Do the people want a revolution?
The Trump administration thinks so. And now that they are in office, they are ready to oblige.
They seem to be off to a good start. As they move to cut or eliminate federal spending programs, their approval rating climbs. A recent CBS poll gave Trump a 53% approval rating, high for him. Harry Enten of CNN has noted that while Trump had a net positive rating for only 11 days in his first term, he has already surpassed that in his second, enjoying a net positive for all 21 days of his first three weeks in office.
But not all revolutions are created equal. Trump’s agenda – securing the border, cutting waste, removing biological males from women’s sports – may be popular. But that popularity could quickly vanish if he chooses the wrong revolutionary model for governing.
Will he choose the American or the French Revolution? Some historical context is in order.
The American Revolution was fought for carefully defined and delineated goals. The colonists rebelled to restore what they considered to be their rights as Englishmen. They did not rebel to overturn an established social order. They may have thrown English tea overboard, but they did not jettison English traditions or structures. American state legislatures discarded the monarchy but retained English models of representation. American courts retained the English common law and jury system.
After the Americans won their Revolutionary War, they designed a new federal government. In going about that task, they followed the advice of John Dickinson, who said: “Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us.” By “reason,” Dickinson meant abstract theory. The resultant Constitution incorporated a system of checks and balances, reflecting the lessons taught by history on how to safeguard liberty and order.
Like the American Revolution, the French Revolution also overthrew a monarchy. But beyond that, it reflects a very different model. The French Revolution ignited a conflagration. The Jacobins liquidated the royal family and much of the aristocracy. They eliminated the power of the Church. The Revolution impacted all aspects of French society, leading to the adoption of a new calendar, a new currency, and the metric system.
While the American Revolution exalted experience over abstract theory, the French Revolution deified “Reason.” The Cathedral of Notre Dame was transformed into a “Temple of Reason,” where a prostitute was installed on the altar as the “Goddess of Reason.”
The American Revolution generated a constitutional system which has endured, with few modifications, for 250 years. The French Revolution ushered in a Reign of Terror, which led to a dictatorship under Emperor Napoleon, which led ultimately to defeat and occupation.
The Trump administration, while correctly perceiving the public desire for revolutionary change, seems to be leaning more to the French than to the American Revolution as its model for governing. Rather than following the American Revolution example of carefully separating what is good and worthy of retention from what deserves to be discarded, they are following the French example. Throwing caution to the wind, they choose wholesale upheaval.
Of course, no one is about to dust off the guillotine and install it on the South Lawn. But where scalpels are warranted, the Trumpsters wield broadswords.
Trump’s team set the tone on their very first day in office, when the White House issued a full and complete pardon to nearly all those convicted for participating in the January 6 riot at the Capitol. The few not pardoned had their sentences commuted. Some of those let off the hook were non-violent, and were guilty of little more than simple trespass. Their sentences really were too severe. But others were violent offenders with long criminal records, including convictions for rape and domestic violence.
The American Revolution approach would have called for a careful, case-by-case examination, culminating in pardons or commutations for some, and not for others. But the new President adopted the kind of wholesale, dramatic approach favored by the French revolutionaries.
To an extent, this was simply laziness. Careful examination of individual cases takes work. “It would be very cumbersome to go and look,” Trump explained, “You know how many people we’re talking about? 1,500 people.”
But laziness was only part of the reason for this approach. Another part is the administration’s preference for the kind of indiscriminate action exemplified by the French Revolution. That kind of mentality says: “If the feudal system is evil and corrupt, then all aristocrats deserve the guillotine. There is no time or need for individual scrutiny.” The Trump team adopted the same approach but in reverse: “If some trespassers were otherwise law-abiding citizens caught up in an unexpected maelstrom, then all the rioters, even the most violent, deserve pardons. There is no time or need for individual scrutiny.”
The same approach emerged from the new administration’s deportation strategy. Shortly after the Inauguration, ICE arrested 1179 illegal aliens. It turned out that half of them had no prior criminal records. Most Americans would agree on the need to deport illegal aliens guilty of committing crimes, especially violent ones. But the Trump administration does not distinguish between those aliens, and aliens whose only crime was entering the country illegally.
And then there is USAID, an agency established during the height of the Cold War by President Kennedy to counter Soviet influence through the use of “soft power.” Thanks to the efforts of Elon Musk and his cadre of young investigators, the public has learned that this agency has funneled money into projects that do not advance American interests abroad. Many appear to be nothing more than attempts to export our own “woke” culture. For example: $1.5 million for DEI programs in Serbian workplaces; $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala; $2.5 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam.
But USAID also issues grants for combating malaria and HIV/AIDS worldwide. It has spent billions on international COVID-19 vaccine development. Terminating these grants will create a vacuum which China or some other unfriendly power may be all too willing to fill, thus winning the gratitude, and perhaps the allegiance, of the recipient countries .
As with the January 6 pardons and the ICE deportations, the USAID controversy should not be reduced to an “either-or” dilemma. Instead, it presents a problem deserving careful calibration. Cost effective programs which advance real American interests abroad, should be retained. Wasteful or trendy projects that reflect little more than a faculty lounge view of what a progressive society ought to look like, should be discontinued.
But that has not been the Trump administration’s approach. Instead, they shut down the USAID website, and ordered agency workers to stay home. A few days later, almost all of the 13,000 staff were placed on administrative leave. Elon Musk boasted on X: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
Wood chippers are just another version of guillotines, and Musk’s post is another example of how the Trump administration looks to the French Revolution rather than our own for guidance. And therein lies a danger, primarily for the country, but also for Trump himself.
President Trump’s early approval ratings, while higher than his first term, are lower than any of his predecessors, dating back to Eisenhower, at this stage in their presidencies. Much of this rather modest popularity may be due to the Democrats’ own incredible inability to read the room.
If the Trumpsters have become Jacobins, the Democrats have become royalist reactionaries, stubbornly and stupidly defending every sclerotic government program. But folly has its expiration dates. Democrats have suffered electoral debacles in the past, and have learned from their mistakes. The ultraliberal George McGovern led to the more moderate Jimmy Carter. Michael Dukakis was followed by the more moderate Bill Clinton, another Southern centrist. Sooner or later, the Democratic Party will wake up and figure out that DEI and biological men competing in women’s sports are not popular positions.
In short, Trump’s approval rating honeymoon is both slender and precarious. Any negative event — an international crisis, a poor economic report, a scandal involving him or an appointee –could quickly crash his numbers.
Adopting the French Revolution as a model for governance may seem exhilarating. Upheaval often is. But President Trump should not allow himself to be carried away. If he does, he may be carried all the way to Waterloo.
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