Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism

From two expert presidential scholars comes a new answer to why the Trump presidency happened: decades of partisanship and policies have centered the president as the sole focus of American government to create a treacherous system whose danger may far outlive the politics of Donald J. Trump

Donald Trump∍s presidency and the extraordinary events that led to his reelection in 2024 have changed how we understand the presidency—but this transformation was not of his own making. His unprecedented rise to power brazenly defies established constitutional norms and institutions, and Trump 2.0 promises another disruptive term. Yet, as Nicholas F. Jacobs and Sidney M. Milkis reveal, Trump’s brand of presidential politics is not merely a shocking departure from tradition, but a symptom of a constitutional disease that had has long afflicted the American polity. They call this condition presidentialism, a dangerous shift towards an executive-centered politics and government that places immense power in the hands of a single individual.

While some scholars of American politics view the Trump presidency as a cult of personality, Jacobs and Milkis argue that his unsettling ascent to the White House was decades in the making, the result of numerous cultural, institutional, and constitutional changes. From aggressively redeploying the federal government’s administrative powers, to using the tools of the modern presidency to undertake a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, the authors comprehensively detail Trump’s first presidential administration to understand the peril of a presidency-centered democracy. The disruptive features of Trump’s presidential politics should not be viewed as an ephemeral phenomenon, nor will the threat that presidentialism poses to American democracy end once he finally leaves office.

Subverting the Republic explains why Trump has reigned over American politics for nearly a decade and why his mastery threatens to deepen a crisis that tears at the fabric of the American constitution.

Nicholas F. Jacobs is assistant professor of government at Colby College. He is the coauthor of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America (with Daniel M. Shea) and What Happened to the Vital Center? Presidentialism, Populist Revolt, and the Fracturing of America (with Sidney M. Milkis).

Sidney M. Milkis is the White Burkett Miller Professor of the Department of Politics and Faculty Associate at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. He is the author of many books, including Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy from the University Press of Kansas.