Yuval Levin: You Can’t Run Government Through Retribution

Every modern presidency has started out as a reaction against the one that preceded it. A half-century ago, Jimmy Carter came to cleanse the sins of the Nixon era. Then Ronald Reagan promised a rejection of Carter’s malaise. George H.W. Bush sought to soften Reaganism’s harder edges. Bill Clinton offered the sympathy and warmth that Bush’s WASP frigidity had lacked. The younger Bush said he would restore some dignity in Clinton’s tawdry wake. Barack Obama stood for a sharp change of direction after Bush’s unpopular wars. Trump embodied a reaction against the radicalism of Obama’s second term. Biden offered normality after the unceasing frenzy of Trump’s first presidency. And Trump then came back, promising an assertive rebuke to Biden’s catatonic wokeism.

But Trump’s return is different, precisely because it is a return. Only one other president in our history has served one term, then sat one out stewing, and came back. When Grover Cleveland did it at the end of the nineteenth century, some dubbed his restoration “Cleveland’s revenge.” And Trump’s second term so far certainly has the feel of retribution too. At least as much as it has been shaped in response to the Biden administration, it has been guided by the lessons Trump and his team learned from their own first time around.