Whether you like it or not, U.S. President Donald Trump has been the most important figure in the country’s political scene for nearly a decade. By this point, we’ve had plenty of time to judge the man, and two things about him are now abundantly clear. First, his political appeal was underestimated from the start, and he has become a more effective politician over time. Despite chronic lying, broken pledges, felony convictions, sex offenses, and a demonstrated willingness to trash any norm that might deny him what he wants, he has remade the Republican Party in his image, and he won reelection in 2024 despite his dismal first-term performance. He is now attempting the most radical transformation of American politics in the nation’s history, an authoritarian takeover that is well underway and may succeed.

The second thing we’ve learned about him is that he’s a terrible policymaker, whose combination of ignorance, impulsiveness, and preference for loyalty over competence has repeatedly led him to make foolish decisions. He’s turned out to be much better at concentrating power, enriching himself, and coercing vulnerable targets than at developing and implementing constructive initiatives that would benefit the United States as a whole.

Whether you like it or not, U.S. President Donald Trump has been the most important figure in the country’s political scene for nearly a decade. By this point, we’ve had plenty of time to judge the man, and two things about him are now abundantly clear. First, his political appeal was underestimated from the start, and he has become a more effective politician over time. Despite chronic lying, broken pledges, felony convictions, sex offenses, and a demonstrated willingness to trash any norm that might deny him what he wants, he has remade the Republican Party in his image, and he won reelection in 2024 despite his dismal first-term performance. He is now attempting the most radical transformation of American politics in the nation’s history, an authoritarian takeover that is well underway and may succeed.

The second thing we’ve learned about him is that he’s a terrible policymaker, whose combination of ignorance, impulsiveness, and preference for loyalty over competence has repeatedly led him to make foolish decisions. He’s turned out to be much better at concentrating power, enriching himself, and coercing vulnerable targets than at developing and implementing constructive initiatives that would benefit the United States as a whole.

This combination of political adroitness and policymaking ineptitude is an unfolding tragedy, because Trump could have used his charisma and favorable position (GOP control of both houses of Congress and a sympathetic if not supine Supreme Court) to break through the logjams and dysfunction that have made it hard for recent presidents to address the serious problems that the country is facing. Had Trump used this opportunity constructively and in the service of different policies, he might have done much to “make America great again” and perhaps even merit his perennial claim to be one of the country’s greatest presidents.

But to paraphrase the Book of Common Prayer, Trump “[has] left undone those things which [he] ought to have done,; and [he has] done those things which [he] ought not to have done; and there is no health in [him].” And the United States........

© Foreign Policy