ce4d5. 15. Alexander Burns, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Martin, “Donald Trump Apology Caps Day of Outrage over Lewd Tape,” New York Times, October 7, 2016, https://www .nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/donald-trump-women.html. 16. Patrick Healy and Michael Barbaro, “Donald Trump Calls for Barring Muslims from Entering U.S.,” New York Times, December 7, 2015. 17. Anna Palmer, “Dozens of Republicans to Urge RNC to Cut Off Funds for Trump,” Politico, August  11, 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/republicans-urge-rnc-cut -funds-trump-226918. 18. Hartz, Liberal Tradition. 19. American Political Science Association, Committee on Political Parties, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System (New York: Rinehart, 1950). 20. Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 21. Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address, 1981,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid​= ​43130. 22. Bill Clinton, “State of the Union Address, 1996,” The American Presidency Project, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid​=​53091. 23. Smith, Civic Ideals. 24. Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969). 25. Ibid. 26. E.g., Steven G. Gey, “The Unfortunate Revival of Civic Republicanism,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 141, no. 3 (1993): 801–98. 27. Rogers M. Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America,” American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (1993): 549–50. 28. Ibid., 550. 29. Martin  E. Spencer, “Multiculturalism, ‘Political Correctness,’ and the Politics of Identity,” Sociological Forum 9, no. 4 (1994): 547–67. 30. Gwendoline Alphonso, “One People, Under One God.” 31. Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (New York: MacMillan, 2016), 117. 32. Eliza Collins, “Sanders Takes Dead Aim on Citizens United Ruling,” Politico, May 10, 2015, https://www.politico.com /story/2015/05/ bernie-sanders-takes-dead-aim-on-citizens -united-ruling-117792. 33. “Transcript: Donald Trump’s Victory Speech,” New York Times, November  9, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/politics/trump-speech-transcript.html. 34. Jill Colvin, “Donald Trump: A ‘Blue Collar Billionaire’ with a Lot of Money,” U.S. News, July 18, 2016, https://www.businessinsider.com/ap-donald-trump-a-blue-collar-billionaire -with-a-lot-of-money-2016-7.

214

Notes to Pages 76–79

35. Daniella Diaz, “Trump Trashes Ryan: ‘I Don’t Want His Support,” CNN, October 11, 2016, https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/11/politics/donald-trump-republican-paul-ryan-2016-ele ction/index.html. 36. Donald Trump, “Inaugural Address,” The American Presidency Project, 2017, http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid​=​120000. 37. Hadas Gold, “Donald Trump: We’re Going to ‘Open Up’ Libel Laws,” Politico, February  26, 2016, https://www.politico.com/ blogs/on-media/2016/02/donald-trump-libel-laws -219866. 38. Pew Research Center, “Public Trust in Government: 1958–2017,” May 3, 2017, http:// www.people-press.org /2017/12/14/public-trust-in-government-1958-2017/. 39. Gallup, “Confidence in Institutions” (poll), 2017, http://news.gallup.com/poll/1597 /confidence-institutions.aspx. 40. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 41. Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to Amer ica’s National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). 42. Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman, Free Speech on Campus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). 43. Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (New York: HarperCollins, 2017). 44. E.g., Aziz Rana, “Race and the American Creed: Rediscovering Black Radicalism,” N+1, Winter 2016, https://nplusonemag.com /issue-24/politics/race-and-the-american -creed /. 45. Pew Research Center, “The Parties on the Eve of the 2016 Election,” 2016, accessed November  10, 2018, http://www.people-press.org /2016/09/13/1-the-changing-composition -of-the-political-parties/. 46. Pew Research Center, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Voters Remain a Solidly Democratic Bloc,” 2016, accessed November  10, 2018, http://www.pewresearch.org /fact-tank /2016/10/25 /lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-voters-remain-a-solidly-democratic-bloc/. 47. Pew Research Center, “The Parties on the Eve of the 2016 Election.” 48. Donald Trump, “Presidential Announcement Speech,” June  16, 2015, http://time .com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/. 49. Donald Trump, “Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration,” December 7, 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9867900/donald-trump-muslims. 50. George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President at Islamic Center of Washington D.C.,” September 17, 2001, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/2001 0917-11.html. 51. Shushannah Walshe, “RNC Completes ‘Autopsy’ on 2012 Loss, Calls for Inclusion Not Policy Change,” ABC News, March  18, 2013, https://abcnews.go.com /Politics/OTUS /rnc-completes-autopsy-2012-loss-calls-inclusion-policy/story?id​=​18755809. 52. Alphonso, “One People, Under One God.” 53. Ian Haney López, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 54. J. M. Berger, “How White Nationalists Learned to Love Donald Trump,” Politico, October 25, 2016, https://www.politico.com /magazine/story/2016/10/donald-trump-2016-white -nationalists-alt-right-214388.

Notes to Pages 79–82

215

55. Eric Bradner, “Donald Trump Stumbles on David Duke, KKK,” CNN, February 29, 2016, https://www.cnn.com /2016/02/28/politics/donald-trump-white-supremacists/index .html. 56. Pew Research Center, “How America Changed During Barack Obama’s Presidency,” January  10, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org /2017/01 /10/ how-america-changed-during -barack-obamas-presidency/. 57. Pew Research Center, “On Diversity, Many Europeans Are Less Positive than Americans,” July  12, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org /fact-tank /2016/07/12/in-views-of-diversity -many-europeans-are-less-positive-than-americans/. 58. Pew Research Center, “As Election Nears, Voters Divided over Democracy and ‘Respect,’ ” October  27, 2016, http://www.people-press.org /2016/10/27/6-views-of-domestic -issues-race-immigration-health-care-abortion-supreme-court/. 59. Emily Flitter and Chris Kahn, “Trump Supporters More Likely to View Blacks Negatively,” Reuters, June 28, 2016; Public Religion Research Institute, “Discrimination in America,” March  10, 2017, https://www.prri.org /research/lgbt-transgender-bathroom-discrimination -religious-liberty/. 60. Robert Mickey, Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in Amer ica’s Deep South, 1944–1972 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 61. Michael Bröning, “The Rise of Popu lism in Eu rope,” Foreign Affairs, June 3, 2016, ahttps://www.foreignaffairs.com /articles/europe/2016-06- 03/rise-populism-europe. 62. New York Times, “Election 2016: Exit Polls,” November 8, 2016, https://www.nytimes .com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html. 63. Economist/YouGov, “The Economist/YouGov Poll,” November 7, 2016, https://today .yougov.com /topics/politics/articles -reports/2016/11 /07/final-economistyougov-poll-shows -clinton-4-point-n. 64. Pew Research Center, “Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016,” June 22, 2016, http://www.people-press.org /2016/06/22/partisanship-and-political-animosity-in-2016/. 65. Maggie Haberman, Michael Shear, and Glenn Thrush, “Stephen Bannon Out at the White House After Turbulent Run,” New York Times, August 18, 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/2017/08/18/us/politics/steve-bannon-trump-white-house.html. 66. Ana Swanson and Max Ehrenfreund, “Trump Administration Officially Declines to Label China Currency Manipulator,” Washington Post, April 14, 2017, https://www.washington post .com /news /wonk /wp /2017/04 / 14 /trump - administration - officially- declines -to -label -china-currency-manipulator/. 67. Neil Irwin, “The Trump Steel Tariffs Are Economically Small and Symbolically Huge,” New York Times, March 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/upshot/the-trump-steel -tariffs-are-economically-small-and-symbolically-huge.html. 68. John Wagner, “Trump Signs Sweeping Tax Bill into Law,” Washington Post, December  22, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/12/22/trump-signs -sweeping-tax-bill-into-law/?utm_term​=​.dfca10951c09. 69. Michael D. Shear and Helene Cooper, “Trump Bars Refugees and Citizens of 7 Muslim Countries,” New York Times, January  27, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us /politics/trump-syrian-refugees.html. 70. Sadie Gurman, “Trump Threatens to Cut Off Funding from ‘Sanctuary Cities,’” Associated Press, April 22, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-22/sanctuary -cities-threatened-with-loss-of-federal-grant-money.

216 Notes to Pages 82–86 71. Ed O’Keefe and David Nakamura, “Trump, Top Democrats Agree to Work on Deal to Save ‘Dreamers’ from Deportation,” Washington Post, September  14, 2017, https://www .washingtonpost.com /news/powerpost /wp/2017/09/13/trump-top-democrats-agree-to-work -on-deal-to-save-daca/. 72. Julia Manchester, “White House Considers More Travel, Campaign-Style Rallies,” The Hill, May  27, 2017, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/335432-white-house -considers-more-travel-campaign-style-rallies. 73. Maggie Haberman and Mark Landler, “A Week After the Midterms, Trump Seems to Forget the Caravan,” New York Times, November  13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com /2018/11/13/us/politics/trump-caravan-midterms.html. 74. Michael M. Grynbaum and Niraj Chokshi, “Even Fox News Stops Running Trump Caravan Ad Criticized as Racist,” New York Times, November 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes .com/2018/11/05/us/politics/nbc-caravan-advertisement.html. 75. Quinnipiac University, “21% Of U.S. Voters Approve of Revised GOP Health Plan,” May 11, 2017, https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID​=​2457. 76. Quinnipiac University, “American Voters Want to Save Big Bird,” March 24, 2017, https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID​=​2444. 77. Philip Rucker, Matt Viser, Elise Viebeck, and Issac Stanley-Becker, “Midterm Elections: Democrats Capture House as GOP Holds Senate,” Washington Post, November  7, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost .com /politics/midterm- elections- democrats-flip -house -as-gop -expands-senate-majority/2018/11 /07/94d62430 -e27d-11e8-8f5f-a55347f48762 _ story .html. 78. David Montgomery, “Suburban Voters Gave Democrats Their House Majority,” CityLab, November 7, 2018, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/house-races-election-results -democrats-suburbs-blue-wave/575287/.

Chapter 6 1. Joe Heim, “Recounting a Day of Rage, Hate, Violence, and Death,” Washington Post, August  14, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/charlottesville-timeline/ ?utm _term=.593bc975268b. 2. Steve Hendrix, “It’s Still Hard to Look At,” Washington Post, August 10, 2018, https:// www.washingtonpost . com /graphics / 2018 / local /charlottesville - photographer -pulitzer -prize-photo/?utm _term=.19e0a077976a. 3. Politico staff, “Full Text: Trump’s Comments on White Supremacists, ‘Alt-Left’ in Charlottesville,” Politico, August 15, 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text -trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662. 4. M4BL (Movement for Black Lives), “Platform,” accessed December  2, 2017, http:// policy.m4bl.org /platform; Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016). 5. Theodore Schleifer and Allie Malloy, “Black Lives Matter Activists Join Obama at Forum on Policing,” CNN, July 14, 2016, https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/13/politics/obama-black -lives-matter-meeting /index.html. 6. Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Justice Report Regarding the Criminal Investigation into the Shooting Death of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson, March 4, 2015.

Notes to Pages 87–89

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7. Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Donald Trump Is the First White President,” Atlantic, October  2017, https://www.theatlantic .com /magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president -ta-nehisi-coates/537909/. 8. Claudia Rankine, “Was Charlottesville the Exception or the Rule?,” New York Times, September 13, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com /2017/09/13/magazine/was-charlottesville-the -exception-or-the-rule.html. 9. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7. 10. Chloe Thurston, At the Boundaries of Homeownership (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Zachary Callen, Railroads and American Political Development (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2016); Robert Mickey, Paths out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America’s Deep South, 1944–1972 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Emily Zackin, Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Pamela Brandwein, Rethinking the Judicial Settlement of Reconstruction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Paul Frymer, Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Richard Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Strug gle for Racial Enfranchisement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Robert Liberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). 11. Kimberley Johnson, Reforming Jim Crow: Southern Politics and State in the Age Before Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 12. Julie Novkov and Carol Nackenoff, eds., Statebuilding from the Margins: Between Reconstruction and the New Deal (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 13. For impor tant critiques of this point, see Paul Frymer, “Racism Revised: Courts, Labor Law, and the Institutional Construction of Racial Animus,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (2005): 373–87; Desmond King and Rogers Smith, “Racial Orders in American Political Development,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (2005): 75–92; Rogers Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in Amer ica,” American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (1993): 549–66. 14. Ida B. Wells, On Lynchings: Southern Horrors, A Red Record, Mob Rule in New Orleans (reprints of original pamphlets) (New York: Arno Press, 1969); Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in Amer ica (New York: Knopf, 1967); Aziz Rana, “Colonialism and Constitutional Memory,” UC Irvine Law Review 5, no. 2 (2015): 263–88; Paul Frymer, Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 15. Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Paula Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions (New York: HarperCollins, 2008). 16. For accounts of the development of the NAACP, see Megan Ming Francis, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Susan Carle, Defining the Strug gle (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Charles Flint Kellogg, NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Vol. 1 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New Press, 2009).

218 Notes to Pages 89–95 17. Platform of the National Negro Committee, 1909. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 18. As quoted in Kellogg, NAACP, 134. 19. While governor of Mississippi, Vardaman opened Parchman Farm, the largest and most inhumane state-run convict labor prison. While governor of Georgia, Smith abolished the convict lease to use convicts for state benefit and greatly expanded the chain gang in Georgia. 20. Arthur Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 64. 21. E. David Cronon, ed., The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels, 1913–1921 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), 32–3. 22. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era; Nancy Weiss, “The Negro and the New Freedom: Fighting Wilsonian Segregation,” Political Science Quarterly 84, no. 1 (1969): 61–79; Kellogg, NAACP. 23. Desmond King, Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the US Federal Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 24. Kathleen Long Wolgemuth, “Woodrow Wilson’s Appointment Policy and the Negro,” Journal of Southern History 24, no. 4 (1958): 467. 25. Booker T. Washington to Oswald Garrison Villard, August 10, 1913, Wilson Papers. 26. Woodrow Wilson to Oswald Villard, July 23, 1913, Oswald Garrison Villard Papers. 27. Thomas Dixon to Woodrow Wilson, July 27, 1913; Wilson to Dixon, July 29, 1913. Reprinted in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur Link (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 28: 88–89, 94. 28. Moorfield Storey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Oswald Garrison Villard to Woodrow Wilson, August  15, 1913, Letter, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 29. W. E. B. Du Bois, “My Impressions of Woodrow Wilson,” Journal of Negro History 58, no. 4 (1973): 453–59. 30. Elliott Rudwick, Race Riot at East St.  Louis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964); Martha Gruening and W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Massacre of East St. Louis,” The Crisis, September 1917. 31. Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, 134. 32. Although the demonstration was the largest, it was not the first. The first demonstration of African Americans occurred two years prior in response to the film The Birth of a Nation; thousands came out in protest in Philadelphia and Boston. See August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Along The Color Line: Explorations in the Black Experience (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York: The Viking Press, 1933). 33. New York Times, July 29, 1917. 34. “Thousands March in Silent Protest,” Chicago Defender, August 4, 1917. 35. James Weldon Johnson, New York Age, August 3, 1917. 36. “Wilson Pledge to Negroes,” Washington Post, August 17, 1917, 2; Alfred B. Cosey to President Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, August 9, 1917. 37. President Woodrow Wilson, A Statement to the American People, July 26, 1918, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress. 38. Wilson’s statement should not be considered a direct result of war time concerns. In large part as a result of the difference in the structure of the media in WWI and WWII,

Notes to Pages 95–110 219 the Cold War civil rights theory cannot account for Wilson’s actions. For a fuller discussion of why Wilson’s statement should be read as a result of the NAACP’s persuasion efforts, see chapter 6 in Francis, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. 39. President Wilson to Newton Diehl Baker, February 19, 1918, War Department Records, Record Group 165, No. 114575, National Archives. 40. Omarosa Manigault, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House (New York: Gallery Books, 2018).

Chapter 7 1. In par ticu lar, see the closing ad for the Trump campaign, “Argument for Amer ica,” accessed December  26, 2016, https://www.youtube.com /watch? v​= ​v ST61W4bGm8&app​ =​desktop. 2. Fred I. Greenstein, “Change and Continuity in the Modern Presidency,” in The New American Political System, ed. Anthony King (Washington, DC: American Enterprise, Institute, 1979), 45–86; William Howell, Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006); Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). 3. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 5; Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: Wiley, 1960). 4. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 15, 27–28. 5. Ibid., 30. 6. Peri Arnold, Remaking the Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, 1901–1916 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009). 7. Bradford Richardson, “Trump Compares Himself to Reagan,” The Hill, September 1, 2015, https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/252483-trump-compares-himself -to-reagan. 8. Stephen Skowronek, “Leadership by Definition: First Term Reflections on George W. Bush’s Political Stance,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 4 (2005): 817–31. 9. Jim Acosta, “These Are the 100-Day Accomplishments Trump Is Touting,” CNN, April  24, 2017, http://www.cnn.com /2017/04/24/politics/donald-trump-white-house-100 -day-accomplishments/. 10. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 232. 11. Howell, Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action; Kenneth R. Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 12. Tulis, Rhetorical Presidency. 13. Brandice Canes-Wrone, Who Leads Whom? Presidents, Policy, and the Public (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); George C. Edwards, On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 14. David A. Crockett, “The Perils of Restoration Politics: Nineteenth- Century Antecedents,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2012): 881–902. 15. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 40. 16. Richard Kreitner, “What Time Is It? Here’s What the 2016 Election Tells Us About Obama, Trump, and What Comes Next,” Nation, November 22, 2016, https://www.thenation

220 Notes to Pages 110–114 .com/article/what-time-is-it-heres-what-the-2016-election-tells-us-about-obama-trump-and -what-comes-next/. 17. Julia Azari, “Trump’s Presidency Signals the End of the Reagan Era,” Vox.com, December  1, 2016, https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2016/12/1/13794680/trump-presidency -reagan-era-end. 18. Donald Trump interview with George Stephanopoulos, May 8, 2016, https://www .youtube.com/watch?v​=​Td6Pl7x3rlM. 19. Checks and Balances, “Mission Statement,” accessed March  1, 2019, https://www .documentcloud.org /documents/5096610-Checks-and-Balances.html. 20. William D. Adler and Jonathan Keller, “A Federal Army, Not a Federalist One: Regime Building in the Jeffersonian Era,” Journal of Policy History 26, no. 2 (2014): 167–87. 21. Theodore J. Lowi, The Personal President: Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). 22. Jennifer Stromer- Galley, Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 23. Elvin  T. Lim, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 24. Adler and Keller, “A Federal Army, Not a Federalist One”; Daniel  M. Cook and Andrew  J. Polsky, “Political Time Reconsidered: Unbuilding and Rebuilding the State Under the Reagan Administration,” American Politics Research 33, no. 4 (2005): 577–605. 25. Keith  E. Whittington and Daniel  P. Carpenter, “Executive Power in American Institutional Development,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (2003): 495–513. 26. Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal, 2nd ed. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011). 27. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 56, 57; Curt Nichols and Adam S. Myers, “Exploiting the Opportunity for Reconstructive Leadership: Presidential Responses to Enervated Political Regimes,” American Politics Research 38, no. 5 (2010): 806–41; Andrew J. Polsky, “Partisan Regimes in American Politics,” Polity 44, no. 1 (2012): 51–80. 28. Matthew Laing, “ Toward a Pragmatic Presidency? Exploring the Waning of Political Time,” Polity 44, no. 2 (2012): 259.

Chapter 8 Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Dan DiSalvo, Dan Galvin, Jeff Stonecash, Cassie Miller, and Chloe Thurston for valuable comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Thanks are also due to Ariel Goodman and Erika Julsrud for timely research assistance. Conversations with Julia Azari, Zac Callen, Travis Johnston, and Beth Popp Berman helped to inspire my thinking. Any remaining errors are my own. 1. Tara Golshan, “Donald Trump on His Campaign Staff: ‘People That Aren’t So Smart,’ ” Vox .com, June  7, 2016, https://www.vox .com /2016/6/7/11875040/donald-trump -campaign-staff-arent-so-smart-conference-call. 2. Nick Gass, “Trump: ‘The Experts Are Terrible,’ ” Politico, April 4, 2016, https://www .politico .com / blogs /2016 - gop -primary -live -updates - and -results /2016 /04 /donald -trump -foreign-policy-experts-221528. 3. Jan Werner Müller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

Notes to Pages 115–116

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4. Jackie Calmes, “Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Would Add to Deficit and Hillary Clinton’s Wouldn’t, Study Finds,” New York Times, October 11, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com /2016/10/12/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes-hillary-clinton.html. 5. Christopher Ingraham, “19 Times Trump Called Jobs Numbers ‘Fake’ Before They Made Him Look Good,” Washington Post Wonkblog, March 10, 2016, https://www.washington post .com /news/wonk /wp/2017/03/10/19-times-trump -called-the-jobs-numbers-fake-before -they-made-him-look-good/?utm _term​=​.ac543e11609b. 6. Jill Colvin and Calvin Rugaber, “Jobs Report No Longer Phony, Trump Says, Now That It’s His,” Associated Press, March 10, 2017, https://www.apnews.com/8ae2b27819cf4d4198a5f5 8326fbd1de. 7. Ingraham, “19 Times Trump Called Jobs Numbers ‘Fake’.” 8. Brian Naylor, “Trump Denies Almost 3,000 Died in Puerto Rico, Falsely Claims Democrats Inflated Data,” NPR, September 13, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647377915 /trump-denies-death-toll-in-puerto-rico-falsely-claims-done-by-the-democrats. 9. Aaron Rupar, “Trump Is Lying About Voter Fraud in Florida, and Media Outlets Are Spreading It,” Vox.com, November  12, 2018, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018 /11/12/18087676/trump-florida-recount-election-fraud-allegations-coverage. 10. Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (New York: Norton, 2018). 11. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Policy State: An American Predicament (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). 12. Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 13. John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, The National Origins of Policy Ideas: Knowledge Regimes in the United States, France, Germany, and Denmark (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). 14. John Carey, Gretchen Helmke, Brendan Nyhan, and Susan Stokes, “Results of the Bright Line Watch  U.S. Democracy Survey,” Bright Line Watch, February  23, 2017, http:// brightlinewatch.org /results-from-the-bright-line-watch-u-s-democracy-survey. 15. Jennifer Hunter Childs, “When Numbers Aren’t Enough: Supplementing Quantitative Data Collection with Qualitative Insights,” presentation at American Association for Public Opinion Research Meeting, 2018, https://www.census.gov/content /dam /Census /newsroom/press-kits/2018/aapor/aapor-presentation-insights.pdf. 16. Walter Williams, Honest Numbers and Democracy: Social Policy Analysis in the White House, Congress, and the Federal Agencies (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998). 17. Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 18. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 19. Margaret Weir, Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 20. Jennifer S. Light, From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 21. Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth- Century US History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

222 Notes to Pages 116–118 22. Edward Banfield, “Policy Science as Metaphysical Madness,” in Statesmanship and Bureaucracy, ed. Robert Goldwin (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute), 1–35; Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (New York: Norton, 1988). 23. Donald P. Moynihan, The Dynamics of Per formance Management: Constructing Information and Reform (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008). 24. Stephen Skowronek, “An Attenuated Reconstruction: The Conservative Turn in American Political Development,” in Conservatism and American Political Development, ed. Brian Glenn and Steven M. Teles (New York: Oxford University Press), 348–63. 25. John Burke, The Institutional Presidency: Organizing and Managing the White House from FDR to Clinton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Daniel Hirschman and Elizabeth Popp Berman, “Do Economists Make Policies? On the Political Effects of Economics,” Socio-Economic Review 12, no. 4 (2014): 779–811. 26. Andrew Rudalevige, Managing the President’s Program: Presidential Leadership and Legislative Policy Formulation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). 27. Robert M. Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar Amer ica (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 28. William J. Barber, Designs Within Disorder: Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Economists, and the Shaping of American Economic Policy, 1933–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 165–68. 29. Philip Joyce, The Congressional Budget Office: Honest Numbers, Power, and Policymaking (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011). 30. Andrew Rich, Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 31. Campbell and Pedersen, National Origins of Policy Ideas. 32. Weir, Politics and Jobs. 33. Joyce, Congressional Budget Office. 34. Eric M. Patashnik and Justin Peck, “Can Congress Perform Policy Analysis? The Politics of Problem Solving on Capitol Hill,” in Governing in a Polarized Age: Elections, Parties, and Political Representation in America, ed. Alan Gerber and Eric Schickler (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 267–303. Patashnik and Peck report the results of a recent survey of experts on the U.S. policymaking process. A majority (54  percent) of respondents said that cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis have “only a little” influence on congressional decision making. Respondents with extensive experience in policy making were the most likely to give this response. 35. See Banfield, “Policy Science as Metaphysical Madness.” 36. Charles O. Jones, “Why Congress Can’t Do Policy Analysis (or Words to That Effect),” Policy Analysis 2, no. 2 (1976): 251–64. 37. Williams, Honest Numbers and Democracy. 38. Ibid., 220. 39. Robert P. Saldin, When Bad Policy Makes Good Politics: Running the Numbers on Health Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 40. William Greider, The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans (New York: Dutton, 1982). 41. Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder, The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point (New York: Hachette, 1996).

Notes to Pages 118–121

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42. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, “Abandoning the Middle: The Bush Tax Cuts and the Limits of Democratic Control,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 1 (2005): 33–53. 43. Williams, Honest Numbers and Democracy, 148. 44. David E. Lewis and Terry M. Moe, “The Presidency and the Bureaucracy: The Levers of Presidential Control,” in The Presidency and the Political System, ed. Michael Nelson (Washington, DC: CQ Press), 367–400. 45. Williams, Honest Numbers and Democracy. 46. Anthony  J. Chergosky and Jason  M. Roberts, “The De-institutionalization of Congress,” Political Science Quarterly 133, no. 3 (2018): 475–95. 47. Union of Concerned Scientists, “Trump Budget Disregards Science, Puts Public Health, Innovation at Risk,” May  23, 2017, https://www.ucsusa .org /press/2017/trump -budget-disregards-science-puts-public-health-innovation-risk#!. 48. Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, “Trump Administration Is Shutting Down Practice-Guidelines Clearinghouse for Doctors,” STAT News, June 13, 2018, https://www. statnews .com /2018 /06 / 13 /ahrq -practice -guidelines - clearinghouse - shutting -down/. 49. Constance  F. Citro, “The US Federal Statistical System’s Past, Present, and Future,” Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application 3 (2016): 347–73. 50. Office of Management and Budget, Statistical Programs of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2018 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2018). 51. Office of Management and Budget, Analytical Perspectives: Budget of the U.S. Government: Fiscal Year 2018 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2017). 52. The Census Project, “Letter to Appropriators on FY2018 Census Bureau Funding,” September 1, 2017, https://censusproject.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/2017-09-01censusproject letter-f2.pdf. 53. Government Accountability Office, “Actions Needed to Mitigate Key Risks Jeopardizing a Cost-Effective and Secure Enumeration,” May  8, 2018, https://www.gao.gov/assets /700/691660.pdf. 54. Government Accountability Office, “Actions Needed to Address Challenges to Enumerating Hard-to-Count Groups,” July 2018, https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-599. 55. The Census Project, letter to Senate appropriators, April 29, 2019, https://censusproject .files.wordpress.com/2019/04/census-project-and-lcchr-letter-to-senate-re.-fy-19-spending-4 -30.pdf. 56. Nick Brown, “Worried About Undercount, States and Cities Spend Big to Promote 2020 Census,” Governing, October  2, 2018, http://www.governing.com /topics/politics / Worried -About - Undercount - States - and - Cities - Spend - Big - to - Promote -2020 - Census .html. 57. Center for Survey Measurement, U.S. Census Bureau, “Memorandum for Associate Director for Research and Methodology Re: Respondent Confidentiality Concerns,” September  20, 2017, https://www2 .census .gov/cac /nac /meetings/2017-11 / Memo -Regarding -Respondent-Confidentiality-Concerns.pdf; National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations, U.S. Census Bureau, Final Report of the Administrative Records, Internet, and Hard to Count Population Working Group, 2016, accessed October  16, 2018, https://www2.census.gov/cac/nac/reports/2016-07-admin _ internet-wg-report.pdf. 58. Liz Robbins and Katie Benner, “Documents Show Political Lobbying in Census Question About Citizenship,” New York Times, June 9, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018

224 Notes to Pages 121–123 /06 /09/nyregion / kobach - bannon -lobbying - census - question - on - citizenship - documents .html. 59. Hansi Lo Wang, “Justice Ginsburg Stops Effort to Block Officials’ Census Lawsuit Depositions, for Now,” NPR, September 29, 2018, https://www.npr.org /2018/09/29/652944082 /trump-administration-moves-to-escalate-census-lawsuits-to-supreme-court. 60. Hansi Lo Wang, “Hurdles Remain as the Final Countdown Begins for the 2020 Census,” NPR, January  10, 2019, https://www.npr.org /2019/01/10/677745758/hurdles-remain-as -the-final-countdown-begins-for-the-2020-census; Kyley McGeeney, Brian Kriz, Shawnna Mullenax, Laura Kail, Gina Walejko, Monica Vines, Nancy Bates, and Yazmín García Trejo, “2020 Census Barriers, Attitudes, and Motivators Study Survey Report,” U.S. Census Bureau, January  24, 2019, https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial /2020/program -management/final-analysis-reports/2020-report-cbams-study-survey.pdf. 61. Donald Trump, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress,” February 28, 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid​=​123408. 62. “Executive Order 13836 of May  25, 2018, Developing Efficient, Effective, and CostReducing Approaches To Federal Sector Collective Bargaining,” Federal Register 83, no. 106 (June  1, 2018): 25329–34; “Executive Order 13837 of May  25, 2018, Ensuring Transparency, Accountability, and Efficiency in Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Use,” Federal Register 83,  no.  106 (June  1, 2018): 25335–40; “Executive Order 13839 of May  25, 2018, Promoting Accountability and Streamlining Removal Procedures Consistent with Merit System Principles,” Federal Register 83, no. 106 (June 1, 2018): 25343–47. 63. “Executive Order 13843 of July 10, 2018, Excepting Administrative Law Judges From the Competitive Ser vice,” Federal Register 83, no. 135 (July 13, 2018): 32755–58. 64. Executive Order 13836. 65. Executive Order 13843. 66. Executive Order 13839, 25343. 67. Erich Wagner, “Judge Strikes Down Trump Executive Orders Limiting Federal Employee Union Bargaining,” Government Executive, August  25, 2018, https://www.govexec .com /management /2018/08/judge -strikes - down-trump - executive - orders -limiting-federal -employee-union-bargaining /150813/. 68. Erich Wagner, “Article Casts Doubt on the Legality of Trump’s Administrative Law Judge EO,” Government Executive, July 20, 2018, https://www.govexec .com /oversight/2018 /07/article-casts-doubt-legality-trumps-administrative-law-judge-eo/149919/. 69. Eric Katz, “Bipartisan Bill Would Reverse Trump’s Order on Executive Branch Judges,” Government Executive, August  28, 2018, https://www.govexec .com /management /2018/08/ bipartisan-bill-would-reverse-trumps-order-executive-branch-judges/150873/. 70. Evan Osnos, “Trump Versus ‘the Deep State,’ ” New Yorker, May 21, 2018, https://www .newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/21/trump-vs-the-deep-state. 71. Marissa Martino Golden, What Motivates Bureaucrats? Politics and Administration During the Reagan Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 72. Osnos, “Trump Versus ‘the Deep State.’ ” 73. Coral Davenport, “E.P.A. Dismisses Members of Major Scientific Review Board,” New York Times, May  7, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com /2017/05/07/us/politics/epa-dismisses -members-of-major-scientific-review-board.html. 74. Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, “EPA Dismisses Half of Key Board’s Scientific Advisers; Interior Suspends More Than 200 Advisory Panels,” Washington Post, May 7, 2017,

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https://www.washingtonpost .com /news/energy-environment /wp/2017/05/07/epa-dismisses -half-of-its-scientific-advisers-on-key-board-citing-clean-break-with-obama-administration /?utm _term​=​.589ec0343593. 75. Coral Davenport, “E.P.A. to Eliminate Office That Advises Agency Chief on Science,” New York Times, September 27, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/climate/epa-science -adviser.html. 76. Coral Davenport, “In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome: So Is Advice,” New York Times, June 9, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com /2018/06/09/climate/trump -administration-science.html?module​=​inline. 77. Miranda Green and Rebecca Beitsch, “Trump Directs Agencies to Cut Advisory Boards by “at least” One-Third,” The Hill, June 14, 2019, https://thehill.com/regulation/energy -environment/448678-trump-directs-agencies-to-cut-advisory-boards-by-at-least-one. 78. Departure rates under Trump were especially high for SES members in the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Ser vices, and State. 79. Eric Katz, “The Number of Top Career Execs Leaving Government Nearly Doubled in Trump’s First Year,” Government Executive, September 5, 2018, https://www.govexec.com /management / 2018 /09 /number -top - career - execs - leaving - government -nearly - doubled -trumps-first-year/151033/. 80. Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Elaine Kamarck, and Nichoals W. Zeppos, “Tracking Turnover in the Trump Administration,” Brookings Institution, July  20, 2018, https://www .brookings.edu/research/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/. 81. Lewis, The Fifth Risk. 82. Lewis and Moe, “The Presidency and the Bureaucracy.” 83. See “Research,” Council of Economic Advisers, accessed October 29, 2018, https:// www.whitehouse.gov/cea /research /; “Reports and Issue Briefs,” Obama White House Council of Economic Advisers, accessed October  29, 2018, https://obamawhitehouse .archives.gov/administration/eop/cea /factsheets-reports; “Publications,” Bush White House Council of Economic Advisers, accessed October 29, 2018, https://georgewbush-whitehouse . archives .gov/cea /pubs . html. Excluding reports mandated by Congress and the Economic Report of the President, the CEA produced thirteen reports during the first two years of the Obama administration and five reports during the first two years of the Bush administration. 84. Council of Economic Advisers, “How Much Are Workers Getting Paid? A Primer on Wage Measurement,” September  2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads /2018 /09/ How-Much -Are -Workers - Getting-Paid -A-Primer- on -Wage -Measurement- Sept -2018.pdf. 85. Council of Economic Advisers, “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism,” October 2018, https:// www.whitehouse . gov / wp - content /uploads / 2018 / 10 / The - Opportunity - Costs - of -Socialism.pdf. 86. Juliet Eilperin, “The Trump Administration Just Disbanded a Federal Advisory Committee on Climate Change,” Washington Post, August 20, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost .com /news/energy-environment /wp/2017/08/20/the-trump -administration-just-disbanded -a-federal-advisory-committee-on-climate-change/?utm_term​=​.12977d5348ae; Lisa Friedman and Brad Plummer, “Coal Mining Health Study Is Halted by Interior Department,” New York Times, August 21, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/climate/coal-mining-health-study -is-halted-by-interior-department.html.

226 Notes to Pages 125–128 87. Benjamin Miller, Frank Camm, Marjory Blumenthal, Jesse Lastunen, and Kenneth W. Miller, Inching Towards Reform: Trump’s Deregulation and its Implementation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2017). 88. Amit Narang, “The Stunning Triumph of Cost-Cost Analysis,” Regulatory Review, February  19, 2017, https://www.theregreview.org /2017/02/19/narang-stunning-triumph-cost -cost-analysis/. 89. Conor Raso, “How Has Trump’s Deregulatory Order Worked in Practice?” Brookings Institution, September  6, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-has-trumps -deregulatory-order-worked-in-practice/ 90. Michelle Lee, “Fact Check: Trump Claim on Murders by Unauthorized Immigrants,” Washington Post, February 28, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2017/live-updates /trump-white-house/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-trumps-address-to-congress/fact -check-trump-claim-on-murders-by-unauthorized-immigrants/?utm_term​=​.283feceb3506. 91. Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, Quarterly Report, June  2018, https://www.ice.gov/sites/default /files/documents/Report /2018/voice-quarterlyreport.pdf. 92. Philip Bump, “The White House’s Weekly ‘Immigrant Crime’ Tally Includes Noncrimes and Nonimmigrants,” Washington Post, February 9, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost . com /news / politics / wp / 2018 /02 /09 / the -white - houses -weekly - immigrant - crime - tally -includes-non-crimes-and-non-immigrants/?utm _term​=​.cc3704423b50. 93. Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Trump Picks Voter ID Advocate for Election Fraud Panel,” New York Times, May 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/trump-voter -fraud.html. 94. Pam Fessler, “Despite Little Evidence of Fraud, White House Launches Voting Commission,” NPR, May  11, 2017, http://www.npr.org /2017/05/11 /527924633/white-house -expected-to-announce-voting-fraud-commission. 95. Michael Wines, “Asked for Voters’ Data, States Give Trump Panel a Bipartisan ‘No,’” New York Times, June  30, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/us/politics/kris-kobach -states-voter-fraud-data.html; Michael Tackett and Michael Wines, “Trump Disbands Commission on Voter Fraud,” New York Times, January 3, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01 /03/us/politics/trump-voter-fraud-commission.html. 96. Margaret Groarke, “The Impact of Voter Fraud Claims on Voter Registration Reform Legislation,” Political Science Quarterly 131, no. 3 (2016): 571–96. 97. Amy  B. Zegart, “Blue Ribbons, Black Boxes: Toward a Better Understanding of Presidential Commissions,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2004): 366–93; Jordan Tama, “Crises, Commissions, and Reform: The Impact of Blue-Ribbon Panels,” Political Research Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2014): 152–64. 98. President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Epidemic, Final Report, November  15, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files /images/Final _ Report _ Draft _ 11-15-2017.pdf. 99. German Lopez, “A Member of Trump’s Opioid Commission Calls Its Work ‘a Charade,’”Vox.com, January 23, 2018, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/23/16923188 /trump-opioid-commission-kennedy-sham-charade. 100. Margot Sanger-Katz and Thomas Kaplan, “Congress is Writing Lots of Opioids Bills. But Which Ones Will Actually Help?,” New York Times, June 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes . com / 2018 /06 /20 /upshot /congress -is -writing -lots - of - opioid - bills - but -which - ones -will -actually-help.html.

Notes to Pages 128–135

227

101. “White House Briefing as Senate Takes on House GOP Health Plan,” CNN, May 5, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1705/05/cnr.05.html. 102. Philip Rocco, “The CBO Can’t Score Republicans’ Health-Care Plan in Time: That’s Where Jimmy Kimmel Comes In,” Monkey Cage, Washington Post, September 22, 2018, https:// w w w .washingtonpost . com / news / monkey - cage / wp / 2017 / 09 / 20 / the - cbo - cant - score -republicans-health-care-plan-in-time-thats-where-jimmy-kimmel-comes-in /?utm _term​=​ .9eee56aafb1c.

Chapter 9 1. Quoted in “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Fox News, November 10. 2. Ibid. 3. George Tsebelis, “Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartyism,” British Journal of Political Science 25, no. 3 (1995): 289–325. 4. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Eric Patashnik, Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 5. Patashnik, Reforms at Risk, 10. 6. Ibid.; Pierson, Politics in Time; Kent Weaver, “Paths and Forks or Chutes and Ladders?: Negative Feedbacks and Policy Regime Change,” Journal of Public Policy  30, no.  2 (2010): 137–62. 7. Patashnik, Reforms at Risk; Eric M. Patashnik and Julian E. Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics: Liberal Reform and the Limits of Policy Feedback in the Contemporary American State,” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 4 (2013): 1071–87. 8. Patashnik, Reforms at Risk; Patashnik and Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics.” 9. Jacob S. Hacker, “Privatizing Risk Without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy Retrenchment in the United States,” American Political Science Review 98, no. 2 (2004): 243–60. 10. Theodore R. Marmor, The Politics of Medicare (Hawthorne: Aldine De Gruyter, 2000). Theodore R. Marmor and Jerry L. Mashaw, “Understanding Social Insurance: Fairness, Affordability, and the ‘Modernization’ of Social Security and Medicare,” Health Affairs 25, no. 3 (2006): 114–34; Theodore R. Marmor and Jacob S. Hacker, “Medicare Reform and Social Insurance: The Clashes of 2003 And Their Potential Fallout,” Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 5, no. 1 (2005): 475–89; Mark Peterson, “Third Rail of Politics: The Rise and Fall of Medicare’s Untouchability,” in Medicare and Medicaid at 50: America’s Entitlement Programs in the Age of the Affordable Care Act, ed. Alan B. Cohen, David C. Colby, Keith A. Wailoo, and Julian E. Zelizer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 147–67. 11. Marmor and Marshaw, “Understanding Social Insurance,” 116. 12. Jacob S. Hacker, “The Road to Somewhere: Why Health Reform Happened: Or Why Political Scientists Who Write About Public Policy Shouldn’t Assume They Know How to Shape It,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 3 (2010): 861–76. 13. Andrea Louise Campbell, “Independence and Freedom: Public Opinion and the Politics of Medicare and Medicaid,” in Medicare and Medicaid at 50: Amer ica’s Entitlement Programs in the Age of the Affordable Care Act, ed. Alan B. Cohen, David C. Colby, Keith A. Wailoo, and Julian E. Zelizer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015): 213–32. 14. Peterson, “Third Rail of Politics.”

228

Notes to Pages 135–138

15. Ibid.; Andrew S. Kelly, “Boutique to Booming: Medicare Managed Care and the Private Path to Policy Change,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 41, no.  3 (2016): 315–54; Jonathan Oberlander, “Voucherizing Medicare,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 39, no. 2 (2014): 467–82. 16. Robert Pear and Robin Toner, “Bush Medicare Proposal Urges Switch to Private Insurers,” New York Times, March 5, 2003, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/us/bush-medicare -proposal-urges-switch-to-private-insurers.html. 17. Jeffrey Young, “Obama, Reid Take Dead Aim at Medicare HMOs,” The Hill, January 14, 2019, http://thehill.com/homenews/news/17749-obama-reid-take-dead-aim-at-medicare -hmos. 18. Steven Findlay, “Seniors, HMOs Worried About Federal Tinkering,” USA Today, May 15, 1997; Amy Goldstein, “Health Care Financing Administration; Medicare ‘Competition’: Not in Their Backyard,” Washington Post, August 13, 1999; Alice Ann Love, “Bounced in Maryland, Medicare HMO Competition Demo Again Rejected,” Daily Record (Baltimore), April 29, 1997. 19. “Special Report with Brett Baier.” 20. In leaving the ACA’s Medicare reforms in place—including the ACA’s benefit improvements, the reduction of payments to Medicare Advantage plans, and the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation— and doing little else to restructure Medicare, the AHCA’s Medicare-related aspects are more in line with Trump’s populist campaign promises than Ryan’s reform agenda. 21. Repeal of the surtax will reduce Medicare Part A revenue by $117 billion between 2017 and 2026 and push forward Medicare’s insolvency by three years. 22. American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), “AARP Opposes Special Interest Health Care Bill,”  AARP Press Release, March  7, 2017, https://press.aarp.org /2017-03-07 -AARP-Opposes-Special-Interest-Health-Care-Bill. 23. Timothy Jost, “House Passes AHCA: How It Happened, What It Would Do, and Its Uncertain Senate Future,” Health Affairs Blog, May  4, 2017, https://www.healthaffairs.org /do/10.1377/hblog20170504.059967/full/. 24. Peterson, “Third Rail of Politics.” 25. William Roper, Interview with Ed Berkowitz, August 29, 1995, CMS Oral History Project, accessed February  27, 2019, https://www.cms.gov/About- CMS/Agency-Information /History/Downloads/CMSOralHistory_ Medicare-.pdf. 26. See Kelly, “Boutique to Booming”; Andrew S. Kelly, “Mistaken for Dead: The Affordable Care Act and the Continued Resilience of Medicare Advantage,” Forum 13, no. 1 (2015): 143–65; Jonathan Oberlander, The Political Life of Medicare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Medicare has certainly also enjoyed political support from corporate interests such as insurance companies—a support that has been expanding with the growth of private Medicare plans since the late 1990s—but Medicare’s “third-rail” status has primarily been a product of its large and politically active beneficiary class. 27. Robert Pear, “Deal Is Struck on Restoring Medicare Aid,” New York Times, November 11, 1999, http://movies2.nytimes.com/library/politics/111199health-disabled.html. 28. Bowen Garrett and Anuj Gangopadhyaya, “Who Gained Health Insurance Coverage Under the ACA, and Where Do They Live?,” Urban Institute Report, December 2016, https://

Notes to Pages 138–141

229

www.urban.org /sites/default /files/publication /86761 /2001041-who -gained-health-insurance -coverage-under-the-aca-and-where-do-they-live.pdf. 29. Hacker, “The Road to Somewhere,” 672. 30. Jonathan Oberlander and R. Kent Weaver, “Unraveling from Within? The Affordable Care Act and Self-Undermining Policy Feedbacks,” Forum 13, no. 1 (2015): 37–62. 31. Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Politics Undermine American Democracy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011); Kimberly J. Morgan and Andrea Campbell, The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of Social Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 32. Despite the decision by the Trump administration to discontinue cost-sharing reduction payments, insurers are still required by law to provide reduced cost-sharing for those individuals enrolled in a silver plan with incomes up to 250% of the federal poverty level. 33. Morgan and Campbell, The Delegated Welfare State; Frank Thompson, Medicaid Politics: Federalism, Policy Durability, and Health Reform (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012). 34. Anthem and Aetna, two of the biggest insurers in the country, both spent close to eighteen months and millions of dollars in pursuit of separate mergers that were driven by ACAbased strategies. 35. Reed Abelson, “Health Care Companies in Merger Frenzy,” New York Times, October 29, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/business/dealbook /health-care-companies -in-merger-frenzy.html. 36. Marilyn  B. Tavenner and Scott  B. Serota, Letter to Mitch McConnell and Charles Schumer, July 14, 2017, https://www.ahip.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Joint-AHIP-BCBSA -Consumer-Freedom-Option-Letter-FINAL-071417.pdf. 37. Zachary Tracer and Anna Edney, “Doctors, Hospital Groups Line Up Against GOP Health Proposal,” Bloomberg, March 8, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017 -03-08/doctor-hospital-groups-line-up-against-gop-health-proposal. 38. Ibid. 39. Bruce Siegel, “Statement on CBO Score of American Health Care Act,” accessed February  27, 2019, https://essentialhospitals.org /general/statement-on-cbo-score-of-american -health-care-act/. 40. Rick Pollack, “Statement on Graham-Cassidy Proposal,” September 26, 2017, http:// www.aha.org /presscenter/pressrel/2017/092617-pr-grahamcassidy.shtml. 41. David Dranove, Craig Garthwaite, and Christopher Ody, “Uncompensated Care Decreased At Hospitals in Medicaid Expansion States but Not at Hospitals in Nonexpansion States,” Health Affairs 35, no. 8 (2016): 1471–79. 42. Siegel, “Statement on CBO Score.” 43. Beth Kutscher, “Kentucky Hospitals Gain $506 Million in Medicaid Expansion’s First Year,” Modern Healthcare, February  12, 2015, https://www.modernhealthcare.com /article /20150212 / NEWS / 150219970 / kentucky -hospitals - gain -506 -million -in -medicaid -expansion-s-first-year. 44. Charles Brown, Steven  B. Fisher, and Phyllis Resnick, Assessing the Economic and Budgetary Impact of Medicaid Expansion in Colorado: FY 2015–16 Through FY 2034–35 (Denver: Colorado Health Foundation, 2016).

230

Notes to Pages 141–144

45. Deborah Bachrach, Patricia Boozang, and Mindy Lipson, The Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Uncompensated Care Costs: Early Results and Policy Implications for States (Menlo Park, CA: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2015). 46. Russell Berman, “The Conservative Uprising Against the Republican Health-Care Bill,” Atlantic, March 6, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/conservatives -revolt-against-gop-obamacare-repeal-replacement/518775/. 47. Russell Berman, “The Republicans Trying to Slow Down Obamacare Repeal,” Atlantic, January  9, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/the-republicans-trying -to-slow-down-obamacare-repeal/512459/. 48. Ibid. 49. Peter Sullivan, “GOP Governors Defend Medicaid Expansion,” The Hill, January  19, 2017, https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/315173-gop-governors-defend-medicaid-expansion. 50. John Hickenlooper et al., Letter to Mitch McConnell and Charles Schumer, September 19, 2017, https://www.colorado.gov/governor/sites/default/files/bipartisan_ governors _ letter _ re _ graham-cassidy_9-19-17.pdf. 51. National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD), “NAMD Statement on Graham-Cassidy,” September  22, 2017, http://medicaiddirectors.org /wp-content/uploads /2017/09/NAMD-Statement-on-Graham-Cassidy9_ 22_ 17.pdf. 52. Ibid. 53. The size of AHCA tax credits is determined by age. Under the ACA, they are determined by income and geography. 54. Berman, “The Conservative Uprising Against the Republican Health- Care Bill.” 55. Justin Amash, Twitter, March  6, 2017, https://twitter.com /justinamash /status /838889979501760514. 56. Americans for Prosperity (AFP), “AFP Grassroots Convenes on U.S. Capitol at Obamacare Repeal Rally,” AFP website, March  8, 2017, https://americansforprosperity.org /afp -grassroots-convenes-u-s-capitol-obamacare-rally/. 57. Rebecca Harrington, “Billionaire Koch Brothers Are Promising Millions to Republicans That Help Sink ‘Trumpcare,’ ” Business Insider, March 23, 2017, https://www.businessinsider .com.au/koch-brothers-trumpcare-conservative-gop-donors-races-2017-3. 58. Michael Needham, “GOP Plan Fails to Move Past Obamacare’s Progressive Promise,” Heritage Action for America, March 7, 2017, https://heritageaction.com/press/gop-plan-fails -to-move-past-obamacares-progressive-promise. 59. Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Philip Rocco and Simon F. Haeder, “How Intense Policy Demanders Shape Postreform Politics: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43, no. 2 (2018): 271–304. 60. Jessie Hellmann, “Four GOP Senators Pledge to Vote Against Rolling Back Medicaid Expansion,” The Hill, March 6, 2017, https://thehill.com /policy/ healthcare/322581-gop -senators-raise-red-flags-over-repeal-bill-that-would-eliminate-medicaid. 61. Quoted in Caitlin MacNeal, “GOP Sen. Heller Says He Won’t Vote for Obamacare Repeal Bill,” Talking Points Memo, March  17, 2017, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire /dean-heller-no-vote-ahca. This quote was made in regard to the AHCA version that was pulled from the floor on March 24. The version of the AHCA that passed on May 4, while different in key respects, had similar Medicaid provisions.

Notes to Pages 144–150

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62. Thompson, Medicaid Politics, 215. 63. Jack Torry, “Portman Pushing Gradual Medicaid Expansion Cut Instead of Elimination,” Dayton Daily News, June 9, 2017, https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/state–regional - govt–politics /portman -pushing - gradual -medicaid - expansion - cut-instead - elimination /1YRcT4InsBjXDCyuLYTdUN/. 64. Robert Portman and Shelley Capito, “Portman, Capito Announce Opposition to Current Senate Health Draft” (press release), June 27, 2017. 65. Voting against the ORRA were Senators Collins (R-Maine), Murkowski (R-Alaska), McCain (R-Arizona), Heller (R-Nevada), Alexander (R-Tennessee), Capito (R-West Virginia), and Portman (R-Ohio). Senators McCain, Alexander, Capito, and Portman had supported the earlier BCRA legislation. 66. Daniel Béland, Philip Rocco, and Alex Waddan, “Policy Feedback and the Politics of the Affordable Care Act,” Policy Studies Journal 47, no. 2 (2018), DOI: 10.1111/psj.12286. 67. Bob Bryan, “Trump Just Made a Huge Move That Could Blow Up Obamacare,” Business Insider, October  12, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ends-cost-sharing -reduction-csr-payments-2017-10. 68. Sarah Kliff, “This Is What Obamacare Sabotage Looks Like,” Vox.com, September  5, 2017, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/5/16240282/obamacare-sabotage-trump. 69. Nicholas Bagley, “Trump Has Declared Open War on the ACA. We’ll All Get Hurt,” Los Angeles Times, October  13, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-bagley -cost-sharing-sabotage-20171013-story.html. 70. Kaiser Family Foundation, “KFF Health Tracking Poll: The Public’s Views on the ACA,” June 18, 2019, https://www.kff.org/interactive/kff-health-tracking-poll-the-publics-views -on-the-aca/#?response​=​Favorable–Unfavorable&aRange​=​t woYear. 71. Amy E. Lerman, Meredith L. Sadin, and Samuel Trachtman, “Policy Uptake as Political Behav ior: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act,” American Political Science Review 111, no. 4 (2017): 755–70. 72. Oberlander, The Political Life of Medicare. 73. Ashley Kirzinger, Bianca DiJulio, Bryan Wu, and Mollyann Brodie, “Kaiser Health Tracking Poll—August 2017: The Politics of ACA Repeal and Replace Efforts,” Kaiser Family Foundation, August  11, 2017, https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kaiser-health -tracking-poll-august-2017-the-politics-of-aca-repeal-and-replace-efforts/. 74. Ibid. 75. Wesleyan Media Project, “Advertising Issue Spotlight (8/1/18–8/31/18),” accessed February 27, 2019, http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases/issues-090618/. In September 2018, only 28 percent of pro-Republican ads mentioned health care. 76. Sarah Binder, Twitter, October  14, 2017, https://twitter.com / bindersab/status /919212019525607424. 77. Donald Trump, Twitter, October  18, 2018, https://twitter.com /realdonaldtrump /status/1053008701026693122?lang​= ​en. 78. Perry Bacon  Jr., “Republicans Killed Much of Obamacare Without Repealing It,” FiveThirtyEight, December  18, 2018, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/republicans-killed -much-of-obamacare-without-repealing-it/. 79. Ashley Kirzinger, Bianca DiJulio, Bryan Wu, and Mollyann Brodie, “Kaiser Health Tracking Poll—April 2017: The Fall of the AHCA and Next Steps for the ACA,” Kaiser Family

232

Notes to Pages 151–153

Foundation, April  4, 2017, https://www.kff.org / health-reform /poll-finding /kaiser-health -tracking-poll-april-2017-the-fall-of-the-ahca-and-next-steps-for-the-aca/.

Chapter 10 1. Phillip Rucker and Robert Barnes, “Trump to Inherit More Than 100 Court Vacancies, Plans to Reshape Judiciary,” Washington Post, December 25, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost .com /politics/trump-to -inherit-more-than-100 -court-vacancies-plans-to -reshape-judiciary /2016/12/25/d190dd18-c928-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d _ story.html; David Weigel, “Claiming Mandate, GOP Congress Lays Plans to Propel Sweeping Conservative Agenda,” Washington Post, January 1, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/claiming-mandate-gop-congress -lays -plans -to -propel-sweeping- conservative -agenda /2017/01 /01 /9840338a- ceee -11e6 -b8a2 -8c2a61b0436f _ story.html. 2. John W. Schoen, “Regulation Buster Trump Takes Aim at the EPA,” CNBC, November  10, 2016, https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09/regulation-buster-trump-takes-aim-at-the -epa.html. 3. Oliver Milman, “Trump to scrap NASA Climate Research in Crackdown on “Politicized Science,” Guardian, November 23, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com /environment /2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research. 4. Danielle Paquette and Kim Soffen, “What Abortion Would Look Like in Amer ica Under Donald Trump,” Washington Post, November 15, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost .com /news/wonk /wp/2016/11 /15/what-abortion-could-look-like-in-an-america-without-roe -v-wade/?utm _term​=​.e9213368ca2e. 5. Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa, “Bannon Vows a Daily Fight for the ‘Deconstruction of the Administrative State,’” Washington Post, February 23, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost .com/politics/top-wh-strategist-vows-a-daily-fight-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative - state /2017/02 /23 /03f6b8da -f9ea -11e6 -bf01 - d47f8cf9b643 _ story. html ?utm _ term​= ​. fca91e 917a3a. 6. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacity, 1877–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 7. David Brian Robertson, Federalism and the Making of Amer ica (New York: Routledge, 2011). 8. There is, of course, a significant liter ature concerning how local officials use their power for their own gain in American politics. In addition, comparative scholars have also long discussed how state power can be used for personal gain. V.O. Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation: A New Edition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984); John Gerring and Strom Thacker, “Political Institutions and Corruption: The Role of Unitarism And Parliamentarism,” British Journal of Political Science 34, no. 2 (2004): 295–330. 9. David  A. Graham, “The Strangest Thing About Trump’s Approach to Presidential Power,” Atlantic, June 7, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/the-strangest -thing-about-trumps-approach-to-presidential-power/562271/. 10. David A. Lieb, “Trump Infrastructure Plan Seeks to Shift Funding Burden to States,” Chicago Tribune, January 31, 2018, https://www.apnews.com/1f529900fd71447c949d98c4264b a4fa.

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11. John W. Schoen, “Help Wanted: Trump Administration Still Has Hundreds of Jobs to Fill,” CNBC, April  23, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/24/help-wanted-trump-admini stration-still-has-hundreds-of-jobs-to-fill.html. 12. Tal Kopan, “Here’s What Trump’s Budget Proposes to Cut,” CNN, March 16, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/16/politics/trump-budget-cuts/index.html. 13. Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States (New York: Cromwell, 1972). 14. Jeremy Berke and Skye Gould, “Canada Has Legalized Marijuana—and This Map Shows Every US State That Has Legalized Marijuana,” Business Insider, October  17, 2018; Barry  G. Rabe, Statehouse and Greenhouse: The Emerging Politics of American Climate Change Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004). 15. Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth- Century Amer ica (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 16. Octavio Blanco, “Sanctuary Cities Risk Billions in Defiance of Trump,” CNN Money, November 19, 2016, https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/19/news/economy/sanctuary-cities-trump -funding /. 17. “California Looks to Lead the Trump Resistance,” New York Times, December 9, 2016, https:// w w w . ny times . com / 2016 / 12 / 09 /opinion /california - looks - to - lead - the - trump -resistance.html. 18. Heather Kelly, “California Just Passed Its Net Neutrality Law: The DOJ Is Already Suing,” CNN, October  1, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/01/tech/california-net-neutrality -law/index.html. 19. Timothy J. Conlan, From New Federalism to Devolution: Twenty-Five Years of Intergovernmental Reform (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998); Robert F. Nagel, The Implosion of American Federalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 20. Heather Gerken, “We’re About to See States’ Rights Used Defensively Against Trump,” Vox.com, January 20, 2017, http://vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/12/13915990/federalism -trump-progressive-uncooperative. 21. Andrew Karch, Democratic Laboratories: Policy Experimentation in the American States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007). 22. Jon C. Teaford, The Rise of the States: Evolution of American State Government (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). 23. Rabe, Statehouse and Greenhouse. 24. Pamela J. Clouser McCann, The Federal Design Dilemma: Congress and Intergovernmental Delegation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 25. Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in Amer ica, 1859–1877 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 26. William Howell, Simon Jackman, and Jon Rogowski, The War time President: Executive Influence and Nationalizing Politics of Threat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 27. Delphine Schrank, “Trump’s Season of Fear: Inside the Devastation Left by Immigration Raids,” Guardian, March  13, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/13 /undocumented-immigration-raids-ice-impact. 28. Sarah Gonzalez, “No One Expected Obama Would Deport More People Than Any Other  U.S. President,” WNYC News, January  19, 2017, https://www.wnyc.org /story/no-one -thought-barack-obama-would-deport-more-people-any-other-us-president/.

234 Notes to Pages 156–159 29. Tal Kopan, “Immigration Arrests Rise in First Months of Trump Administration,” CNN, April 17, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/17/politics/immigration-arrests-rise/index .html. 30. Ari Natter, “Trump Moved FEMA Funds to ICE at Start of Hurricane Season,” Bloomberg, September  12, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-12/fema -funds-shifted-to-immigration-at-start-of-hurricane-season. 31. Tal Kopan, “The Simple Reason More Immigrant Kids Are in Custody Than Ever Before,” CNN, September  14, 2018, https://www.cnn.com /2018/09/14/politics/immigrant -children-kept-detention/index.html. 32. Maya Rhodan, “Jeff Sessions Warns Sanctuary Cities: Comply with Immigration Law or Lose Federal Money,” Time, April 21, 2017, http://time.com/4750977/jeff-sessions-sanctuary -cities-immigration/. 33. Amber Phillips, “If Jeff Sessions Wants to Crack Down on Medical Marijuana, He’ll Have to Battle More Than Half the Country,” Washington Post, April 15, 2017, https://www .washingtonpost . com /news /the -fix / wp /2017/04 / 15 /jeff - sessions -may -not -like -medical -marijuana-but-even-republican-states-love-it /?utm _term​=​.4ddc233035a0; Joseph Tanfani and Evan Halper, “Sessions Restores Tough Drug War Policies That Trigger Mandatory Minimum Sentences,” Los Angeles Times, May  12, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na -politics-sessions-drugwar-20170511-story.html. 34. Kathryn Casteel, “Would Trump’s ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Effort Really Help Protect Police?,” FiveThirtyEight, February  22, 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/would-trumps -blue-lives-matter-effort-really-help-protect-police/. 35. Zachary Cohen, “Trump Proposes $54 Billion Defense Spending Hike,” CNN, March 16, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/16/politics/donald-trump-defense-budget-blueprint/index .html. 36. Robert Pear, Maggie Haberman, and Reed Abelson, “Trump to Scrap Critical Health Care Subsidies, Hitting Obamacare Again,” New York Times, October 12, 2017, https:// www . nytimes . com / 2017/ 10 / 12 / us / politics / trump - obamacare - executive - order - health -insurance.html. 37. Sarah Kliff, “Most Trump Voters Don’t Want Trump to Sabotage Obamacare,” Vox .com, August  11, 2017, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/11/16136204/voxcare -trump-sabotage-obamacare. 38. John L. Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 39. Robert C. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 40. Drew Harwell, “Trump Trust Allows President to Easily Withdraw Money,” Chicago Tribune, April  3, 2017, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct -trump-blind-trust-20170403-story.html. 41. Jonathan O’Connell and Mary Jordan, “For Foreign Diplomats, Trump Hotel Is Place to Be,” Washington Post, November  18, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ business /capitalbusiness/2016/11/18/9da9c572-ad18-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_ story.html. 42. Darren Samuelsohn, “Trump Organization: First Treasury Donation on Hotel Stays to Come in 2018,” Politico, March  17, 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump -hotels-first-treasury-donation-2018-236202.

Notes to Pages 159–160

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43. Eric Lipton, “Ivanka Trump’s Presence at Meeting with Japan’s Leader Raises Questions,” New York Times, November 18, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/us/politics /ivanka-trump-shinzo-abe.html. 44. Ashley Parker and John Wagner, “Kushner Has a Singular and Almost Untouchable Role in the White House,” Washington Post, April  3, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost .com/politics/kushner-has-a-singular-and-almost-untouchable-role-in-trumps-white-house /2017/04/03/df4e7cf8-1897-11e7-855e-4824bbb5d748_ story.html?utm _term​=​.558aa51824cc. 45. Dan Merica, Gloria Borger, Jim Acosta, and Betsy Klein, “Ivanka Trump Is Making Her White House Job Official,” CNN, March  30, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/29 /politics/ivanka-trump-white-house-job/index.html. 46. Matt Rocheleau, “Trump’s Cabinet Picks So Far Worth a Combined $13b,” Boston Globe, December 20, 2016, https://www.bostonglobe.com /metro/2016/12/20/trump-cabinet -picks-far-are-worth-combined/XvAJmHCgkHhO3lSxgIKvRM/story.html. 47. Ben Brody, “Trump’s Golf Courses Would Benefit from His Water-Rule Rollback,” Bloomberg, March  1, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com /news/articles/2017-03-01 /trump-s -golf-courses-would-benefit-from-his-water-rule-rollback. 48. Jeremy Venook, “Trump’s Interests vs. America’s, Dubai Edition,” Atlantic, August 9, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/ business/archive/2017/08/donald-trump-conflicts-of-inte rests/508382/. 49. Sarah Mulholland and Mark Niquette, “Trump Ties to Infrastructure Advisers Roth, LeFrak Run Deep,” Bloomberg, February 15, 2017, https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets /trump-ties-to-infrastructure-advisers-roth-and-lefrak-run-deep; Peter Grant and Ted Mann, “Donald Trump Asks Richard LeFrak, Steven Roth to Monitor Infrastructure Plan’s Costs,” Wall Street Journal, January  16, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-asks-richard -lefrak-steven-roth-to-monitor-infrastructure-plans-costs-1484591989. 50. William Howell, Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); John Hudak and Grace Wallack, “Political Appointees as Barriers to Government Efficiency and Effectiveness: A Case Study of Inspectors General,” April 2016, Brookings Institution Center for Effective Public Management, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/oig.pdf. 51. William Howell and Terry Moe, Relic (New York: Basic Books, 2016); Skowronek, Building a New American State. 52. Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century Amer ica (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010); James  C. Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). 53. Balogh, A Government Out of Sight; Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Jacob Hacker, The Divided Welfare State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 54. Nancy Bermeo, “Classification and Consolidation: Some Lessons from the Greek Dictatorship,” Political Science Quarterly 110, no. 3 (1995): 435–52; Farid Guliyev, “Personal Rule, Neopatrimonialism, and Regime Typologies: Integrating Dahlian and Weberian Approaches to Regime Studies,” Democratization 18, no. 3 (2011): 575–601. 55. Michael S. Schmidt, “In a Private Dinner, Trump Demanded Loyalty: Comey Demurred,” New York Times, May  11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com /2017/05/11 /us/politics /trump-comey-firing.html.

236

Notes to Pages 161–169

56. Veronica Stracqualursi and Paul LeBlanc, “Trump’s Replacement for Sessions Once Argued the Mueller Probe Goes Too Far,” CNN, November 8, 2018. 57. An updated Trump appointment tracker can be found at https://www.washingtonpost .com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/. 58. Jacqueline Alemany, “Donald Trump’s Science Office Is a Ghost Town,” CBS News, November 21, 2017, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trumps-science-office-is-a-ghost -town/; Suzy Khimm, “Number of OSHA Workplace Safety Inspectors Declines Under Trump,” NBC News, January 8, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/exclusive-number -osha-workplace-safety-inspectors-declines-under-trump-n834806. 59. Eric Katz, “Trump Cut 13k Federal Jobs in First Year, but 3 of His Recent Predecessors Outdid Him,” Government Executive, February 5, 2018, https://www.govexec.com/management /2018 /02 /trump - cuts -13000 -feds -first-year - shedding -fewer - several -recent-predecessors /145727/. 60. Alec MacGillis, “Is Anybody Home at HUD?,” ProPublica, August 22, 2017, https:// www.propublica.org /article/is-anybody-home-at-hud-secretary-ben-carson. 61. Safia Samee Ali, “Why Betsy DeVos Is Riling Up Education Advocates,” CNBC, February  7, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com /news/us-news/why-betsy-devos-riling-education -advocates-n716491. 62. Erica Green, “Betsy DeVos Calls for More School Choice, Saying Money Isn’t the Answer,” New York Times, March 29, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/us/politics / betsy-devos-education-school-choice-voucher.html. 63. Ewen MacAskill, “Rick Perry Forgets Agency He Wants to Scrap in Republican Debate Disaster,” Guardian, November 9, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/10 /rick-perry-forgets-agency-scrap. 64. Alex Kotch, “Rick Perry’s Early Days as Energy Secretary Have Been a Bonanza for Corporations and the Koch Brothers,” Salon, May 18, 2017, https://www.salon.com/2017/05/18 /rick-perrys - early- days -as - energy-secretary-have -been -a -bonanza -for- corporations -and -the-koch-brothers _partner/. 65. Ibid.

Chapter 11 1. Nancy Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding,”  Journal of Democracy  27, no 1 (2016): 5–19; Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018). 2. John Carey, Gretchen Helmke, Brendan Nyhan, and Susan Stokes, “Results of the Bright Line Watch U.S. Democracy Survey,” Bright Line Watch, accessed November 11, 2018, http:// brightlinewatch.org /results-from-the-bright-line-watch-u-s-democracy-survey/. 3. Sarah Binder, Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Douglas L. Kriner and Eric Schickler, Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 4. Fred Greenstein, The Presidential Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 5. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, Competitive Authoritarianism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 6. Robert  C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, Thomas  B. Pepinsky, Kenneth  M. Roberts, and Richard Valelly, “The Trump Presidency and American Democracy: A Historical and

Notes to Pages 169–172

237

Comparative Analy sis,”  Perspectives on Politics 2018, https://doi .org / 10.1017/S153759 2718003286, 7. 7. Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia Falleti, and Adam Sheingate, “Historical Institutionalism in Political Science,” in The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism, ed. Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia Falleti, and Adam Sheingate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 3–30. 8. Robert Mickey, Paths out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in Amer ica’s Deep South, 1944–1972 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Desmond King and Robert Lieberman, “Ironies of State Building: A Comparative Perspective on the American State,” World Politics 61 (2009): 547–88; Desmond King and Rogers Smith, “Racial Orders in American Political Development,” American Political Science Review 99, no.  1 (2005): 75–92. 9. Vesla Weaver and Joe Soss, “Learning from Ferguson: Welfare, Criminal Justice, and the Political Science of Race and Class,” in The Double Bind: The Politics of Racial and Class Inequalities in the United States, ed. Juliet Hooker and Alvin Tillery (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2016). 10. For another critique of behavioral work in this vein, see Joseph Lowndes, Julie Novkov, and Dorian Warren, eds., Race and American Political Development (London: Routledge, 2008). 11. Weaver and Soss, “Learning from Ferguson,” 94. 12. James Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 13. Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz, “Comparative Perspectives on Inequality and the Quality of Democracy in the United States,” Perspectives on Politics 9 (2011): 841–56. 14. Duane Swank, “Political Institutions and Welfare State Restructuring: The Impact of Institutions on Social Policy Change in Developed Democracies,” in The New Politics of the Welfare State, ed. Paul Pierson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 197–237. 15. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950). 16. Desmond King, “Forceful Federalism against American Racial Inequality,” Government and Opposition 52 (2017): 356–82. 17. Mickey, Paths out of Dixie. 18. Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, “Introduction,” in Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin Amer ica, ed. Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 1–32. 19. Julia Azari and Jennifer Smith, “Unwritten Rules: Informal Institutions in Established Democracies,” Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 1 (2012): 37–55. 20. Ibid., 49. 21. Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die. 22. Joseph Cooper, “The Balance of Power Between Congress and the President: Issues and Dilemmas,” in Congress Reconsidered, 11th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2017), 357–98. 23. Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow, Legacies of Losing in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 24. David Miller Dewitt, quoted in Sidney M. Milkis and Michael Nelson, The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2011, 6th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2012), 187. 25. Tulis and Mellow, Legacies of Losing in American Politics, 186.

238

Notes to Pages 172–179

26. Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam, Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 27. Cas Mudde, On Extremism and Democracy in Europe (London: Routledge, 2016). 28. Paul Lucardie, “Prophets, Purifiers, and Prolocutors: Towards a Theory on the Emergence of New Parties,” Party Politics 6, no. 2 (2000): 175. 29. Mark Blyth, “Global Trumpism: Why Trump’s Victory Was 30 Years in the Making and Why It Won’t Stop Here,” Foreign Affairs, November 15, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs .com/articles/2016-11-15/global-trumpism. 30. Ibid. 31. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Keith Whittington, “Interpose Your Friendly Hand: Political Support for the Exercise of Judicial Review by the United States Supreme Court,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 4 (2005): 583–96. 32. Diane Kapiszewski and Matthew Taylor, “Doing Courts Justice? Studying Judicial Politics in Latin America,” Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 4 (2008): 741–67. 33. Gretchen Helmke and Jeffrey Staton, “The Puzzling Judicial Politics of Latin America: A Theory of Litigation, Judicial Decisions, and Interbranch Conflict,” in Courts in Latin America, ed. Gretchen Helmke and Julio Rios-Figuroea (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 306–31. 34. Juan Linz, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” Journal of Democracy 1, no. 1 (1990): 51–69. 35. Gretchen Helmke, “Could Trump Set Off a Constitutional Crisis? Here’s What We Can Learn from Latin Amer ica,” Monkey Cage, Washington Post, April  25, 2017, https:// www.washingtonpost .com /news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04 /25/will-president-trump-set-off - a - constitutional - crisis - heres -what -we - can - learn - from - latin - america / ? utm _ term​=​ .72c13d60e1ba. 36. Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 37. King and Smith, “Racial Orders in American Political Development.” 38. Daniel Slater, “Democratic Careening,” World Politics 65, no. 4 (2013): 729–63.

Chapter 12 1. Brian Klaas, The Despot’s Apprentice: Donald Trump’s Attack on Democracy (London: Hurst, 2017); David Frum, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (New York: Harper, 2018); Robert Jervis, Francis J. Gavin, Joshua Royner, and Diane Labrosse, eds., Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the TwentyFirst Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); David Cay Johnston, It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018); Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right (New York: Liveright, 2018); Cass  R. Sunstein, ed., Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America (New York: Dey Street, 2018). 2. John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck, Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018); James E. Campbell, “Forecasting the 2016 American National Elections,” PS: Political Science and Politics 49, no. 4 (2016): 649–54. See also the various forecast models published in the same issue of PS. 3. All the data in this paragraph are from CNN’s 2016 Exit Polls, http://www.cnn.com /election/results/exit-polls.

Notes to Pages 180–182

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4. Terry M. Moe and William G. Howell, “Unilateral Action and Presidential Power: A Theory,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1999): 850–72; Sarah Binder, “The Dysfunctional Congress,” Annual Review of Political Science 18 (2015): 85–101; Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism (New York: Basic Books, 2012). 5. Jason Zengerle, “How the Trump Administration Is Remaking the Courts,” New York Times Magazine, August  22, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com /2018/08/22/magazine /trump-remaking-courts-judiciary.html. 6. White House Transition Project, http://www.whitehousetransitionproject.org /appoint ments/; Philip Rocco, “The Policy State and the Post-truth Presidency,” this volume. 7. Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks; Binder, “Dysfunctional Congress”; but see also David  R. Mayhew, The Imprint of Congress (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). 8. Suzanne Mettler, “The Policyscape and the Challenges of Contemporary Politics to Policy Maintenance,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 2 (2014): 369–90; Steven M. Teles, “Kludgeocracy in America,” National Affairs 17 (Fall 2013): 97–114. 9. Paul Pierson, “The Costs of Marginalization: Qualitative Methods in the Study of American Politics,” Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 2 (2007): 145–69. 10. Richard M. Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Strug gle for Black Enfranchisement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Desmond King, Robert C. Lieberman, Gretchen Ritter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Democratization in America: A Comparative-Historical Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Robert Mickey, Paths out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in Amer ica’s Deep South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 11. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018). 12. William E. Connolly, Aspirational Fascism: The Strug gle for Multifaceted Democracy Under Trumpism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017); David Runciman, How Democracy Ends (New York: Basic Books, 2018). 13. Francis Fukuyama, “Is American Democracy Strong Enough for Trump? The Case Against Panic,” Politico, January  23, 2017, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01 /donald-trump-american-democracy-214683; E.  J. Dionne  Jr., Norman  J. Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann, One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet-Deported (New York: St. Martin’s, 2017); Michael Nelson, Trump’s First Year (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018). 14. Brian F. Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta, “Understanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism,” Political Science Quarterly 133, no. 1 (2018): 9–34; Nicholas A. Valentino, Carly Wayne, and Marzia Oceno, “Mobilizing Sexism: The Interaction of Emotion and Gender Attitudes in the 2016 US Presidential Election,” in “The Psychology of Politics and Elections,” special issue, Public Opinion Quarterly 82 (2018): 213–35; Stephen J. Morgan and Jiwon Lee, “The White Working Class and Voter Turnout in the U.S. Presidential Elections, 2004–2016,” Sociological Science 4 (November 2017): 656–85; Larry M. Bartels, “Partisanship in the Trump Era,” Journal of Politics 80, no. 4 (2018): 1483–94. 15. Dionne, Ornstein, and Mann, One Nation After Trump; Sarah Binder, “How to Waste a Congressional Majority: Trump and the Republican Congress,” Foreign Affairs 97 (January/ February 2018): 78–96.

240 Notes to Pages 182–186 16. Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, Thomas B. Pepinsky, Kenneth M. Roberts, and Richard Valelly, “The Trump Presidency and American Democracy: A Historical and Comparative Analysis,” Perspectives on Politics 17, no. 2 (2019): 470–79; Adam Sheingate, “Donald Trump and the End of American Politics,” this volume. 17. Theda Skocpol, “Analyzing American Political Development as It Happens,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, ed. Richard M. Valelly, Suzanne Mettler, and Robert C. Lieberman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 48–68. 18. Kimberly J. Morgan, “Comparative Politics and American Political Development,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, ed. Richard M. Valelly, Suzanne Mettler, and Robert C. Lieberman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 166–84. See also Robert C. Lieberman, “The ABCs of Political Development: Notes Toward an ABCD Manifesto,” SSRN, 2018, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract _id​=​3141778; Alfred Stepan and Juan J. Linz, “Comparative Perspectives on Inequality and the Quality of Democracy in the United States,” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 4 (2011): 841–56. 19. Lieberman et al., “The Trump Presidency and American Democracy.” 20. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 21. Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); Frances E. Lee, Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 22. Nolan McCarty, “The Policy Effects of Political Polarization,” in The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism, ed. Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 223–55. 23. Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks. 24. Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1885); American Political Science Association, “ Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Report of the Committee on Political Parties,” American Political Science Review 44, no. 3 (supplement) (1950). 25. Juan J. Linz, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” Journal of Democracy 1, no. 1 (1990): 51–69. 26. Ira Katznelson, Kim Geiger, and Daniel Kryder, “Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933–1950,” Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 2 (1993): 283–306; Sean Farhang and Ira Katznelson, “The Southern Imposition: Congress and Labor in the New Deal and Fair Deal,” Studies in American Political Development 19, no. 1 (2005): 1–30; David A. Bateman, Ira Katznelson, and John S. Lapinski, Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction (New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). 27. Jefferson Cowie, The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 28. David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974); R. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 29. Eric Schickler, Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932– 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 30. Lee, Beyond Ideology.

Notes to Pages 187–190

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31. Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks; Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 2016); Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, “The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 3 (2016): 681–99. 32. Kenneth R. Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government and Why We Need a More Power ful Presidency (New York: Basic Books, 2016); Zachary Callen, “State-Building as Parlor Trick: Trump, the Executive Branch, and the Politics of Deconstruction,” this volume. 33. Julia Azari, “The Scrambled Cycle: Realignment, Political Time, and the Trump Presidency,” this volume. 34. David  R. Mayhew, “Wars and American Politics,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no.  3 (2005): 473–93. 35. Fredrick C. Harris and Robert C. Lieberman, eds., Beyond Discrimination: Racial Inequality in a Post-Racist Era (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013); Gwendoline Alphonso, “ ‘One People, Under One God, Saluting One American Flag’: Trump, the Republican Party, and the Construction of American Nationalism,” this volume. 36. Although working-class whites are perhaps Trump’s most vocal supporters, he was carried to victory in 2016 by voters with higher incomes—though less education—than those who voted for Clinton. See Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu, “It’s Time to Bust the Myth: Most Trump Voters Were Not Working Class,” Washington Post, June 5, 2017, washingtonpost .com /news /monkey - cage /wp /2017/06 /05 /its -time -to -bust-the -myth -most-trump -voters -were-not-working-class/?utm _term​=​.0e0a86adb0bd. On Trump’s cabinet, see Henry  C. Jackson, “Trump’s Cabinet by the Numbers: White, Wealthy and Light on Women,” Politico, January. 24, 2017, politico.com/ blogs/donald-trump-administration/2017/01/trumps-cabinet -by-the-numbers-234117. 37. See Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum Amer ica (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 38. Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: New Press, 2016). 39. Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth- Century Amer ica (New York: Norton, 2005); Linda Faye Williams, The Constraint of Race: Legacies of White Skin Privilege in Amer ica (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Fredrick C. Harris and Robert C. Lieberman, “The Return of Racism? Race and Inequality After Charlottesville,” Foreign Affairs, August  21, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles /united-states/2017-08-21/return-racism; Katherine Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Daniel  J. Galvin and Chloe  N. Thurston, “The Limits of Policy Feedback as a Party-Building Tool,” this volume. 40. Dankwart Rustow, “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2, no. 3 (1970): 337–63.

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Notes to Pages 190–193

41. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971). 42. Valelly, The Two Reconstructions; Elaine Weiss, The Women’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (New York: Viking, 2018); Jennifer Hochschild, Jacqueline Chattopadhyay, Claudine Gay, and Michael Jones-Correa, eds., Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 43. Kathleen Thelen, “Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1999): 369–404; Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 4 (2004): 725–40. 44. Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die. 45. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Roger S. Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993). 46. Joanne B. Freeman, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018). 47. Valelly, The Two Reconstructions. 48. Ira Katznelson, “Structure and Configuration in Comparative Politics,” in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, ed. Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan  S. Zuckerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 81–112. 49. Robert  C. Lieberman, “Ideas, Institutions, and Interests: Explaining Political Change,” American Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (2002): 697–712; Orren and Skowronek, Search for American Political Development.

Contributors

William D. Adler is assistant professor of political science at Northeastern Illinois University. His teaching and research examines the American presidency, public policy, and American political development. He has published articles in Political Science Quarterly, Studies in American Political Development, Journal of Policy History, and Presidential Studies Quarterly. Gwendoline Alphonso is associate professor of politics at Fairfield University. Her work focuses on state-society relations, particularly the intersection of culture and morality with political development and law. Her articles have appeared in various journals and venues, such as Studies in American Political Development, Polity, Journal of Policy History, and Journal of Southern Legal History. Her book Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Economic and Social Values in American Politics will be published in 2018. Julia R. Azari is associate professor of political science at Marquette University. She is the author of Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate (2014) and the coeditor of The Presidential Leadership Dilemma: Between the Constitution and a Political Party (2013). Her work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Social Science History, Social Science Quarterly, Political Communication, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She is a regular contributor to the political science blog Mischiefs of Faction on Vox.com and FiveThirtyEight.com. Zachary Callen is associate professor of political science at Allegheny College. He is the author of Railroads and American Political Development (2016)

244

Contributors

and coauthor of Local Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy (with Eric Oliver and Shang E. Ha, 2012). Megan Ming Francis is associate professor of political science at the University of Washington. Francis specializes in the study of American politics, race, and the development of constitutional law. She is the author of the award-winning book Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (2014). Daniel J. Galvin is associate professor of political science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. He is the author of Presidential Party Building: Dwight  D. Eisenhower to George  W. Bush (2010). Travis M. Johnston is assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. From 2015 to 2016, he worked for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee as part of the American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship Program. His research addresses questions relating to legislative institutions, policy making, and electoral politics. His research has been featured in Studies in American Political Development and Presidential Studies Quarterly. Andrew S. Kelly is assistant professor in the Department of Health Sciences at California State University, East Bay. His research is at the intersection of American political development and U.S. public policy, with a focus on health and science policy. His work has been published in, among others, the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law; the Forum; and Studies in American Political Development. Robert C. Lieberman is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of, among other books, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (1998) and Shaping Race Policy: The United States in Comparative Perspective (2005). He is a coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development (2016), Democratization in America: A Comparative-Historical Analysis (2009), and Beyond Discrimination: Racial Inequality in a Postracist Era (2013).

Contributors 245

Paul Nolette is associate professor of political science at Marquette University. His teaching and research interests focus on the dynamics of contemporary American federalism as well as the interplay between politics and law. He is the author of Federalism on Trial: State Attorneys General and National Policymaking in Contemporary America (2015). His work has also appeared in journals such as Publius: The Journal of Federalism; Law & Social Inquiry; and Polity. Philip Rocco is assistant professor of political science at Marquette University. His work focuses on the political economy of policy expertise and the politics of policy change. He is a coauthor of Obamacare Wars: Federalism, State Politics, and the Affordable Care Act (2016) and has published articles in journals such as Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law; Journal of Public Policy; and Political Science Quarterly. Adam Sheingate is professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy (2016) and a coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism (2016). His research focuses on American political development and comparative public policy. Chloe N. Thurston is assistant professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, specializing in American political development and the politics of public policy. She is the author of At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State (2018).

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures and tables.

AARP, 34, 137 abortion, 73, 101, 103, 151, 179 Adler, William, 8 administrative law judges (ALJs), 122–23 administrative state, 14, 19, 26, 119, 123, 129, 152, 156, 163 Affordable Care Act (ACA): design of, 73; policy drift in, 146; presumed electoral effects of, 31, 35–36; public opinion on, 147–48; “repeal and replace” effort, 8, 81, 110–11, 128, 130–31, 143–49, 153, 157, 167; Trump administration sabotage of, 146–47 African Americans: as Democratic Party constituency, 38, 60, 179; discrimination against, 4, 90–91, 96, 158; disenfranchisement of, 3, 175–76, 190, 192; economic exploitation of, 90; negative stereotypes of, 61–62; policies toward, 23–24; political mobilization of, 93–95; violence against, 89, 90, 92 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 119 Alexander, Lamar, 142, 231n65 Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, 191 Alphonso, Gwendoline, 6, 70, 75, 79, 188 alternative minimum tax, 118 alt-right, 6, 79. See also white supremacy American Creed, 75, 78, 79

American Health Care Act (AHCA), 137, 140–44, 228n20, 230n61 American Hospital Association (AHA), 141 American political development (APD): bottom-up approach, 88; definition, 3, 57; informal institutions in, 172; racial orders in, 58–61, 69–70; struggle for racial justice in, 7; use in studying Trump presidency, 3–6, 25, 57–58, 69, 87, 112, 128–29, 131, 169, 182–93 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, 32 America’s Essential Hospitals (AEH), 141 anti-analytic presidency, 116, 118, 128 anti-Semitism, 1, 6, 83, 85–86, 97, 189 Arpaio, Joe, 24, 86 articulation, politics of, 14–15, 19, 21–22, 103, 110 ascriptivism, 57, 58–59, 69–70, 74–75, 207–8n3 authoritarian enclaves, 3, 7, 171 Axelrod, David, 36 Azari, Julia, 6, 110, 171, 187 Balanced Budget Act of 1997, 138 Bannon, Steve, 81, 119, 152 Bensel, Richard, 155 Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), 143, 145 Birth of a Nation, The, 95, 218

248

Index

Black Lives Matter (BLM), 85–86, 97 Blyth, Mark, 173 border wall, 15, 82, 104, 105, 168, 173 Breitbart News, 22, 81 Buchanan, James, 14, 18 Bureau of Economic Analysis, 120 Bureau of Justice Statistics, 120 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 115, 119, 120, 124 Bureau of Printing and Engraving, 90 Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 120 Burleson, Albert, 90 Bush, George H. W., 61, 111 Bush, George W., 16, 21, 23, 73, 101, 104, 124; immigration proposal, 22; policies of, 37, 111, 118; as preemptive leader, 19; rhetoric of, 79; Trump criticism of, 68 Callen, Zachary, 8, 187 campaign finance, 41–42 Cantwell, Maria, 123 Capito, Shelley Moore, 144, 231n65 Carson, Ben, 161 Car ter, Jimmy, 14, 18, 19, 23, 44, 45, 105, 109–10, 205n21 Cassidy, Bill, 141–43 Census Bureau (U.S.), 90, 120, 121 Census of population (2020), 121–22, 129, 168 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally, 83, 85–86, 97, 189 Cheney, Richard, 21 China, 81–82, 155 Citizens United v. FEC, 76, 187 civil rights, 7, 19, 20, 21, 34; on Democratic Party agenda, 60; enforcement of, 38; NAACP activism on, 92–95; and national security state, 187; and political time, 23–25; Trump campaign pledge on, 62; Trump administration retrenchment of, 97; Woodrow Wilson views on, 90–91, 86–98 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 23 civil-rights movement, 23, 75, 86, 175–76 Civil Ser vice Commission, 91 Civil Ser vice Reform Act, 123

Civil War, 18, 23, 29, 35, 90, 174–76, 191–92, 193 Clean Water Act, 159 Cleveland Gazette, 92–93 Clinton, Hillary, 13, 16, 18, 35, 46–48, 68, 72, 78, 80, 81 Clinton, William J., 15, 16, 28–29, 73, 78, 118, 138 Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 87 Cohen, Elizabeth F., 3 Cohen, Larry, 47 Collins, Susan, 123, 145–46 Comey, James, 160 Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, 128 Confederate battle flag, 189 Congress (U.S.): action on opioid crisis, 128; analytical retrenchment in, 118–19; antilynching legislation in, 95; approval of, 77; as check on executive branch, 22, 185; credit claiming in, 32; decline in dominance of national affairs, 172; gridlock in, 180, 184, 186–87; party leaders in, 20; House Freedom Caucus influence in, 144; oversight capacity of, 160, 168; passage of budget reforms, 117; polarization in, 71, 186; presidential leverage over, 104–5; response to Trump’s proposed budget cuts, 120–21; response to Trump’s proposed civil-service reforms, 122; roll-call voting in, 69; violence in, 187 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, 117 Congressional Budget Office (CBO), 117–18, 128, 141 Congressional Research Ser vice (CRS), 119, 123 conservatism: and design of Affordable Care Act, 73; of House Freedom Caucus, 143–44; and judicial appointments, 81, 110–11; and policy expertise, 115–17; and power of federal government, 154, 156, 162; racial, 24, 103; and Republican coalition, 21–22, 56, 58–60, 63, 67, 79, 104, 110, 112; and repeal of the Affordable Care Act, 145, 149

Index 249 Constitution (U.S.), 3, 5, 87, 88, 91, 174, 175, 177, 183, 185, 188, 189 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), 35 Cooper, Joseph, 172 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), 48, 49, 52, 206n43 Corker, Bob, 81 Cornyn, John, 142 Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), 117, 124, 225n83 courts, 5, 82, 95, 104, 168, 174, 189. See also Supreme Court (U.S.) The Crisis, 91 Cruz, Ted, 21, 145 Dahl, Robert, 190 DeMint, Jim, 22 democracy, 1–4; careening of, 176–77; executive power as threat to, 186–88; fragility of, 180–82; development in U.S., 173–74; and federalism, 154; inequality as threat to, 188–91; and lynching, 89; norm breakdowns in, 191–92; and official statistics, 129; and partisan conflicts, 175; polarization as threat to, 184–86; Trump administration effects on, 163, 167–70 Democratic National Committee (DNC), 41, 42, 46–48, 50–51, 205n33, 206n43 Democratic National Convention, 43, 45–48, 50 Democratic Party: and central state authority, 153; civil-rights agenda of, 60; constituencies of, 38; electoral benefits from labor laws, 29; electoral defeats, 43, 44, 46; electoral victories, 23, 84; and Franklin Pierce, 18; and identity politics, 78; and liberal tradition, 73–74; and localism, 157–58; and neoliberalism, 73; and Obama presidency, 37; and policy feedback effects, 12, 28–39, 148–49; public attitudes toward, 48, 49, 52; and racial politics, 24; reform of, 12–13, 40–51; Southern veto in, 20; and stimuluslegislation feedback effects, 32 deregulation. See regulation

DeVos, Betsy, 19, 161 diagnosis related groups (DRGs), 137 Dillon, Jennifer O’Malley, 47 disjunction, politics of, 6, 14–15, 18–23, 26–27, 101, 103, 109–12, 187 Dixon, Thomas, 91, 95 Du Bois, W. E. B., 91–92 Dudziak, Mary, 5 Dukakis, Michael, 61–62 Economic Research Ser vice, 120 Education, U.S. Department of, 82 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 23, 65 elections. See midterm elections (U.S.); presidential elections (U.S.) Ellison, Keith, 47–48, 51 Energy, U.S. Department of, 161 Energy Information Administration, 120 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 82, 123, 125, 151, 153, 155, 159, 179 ethno-nationalism, 19, 25, 170, 172, 175. See also nationalism; racism evangelicals, 73, 179 executive branch: analytical capacity of, 117–18, 124, 128; growth of, 2, 6, 15; information asymmetries in, 160; Trump administration management of, 35, 152, 158–62 executive orders, 8, 24, 66, 105–8, 122–27, 155, 157, 159, 187 expertise, politics of, 114–29 Federal Advisory Committee Act, 4, 123, 125 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 160, 167, 176, 187 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 154, 162 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 78, 156 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, 122 federalism, 153–55, 157–58, 162, 169–70, 183, 185 Federalist Society, 111 Fifth Amendment, 125 filibuster, 4, 171, 187

250

Index

Financial Crisis of 2008, 32 Flake, Jeff, 80 Fording, Richard, 59 Fortune, T. Thomas, 89 Fourteenth Amendment, 189 Fox News, 130, 137 Francis, Megan Ming, 7, 170 Frank, Robert, 124 Fraser, Don, 45 Freedom of Information Act, 4 Galvin, Daniel, 6, 23, 132, 170, 189 gerrymandering, 4, 175 Gilded Age, 184 Gingrich, Newt, 186 Goldwater, Barry, 56, 59–60, 207n55 Gore, Al, 16 Gorsuch, Neil, 81, 105 Government Accountability Office (GAO), 119, 121 Graham, Lindsey, 37 Graham-Cassidy legislation, 141–42 Great Recession, 32, 37 Great Society, 19, 71, 73 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 117 Harris, DeAndre, 85 Harris, John F., 17 Hartz, Louis, 72–73 Hassett, Kevin, 124 Hatch, Orrin, 136 Hattam, Victoria, 57 Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), 136 Hecht, Gabrielle, 118 Heller, Dean, 144–45 Heritage Foundation, 22, 117, 143 Heyer, Heather, 85 Hochschild, Arlie, 189 Hoover, Herbert, 14–15, 18, 23, 103, 109–10 Hoover, J. Edgar, 187 Horton, Willie, 61–62 House Freedom Caucus, 119, 143–44 Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of, 153, 160

Huckabee, Mike, 21 Hunt Commission, 42, 44–46, 51 identity politics, 75, 77–78 immigration: Bush administration policies on, 22; Eisenhower administration policies on, 65; major party stances on, 24; Trump administration policies on, 5, 8, 78, 82, 103–5, 110–11, 121, 125, 129, 155–57, 170, 173, 180, 188–89 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 155 inclusive hegemonies, 190 inequality, 63, 91, 169–71, 173–74, 177, 184, 188–91, 193 institutional presidency, 117, 118, 119, 122, 129 institutions, 3, 4, 9, 16, 18, 41 Interior, U.S. Department of, 123, 125 Jackson, Andrew, 14–16, 20, 23 Jackson, Ketanji Brown, 123 Jefferson, Thomas, 14, 16 Jennings, Chris, 138 Jim Crow, 23, 88, 90 Johnson, Andrew, 19, 172 Johnson, James Weldon, 93 Johnson, Kimberly, 80 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 20, 30 Johnson, Myeshia, 86 Johnson, Ron, 145 Johnston, Travis, 6 Justice, U.S. Department of (DOJ), 86, 97, 123 Kaiser Family Foundation, 148, 149 Kapernick, Colin, 86 Kasich, John, 21, 141–44 Kavanaugh, Brett, 81 Kelly, Andrew, 8, 31 Kennedy, Edward M. (Ted), 44 Kennedy, John F., 20, 43 Kimmel, Jimmy, 128 Kliff, Sarah, 124 Kobach, Kris, 125 Kristol, William, 28 Ku Klux Klan, 95

Index 251 Kushner, Jared, 159 Kymlicka, Will, 77 labor unions, 29, 38, 116, 122, 179 Laing, Matthew, 113 law and order, 59–61, 79, 104–5 Lee, Frances, 186 Lee, Mike, 145 Lerman, Amy, 31, 34 Levitsky, Steven, 191 liberalism, 24, 70, 73, 74, 75, 78, 80, 154, 209n14 Lieberman, Robert, 9, 169, 171 Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, 35 Lincoln, Abraham, 14, 16, 19, 20, 23, 62, 103 Linz, Juan, 170, 175, 180, 185, 188 Lowi, Theodore, 111 Lowndes, Joseph, 57 Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 122 lynching, 7, 23, 88–98 mandates, presidential, 17, 113 Manigault, Omorosa, 96 marijuana, legalization of, 153, 156 Mayhew, David, 39 McCain, John, 68, 79, 146, 231 McCarthy, Eugene, 205n14 McConnell, Mitch, 83, 140, 142, 144 McGovern-Fraser Commission, 42–43, 47, 51 McGovern-Fraser reforms, 41, 43–46 Medicaid, 31, 81, 119, 135, 139–45, 147–48 Medicare, 30–31, 37–38, 71, 81, 130–31, 134–39, 146–47, 149–50, 228n26 Medicare Advantage, 136 Medicare Modernization Act, 37, 136 Mellow, Nicole, 172 Merit Systems Protection Board, 123 Mettler, Suzanne, 29 Mexicans, Trump rhetorical attacks on, 56, 61, 64–65, 72, 188 Michener, Jamila, 31 Mickey, Robert, 171 midterm elections (U.S.): of 1994, 73; of 2018, 15, 17, 28, 83, 84, 115, 148

Mondale, Walter, 46 Moore v. Dempsey, 95 Morgan, Kimberly, 183 motivated reasoning, 33 Mudde, Cas, 173 multiple-traditions thesis, 58, 72, 74 Mulvaney, Mick, 119 Murkowski, Lisa, 144, 146 Murray, Patty, 142 Muslim ban, 5, 24, 86, 168, 189. See also travel ban Muslims, Trump rhetorical attacks on, 56, 61, 65–66, 72, 78–79 Nackenoff, Carol, 88 Nash, Roy, 89 National Agricultural Research Ser vice, 120 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 23, 88–98 National Association of Colored Women, 90 National Association of Medicaid Directors, 142 National Center for Education Statistics, 120 National Center for Health Statistics, 120 National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 120 National Climate Assessment, 125 National Equal Rights League, 90 National Football League, 24, 84, 86 nationalism, 1, 7, 15, 55–58, 61, 62, 65, 67, 79, 85, 97, 173. See also ethno-nationalism National Review, 21 National Security Council, 117 nativism, 7, 125, 172, 173, 187–89 neoliberalism: ascriptive, 56–67, 208n6; definition of, 209n13; of Democratic Party elites, 73, 75; of Republican Party elites, 70, 73, 76, 81, 208n11; of Trump administration policies, 81–84 neoliberal paternalism, 59 neo-Nazis, 85 net neutrality, 154, 162 Neustadt, Richard, 102

252

Index

New Deal, 21, 23, 25–26, 38, 63, 71, 73, 88 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, 174 Nixon, Richard, 15, 19, 24, 43, 60, 63–64, 79, 117 Nolette, Paul, 7, 55 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 71 Novkov, Julie, 88 Obama, Barack: and 2008 primaries, 46; electoral coalition of, 78; immigration policy of, 155–56; and party building, 35–37; policy accomplishments of, 8, 35, 73, 112; and policy feedback, 32; and preemptive politics, 16; and racialization of American politics, 24; as reconstructive leader, 112; response to police brutality, 86; stimulus package of, 118 Obamacare. See Affordable Care Act (ACA) Obamacare Repeal and Reconciliation Act (ORRA), 143, 145 Obergefell v. Hodges, 21 Oberlander, Jonathan, 138, 147 Occupy Wall Street, 75 Office of Management and Budget, 117 Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, 120 Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), 118 Operation Wetback, 61, 65 Orren, Karen, 115 Pai, Ajit, 162 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 187 partisanship, 4, 6, 17, 22–23, 26, 33, 49, 131, 147, 160, 179, 184–86 party building, 28–39 Patashnik, Eric, 131, 222 Patton, Lynne, 160 Paul, Rand, 145 Peck, Justin, 222 Pelosi, Nancy, 16 Pence, Mike, 21, 101 Perez, Tom, 47–48, 50 Perry, Rick, 161 Pierce, Franklin, 14, 18, 23, 103, 109–10 Planned Parenthood, 71, 103

polarization: in antebellum period, 18; in Congress, 4, 6, 71, 186; and democratic stability, 184–85; among mass public, 8, 69, 71, 74, 79–80, 83; and norm violations, 171; among party elites, 69, 71–74, 83; and policy evaluations, 33; and policy maintenance, 30–31; and presidentialism, 175; racial, 24, 177; tribal, 184–85 policy feedback, 29–30, 32, 38–39, 132, 189 policy state, 8, 115–16, 122, 180 political parties: realignment of, 16–24; reform of, 40–51; weakness of, 22, 26, 186. See also Democratic Party; partisanship; party building; Republican Party political science, organization of knowledge in, 168–69, 181 political time, 6, 13–14, 16–17, 18–20, 22–26, 102, 112 popu lism, 7, 8, 15, 80, 101, 113, 114, 119, 150, 172–74, 177, 188, 190 Portman, Rob, 21, 144–45 Post Office, U.S. Department of, 90–91 preemption, politics of, 15–16, 19, 24, 103, 112 presidential elections (U.S.): of 1860, 175; of 1968, 41–42; of 1980, 42, 44; of 2008, 46; of 2016, 4, 13, 14, 16, 17, 24, 25, 34, 40, 46, 48, 49, 70, 71, 80–81, 130, 142, 159, 160, 172–73, 179, 182 presidential systems, 175, 185 President’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PACEI), 125, 129, 175 Progressive Era, 116, 117 race absorption thesis, 60 racial orders, 5, 25 racial politics: and civil rights, 4–5, 7, 23–25, 90–98; and Republican Party ideology, 55–67, 70, 79–80; during Trump administration, 86–87, 170–71, 173, 175, 189 racism: of Donald Trump, 5, 7, 83, 87, 96–97, 188–89; and state violence, 87–96; of Woodrow Wilson, 91 Rankine, Claudia, 87

Index Reagan, Ronald: as anti-analytic president, 116, 118; comparisons with Donald Trump, 103–5, 112; first inaugural speech, 73; racial rhetoric of, 61, 79; as reconstructive president, 15, 19, 103, 111 Reagan Revolution, 38 realignment, 13, 15, 16–17, 22, 25, 37 Reconstruction, 23, 88 reconstructive politics, 14–15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26–27, 102–3, 111–12 regulation, 66, 82, 104–5, 118, 119, 124–25, 137, 147, 154, 159, 179, 191 Reid, Harry, 36 republicanism, 6 Republican National Committee (RNC), 72 Republican National Convention, 40, 60, 110, 188 Republican Party: consolidation of electoral gains, 175; election losses, 79; election victories, 17; ideology of, 7, 24, 55–67, 75–76; and public-sector retrenchment, 73, 155; relationship with Donald Trump, 14–15, 22–23, 71–72, 81–84, 110–11, 157; reliance on white Southern voters, 80; and repeal of the Affordable Care Act, 33–34, 138–50, 157, 167; reform efforts, 204; responsiveness to the median voter, 186; tensions within, 20–21, 70, 136, 143–44, 150; weakness of, 21–22 resentment, racial, 24, 79, 172, 174, 189–90, 193 Roberts, John, 4 Rocco, Philip, 8, 180 Roe v. Wade, 151 Rogin, Michael, 208n3 Romney, Mitt, 79 Roose velt, Franklin Delano, 14, 23, 102, 117 Roose velt, Theodore, 20, 21, 25, 102, 103–5 Ross, Wilbur, 121 Roth, Steven, 160 Rove, Karl, 37 Rustow, Dankwart, 190 Ryan, Paul, 19, 76, 79, 82, 83, 130, 137, 150

253

sanctuary cities, 82, 125, 154, 156 Sanders, Bernie: efforts to reform DNC, 46–48, 50–51; supporters of, 48, 49 Sanders, Sarah Huckabee, 128 Sandoval, Brian, 142–44 Santorum, Rick, 21 Sasse, Ben, 80 Schickler, Eric, 38 school choice, 62–63 Schram, Sanford, 31, 59 Schumer, Charles F., 16, 140 Senior Executive Ser vice (SES), 118, 123 Sessions, Jeff, 97, 156, 161 Sheingate, Adam, 8–9 Shelby County v. Holder, 4, 38 Siegel, Bruce, 141 Silent majority, 63 Silent Protest Parade (1917), 93, 94 Skowronek, Stephen, 13, 15–16, 18, 26, 102, 104, 109, 115 Slater, Daniel, 176–77 slavery, 7, 19, 88, 171, 191 Smith, Hoke, 90 Smith, Jennifer, 171 Smith, Rogers M., 74, 207 Snyder, Rick, 141–42, 144 social movements, 7, 86–88, 97 Social Security, 34, 71, 81, 111, 138 SoRelle, Mallory, 29 Soss, Joe, 31, 59, 170 South (U.S.): authoritarian enclaves in, 3, 171; in Democratic Party, 20, 60, 185; racial violence in, 89; in Republican Party, 13, 56, 60, 64, 80, 186; and Trump presidency, 96, 189; and Woodrow Wilson presidency, 90–91, 96 Southern strategy, 56, 60, 63, 67, 79 stability, of public policy, 132–34, 138 state-building, 88, 96–97, 151–63, 181, 183 state capacity, 116, 153, 170 state of exception, 5 Statistics of Income, 120 Stepan, Alfred, 170 superdelegates, 42, 45–47, 50–51 Supreme Court (U.S.), 5, 21, 76, 81, 94, 104–5, 122, 168, 187

254

Index

Swank, Duane, 170 Swing, Joseph M., 65 Tancredo, Tom, 22 tax cuts, 28, 29, 32, 37, 39, 81, 82, 101, 103, 110, 114, 118, 124, 162, 167 Taylor, Linda, 61 Tesler, Michael, 24 Thomas, Bill, 138 Thurston, Chloe, 6, 132, 170, 189 time, as dimension of politics, 3–6. See also political time Trans-Pacific Partnership, 104 travel ban, 15, 82, 104, 105, 168. See also Muslim ban Treasury, U.S. Department of, 91 Trotter, Monroe, 95 Trump, Donald J.: allegations of Russian collusion, 160, 176; ascriptive neoliberalism of, 56, 61, 62–67; budget policies of, 81, 119–21; criminal justice policies of, 156; disregard for official statistics, 114–15; environmental policies of, 151; executivebranch leadership, 8, 81, 82, 121–23, 124–28, 152, 153–54, 159–61, 188; executive orders of, 104, 106–8, 124–28; far-right interactions with, 79; election victory of, 6, 13, 17, 18, 34, 41, 80, 142, 179; immigration policy of, 5, 15, 82, 121, 155, 156, 170; judicial appointments of, 81, 179; norm violations of, 15, 68, 158–59, 167, 191–92; in political time, 6, 16, 19, 21, 25–26, 103–4, 109–12; policy accomplishments, 105, 167–68; public approval of, 81, 83; racism of, 5, 6, 7, 24, 78–79, 83, 86, 87, 96–97, 175; relationship to Republican Party orthodoxy, 21–22, 23, 56, 68–69, 70, 76, 101–3; rhetorical style of, 1, 4, 5, 7, 57, 62–67, 72; and repeal of the Affordable Care Act, 8, 146–49, 157; tax policies of, 8,

37; trade policies of, 8, 71, 76, 81, 101, 155; Twitter usage of, 5, 83–84, 109 Trump, Ivanka, 159 Trump International Hotel, 159 Trumpism, 2, 14, 57, 67, 68, 173, 178, 182–83, 190, 192 Trump Organization, 159–60 Trump v. Hawaii, 5, 104 Tulis, Jeffrey, 172 Tuskegee Institute, 90 Vardaman, James, 90, 218 Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office, 125 violence, 43, 156, 167, 191; racial, 85–98, 187 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 4, 23, 38, 121 Walker, Scott, 21 Washington, Booker T., 91 Wasserman Schultz, Debbie, 205n33 Weaver, Kent, 138 Weaver, Vesla, 31, 170 welfare queen, 61, 79 Wells, Ida B., 89 Wesleyan Media Project, 148 Whiskey Rebellion, 191 White House Office of Science and Technology, 161 white supremacy, 6, 74, 79, 83, 85–88, 90–91, 97, 167, 175, 185 Williams, Walter, 116, 118 Wilson, James Q., 71 Wilson, Woodrow, 7, 15, 24, 88, 90–96, 218–19n38 Wood, Gordon, 74 Works Progress Administration, 32 World War I, 187 World War II, 169, 175, 181, 187, 189 Ziblatt, Daniel, 171