A Chris Caldwell article is always a stimulating read, and that includes the new one that MBD has already flagged declaring the Trump movement over.
It has already occasioned some comment, with the main critical themes being:
1) Caldwell is wrong to think there ever was a “Trumpism” consisting of anything beyond what the man himself supports at any given moment. Caldwell writes, “The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base.” That’s not what the polls show. Nick Catoggio puts the point brutally:
Trump has disappointed his base on Iran only if you define his “base” as the postliberal intelligentsia. Caldwell’s claim reminds me of the old jab about how principled conservatism circa 2015 turned out to consist of little more than six guys debating each other in the Weekly Standard break room. In 2026, principled “America First-ism” extends not much further than the contacts list on Tucker Carlson’s iPhone.
2) What took you so long? Caldwell writes that
there are really only two safeguards against a rogue executive: first, the public must elect a public-spirited person of unimpeachable character, and, second, that person must honor the constitution. The Iran assault shows neither condition to be operative.
We had ample reasons to believe neither condition applied well before now. With the possible exception of Woodrow Wilson, no president has been as dismissive of the Constitution in public as Trump has been.
Another portion of Caldwell’s essay deserves more attention than it has gotten.
Contrary to its portrayal in the newspapers, Trumpism was a movement of democratic restoration. . . . The Trump movement is what happened when Americans discovered the system could not be reformed democratically, only dismantled. It was not a move against democracy, or even liberalism. In fact it was a return to the original constitutional understanding that Alexander Hamilton laid out in Federalist No. 70: Americans are led not by a class-based bureaucracy but by an executive they choose.
But a presidentially led democracy wasn’t the original constitutional understanding, even considering only Hamilton. And in fact the Founders generally used the word “leader” pejoratively.
If the Constitution were fundamentally about executive leadership, though, then the Iran policy would surely be in keeping with it.