From the title of the opening chapter of The Ordinary Presidency of Donald J. Trump, Herbert, McCrisken and Wroe take pains to clarify that they are divorcing their book's premise of an “ordinary presidency” from the extraordinary President that is Donald J. Trump. This distinction is crucial to the central thesis of their work, and the authors emphasize the daylight between the presidential style and substance of the forty-fifth President. They agree that “it is unlikely that there has been a more unusual, unorthodox, unconventional, unordinary president” than Donald Trump (3). To underscore the point, there is a chapter devoted to arguments surrounding how his presidency is extraordinary. This is a view held by many, not least the man himself. With this in mind, three strands of response are offered below.

First, there is some validation in the proposal that aspects of Trump's presidential achievements are ordinary by Republican standards. In addition, the amount and content of presidential achievements of Trump (up to the time of the authors’ writing) could to some extent be considered ordinary, not least due to ongoing structural constraints. In relation to Supreme Court appointments, readers are reminded that the choices of socially conservative Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh were establishment picks. On the legislative front, the authors argue that “Trump followed a standard Republican agenda early in his presidency” (77). This is reasonable, not least when considered in relation to such priorities as the rejection of Obamacare and the desire to reduce taxes. Furthermore, the decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and the dismissal of conclusions reached by climate scientists did not put the President at odds with his party. It is true that Trump, unencumbered by political correctness, spoke to the GOP base more directly. Whilst alienating some of the Republican elite, his words and actions chimed with those of more conservative representatives. Looking at the executive actions carried out in the early days of the administration, from immigration to taxation to reproductive rights, again, Trump's action and outcomes can be said to have more or less adhered to a conventional Republican agenda.Footnote ¹

However, to only concentrate on the end (that is, some ordinary achievements) bypasses the consequences of the most extraordinary, and consequential, means. The book posits that the Trump presidency is ordinary precisely because Trump is so extraordinary; in other words, because he does not know how to be President, and does not engage with experts or trust the mechanics of policymaking. Hence, according to the book, Trump is achieving little. Be that as it may, and if we accept the end result that Trump has achieved little, there is still the significant issue of means, which were apparent from early in the 2016 campaign, and continued through his time in office. The authors argue that Trump continuously articulated an unusual rejection of basic democratic norms. Using soundbite slogans and Twitter spats, candidate Trump shared his disdain for the entire Washington swamp, as he saw it. The book informs us that “his verbal rejection of the establishment was all-encompassing, taking in politicians, interest groups, media, courts and many others” (84). Hence there was little that was ordinary about the means through which he communicated, both pre- and post-election. This is of great significance, even in the context of the relatively conventional set of early-days administration achievements. Without doubt, the nation was polarized well before the bitter 2016 election, but recent Republican predecessors did not pitch themselves against the “deep state” in the way that Trump did. The conspiracy-theory style of rhetoric fired up an already heaving base to new levels of incandescence. There was nothing ordinary about this.

Running a highly effective campaign, Trump demonstrated a canny knack for making voters felt heard. There was no question of a conventional poetry-to-prose transition for this candidate turned President. He campaigned in tweets and, to no one's great surprise, continued in this fashion once in the Oval Office. Many of his inexperienced predecessors were also obliged to learn on the job, but here again Trump provided an extraordinary example, rejecting expert input and surrounding himself with family members and yes-men and -women. Unlike others before him who struggled with complex policy detail or choices, his White House staff did not fill the void left by his own shortcomings.

The means by which Trump does, or doesn't, get his agenda in place are hugely consequential. To ignore the collateral damage of his efforts is to ignore the state of the nation in the early years of his administration. By the time of the book's publication, he may not have implemented all that he had hoped. Nonetheless, it is a hard case to make that his methods have not had a meaningful impact on the presidency, politics and the nation.

Third, in the Trump era, style and substance are conjoined. Attempts to surgically separate them are fraught with difficulty. When considering Trump's “ordinary” foreign policy, the authors argue that “there is a useful and important distinction to be made between the rather orthodox and ordinary approach and objectives of the Trump administration,” and the “often extraordinary rhetorical performance of President Trump” (187). In foreign policy, perhaps more than any other area, there tends to be some continuity from one administration to the next, regardless of party affiliation. Difficulty in turning the oil tanker is the stock explanation for this, and it remains true to an extent, even in these extraordinary times. However, as Hillary Clinton often states, in diplomatic affairs, “words matter.”Footnote ² And the weight of the presidential word is second to none. So to divorce Trump's foreign-policy words and deeds is a tricky task. The collaborative internationalist approach of his Democrat predecessor clearly did not appeal, and the “America First” rhetoric reassured supporters who were tired of their nation's oversized role on the world stage. So far, so ordinary. However, for the world to face a situation where the leader of the most powerful nation was a businessman and former reality-television star without a shred of knowledge or insight of world affairs was, by any measure, extraordinary.

Finally, there is the issue of what comes next. Clearly, this work only deals with the early days of what might be the first of two Trump terms. Whatever unknown unknowns are yet to come, it is difficult to envision the direction of a post-Trump presidency. A return to the ordinary might bring welcome relief to a nation living with the consequences of an extraordinary President. These are not ordinary times and Trump, whilst not the cause, is highly symbolic of the populist insurgency that has arisen in many Western nations. If he is more than a norm-buster, and has become a rule breaker, then this is not ordinary. Long before any impeachment inquiries came into view, the President was acting in a way that disregarded democratic and diplomatic norms. All modern Presidents personalize the presidency, but Trump has taken this to a new level. Hence those who vote for him and have remained loyal will do so no matter what. The Republican firewall, in this early period at least, remained in place. Therefore he may not yet have stood on Fifth Avenue and shot someone, but he has carried out what many consider to be impeachable offenses. As with all other aspects of his presidency, such issues have come to the fore very quickly, unlike those of predecessors who faced similar self-imposed challenges. The textbook time for political opponents to shout for impeachment is midway through the second term, not early in the first.

The 2016 election offered a prelude of what was to come, with attention relentlessly focussed on personalities and words, rather than mandates and policy detail. There are a number of ways in which Trump is not an ordinary Republican, starting with his record on issues when he was a private citizen and reality-television star. Based on interview and public utterances, he would have been more at home in the Democrat Party on matters of “moral values” if not on tax and the economy. His protectionist approach to trade is not in line with mainstream GOP thinking. And his anti-immigration stance does not chime with the party elite position that cheap labour benefits business. The authors have not tried to present Trump as an ordinary President. Even with this in mind, efforts to divorce the man and office are fraught with challenge. Donald Trump is a phenomenon. This is positive or negative, depending on one's perspective. The fact remains that he has interpreted and embraced his role in an incomparable way, and to separate out the man from the office is impossible. The blend is complete.

This is a tightly organized book structured around a defining assertion. Jon Herbert, Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Wroe seek to establish that the Trump presidency, if not the President himself, is “ordinary.” That is a brave claim and a full-frontal assault on conventional wisdom amongst both the President's supporters and his detractors. There are times, however, when conventional wisdom gets it right.

First, the authors make much of political “outputs” that they define as “substance, policy, deeds, action and promises kept.” These, they conclude, have been “mostly standard Republican fare” (8). It is certainly the case that if “outputs” are understood in terms of legislation, nominations and unilateral executive actions there has not been too much (with the conspicuous exception of some executive actions) that would not have also come to pass had a relatively conventional figure such as John Kasich or Marco Rubio survived the onslaught to which they were subjected in the 2016 primaries, beaten Hillary Clinton, and then formed an administration. Nonetheless, the authors offer a particularly narrow understanding of “outputs” and, for that matter, of “substance” (5). These amount to much more than formal deeds and also include forms of political mobilization, the capacity to set or block the agenda and the shaping of popular narratives. Arguably, these not only amount to rather more than “deeds” but have shifted markedly in character. Issues that have certainly played a part in shaping Republican politics over recent decades but often took a dog-whistle form are now way out in the open. Indeed, race and gender have become frontline weapons of political war.

Second, there has been more of an ideational shift than the authors are willing to acknowledge. Many of the economic discourses that defined the Trump campaign represent a break with the trajectory of American conservatism which had, prior to 2016, been structured around interpretations of Ronald Reagan's legacy and were encapsulated in former House Speaker Paul Ryan's plans to dismantle and erode the New Deal and Great Society state through, for example, the partial privatization of Medicare. In contrast, the Trump campaign gave pledges to protect and preserve Medicare and Social Security and despite the repeated efforts to destroy Obamacare and cut expenditure, fundamental entitlement reform and much of the particular neoliberal vision that underpinned successive Ryan plans appears to be off the agenda.Footnote ¹ Ryan's departure from Congress (and the closure of the Weekly Standard, the flagship neoconservative journal) marked a sea change in the tide of conservative opinion, or at least in that of the movement's elites.

It will be noted at this point that Trump is not always a man of his word. Indeed, is he ever? Despite the commitments to protect entitlements, the administration is instead engaged in a bitter war of attrition against them. As Herbert, McCrisken and Wroe quite accurately record, the Trump administration has not pursued a full-blown populist policy agenda. That, however, is populism for you. It is, as both Michael Freeden and Cas Mudde record in the most widely accepted representation of the term, a “thin-centred” ideology. As such, there isn't much to it ideationally. In practice, populism invariably combines with or is layered upon other “thicker” ideologies.Footnote ² In drawing together populism and nationalism with more orthodox Republican politics the Trump agenda is ordinarily populist.

Third, representations of Trump's presidency in terms of “ordinariness” highlight the pitfalls that await those who insist upon studying US politics in isolation.Footnote ³ Self-evidently, Trump is not only a populist conjurer but an American expression of a bigger and broader populist turn. The politics of the right are being dramatically and brutally reconfigured in both Europe and the US in order to mobilize the white working class around promises to protect their interests, demands to end immigration, and hopes of recapturing a mythic past whilst at the same time clinging on to many of neoliberalism's defining features. Despite overlaps, the populist parties mark a break with earlier generations of conservative and classical liberal politics. The logics set in motion during the 1980s are being restructured. If British politics are considered, Tommy Robinson is not simply an angrier and more streetwise Theresa May.

Fourth, the authors make much of the 2016 presidential vote. It was, they claim and like all else, nothing much out of the ordinary. It cannot, they assert, be regarded as a “critical” or realigning election. Although the authors rightly assert that many within the white working class (which can, of course, be defined by either education or income) have long been in the Republican camp, there is, however, a very considerable conceptual distance between asserting that an election had a realigning character and claiming it is “ordinary.” By presenting their readership with a binary choice, much is missed. The shorthand reason why Trump won in the Electoral College was because he secured the votes of established Republican voters (although some at that point backed him through gritted teeth) plus those of Democratic defectors who had voted for the Obama–Biden ticket just four years earlier. And he secured them in places that mattered. Some 14 percent of those whites without college degrees who had formerly backed the Democrats threw in their lot with Trump four years later and thus tipped the balance.Footnote ⁴ Not realignment in the classic sense perhaps, but significant nonetheless, and the Democrats’ hopes of regaining the White House depend in significant part on winning back this tranche of voters.

Herbert, McCrisken and Wroe throw a few more darts at the 2016 election but each lands a long way from the analytical bullseye. It is, they say, “notable … that Trump won a smaller proportion of the white male non-college graduates than Ronald Reagan did in 1984” (57). This is, of course, the case, but the comparison that is being drawn is with Reagan's landslide victory over Walter Mondale. There was nothing all that ordinary about 1984. And, they record, there was a parallel shift to the Republican ticket among nonwhites with low levels of educational attainment. True enough, but Obama secured particularly high votes within the minority electorate and so it is hardly a legitimate baseline.

Whether considered “critical” or not (and there is a good case for junking the entire typology), 2016 demonstrated, in a much more eloquent way than formerly, the capacity of Republican populism, structured around racially imbued and abrasively nationalist messages, to win a significant share of the white working-class electorate. In a celebrated comment made in 2012, Senator Lindsey Graham said, “The demographics race we're losing badly … [Republicans are] not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”Footnote ⁵ The year 2016 demonstrated that you quite possibly could.

There is a further consideration. “What about your methodology” is a predictable question invariably thrown around at social-science conferences. It is nonetheless worth asking of the authors, particularly given their treatment of foreign- and national-security policy. They argue that, as in domestic policy, the Trump administration has followed a “mainstream” Republican policy agenda by pursuing “peace through strength” (193–94). This is worthy of comment. “Peace through strength” is not much of a methodological yardstick and certainly not a basis for assessing the character of US foreign and defense policy at any given point in time. Despite the ideological brickbats thrown by the right and the invariable representations of Barack Obama and his Democratic presidential predecessors as craven appeasers, who, it might well be asked, has not sought to pursue American strength? In reality, “peace through strength” is so imprecise and opaque that it is incapable of capturing any shift in a nation's foreign-policy stance. Measured in this way, ’twas ever thus.

It has, of course, been noted that despite the periodic mumblings and grumblings of the commander in chief, the alliances around which Western security is structured and the institutions of the postwar liberal internationalist order remain intact. Nonetheless, as the literature associated with historical institutionalism suggests, formal structures may remain intact, but if those structures are considered in terms of their context and impact, there may well have been substantive, indeed transformative, change.Footnote ⁶ The logic of “America First” has been most acutely felt in those nations on NATO's front lines and amongst the US's Asian allies and partners. Collective security may still formally be in place but the guarantees upon which it rests have been substantially degraded.

There is a final twist in the tale if we go beyond the book's coverage and consider the unfolding events of 2020. Trump's personal extraordinariness was, of course, on display at every turn as the US struggled with COVID-19. Nonetheless, as the crisis developed, there was in some ways a weary sense of “here we go again.” The structural incapacities of the American state apparatus, so rightly highlighted by the denizens of American Political Development, were again cruelly highlighted as they had been at the time of Hurricane Katrina. This is not ordinariness in the sense that Herbert, McCrisken and Wroe intend. Instead, while Trump undoubtedly added to the federal government's incapacities and at the same time sought to mobilize anti-lockdown protestors, the federal government's floundering in the face of the pandemic was a reminder that the state remains the “hapless administrative giant” that Stephen Skowronek once memorably described.Footnote ⁷ If the authors had sought to chart the “ordinariness” of the state's capacity to address crisis and risk, instead of constructing a narrative around the President and presidency, their reworked thesis might have proved more compelling.

The authors of The Ordinary Presidency have reached what appears to be a simple, yet provocative, conclusion only about halfway through Donald Trump's first term: that the Trump presidency is ordinary. Indeed, one might question whether it is too soon to make this case. But, once we look closer, it does seem possible to reach this conclusion so early even if, only a short time after its publication, there are already new questions that the authors might need to address. Their theory rests on a key distinction: that there is a difference between a President – the person – and a presidency. They define the presidency, loosely, as the administration's strategies and accomplishments, so this conclusion is based on an evaluation of the Trump administration's effectiveness in implementing a domestic and international policy agenda through legislation or executive action. In that regard, his administration has seen limited success because the extraordinary approaches taken by Trump are simply ineffective. And since his tactics are unlikely to change, it seems improbable that he will start to produce legislative victories.

The authors stress that, even if the Trump presidency is ordinary, he is an extraordinary President (216). For example, they clearly agree that the record-setting number of dismissals and resignations among administration members is extraordinary, as is Trump's strained relationship with the media (205). Their point is not that every ordinary presidency involves a President who acts the same, but that the actions of the current administration – extraordinary as they may be – have not led to many accomplishments.

This point is what frames the discussion about what makes a presidency ordinary. Presidencies might be assessed “in terms of outputs” or in the “substance, policy, deeds, action and promises kept” of the administration (4). Applying the analytical framework provided in the classic work of Richard Neustadt, the authors ascertain that Trump's presidency is going as well as we might expect given the methodology that he employs. In the two chapters where they assess this methodology, they conclude that Trump has demonstrated a “failure of leadership” (103). So despite whatever rhetoric he may have used during the campaign, it is ineffective as a method to govern. And, therefore, his “outcomes are limited in number and scope” (5).

They divide their findings into three basic parts. They offer a comprehensive discussion of the ways that Trump's domestic outcomes are ordinary, concluding that he has not accomplished much, and that what he has accomplished does not seem as radical as he would lead us to believe. Next, they provide clear analysis of why he is ordinary, focussing on his inability to build public support beyond his base, his lack of an understanding of how the office works, and a failure to use the office effectively, with some specific commentary on how he relates to members of the press. Finally, they conclude with a look at Trump's foreign policy, which, again, neither is as revolutionary as he would have us believe nor does it veer far from what we might expect from a Republican President.

Turning then to an analysis of specific legislative “victories” for Trump, the authors conclude that we have not seen many. In fact, the sole example, tax reform, was far from a radical departure from the GOP agenda. Trump's campaign calls for higher taxes for the rich and a cut for the middle and working class never materialized and were replaced with tax breaks that primarily benefited the wealthy.

Trump's immigration policies, the authors point out, were part of an ongoing discussion within the GOP. Indeed, there are two dominant approaches: one favors more openness while the other calls for a closed-door policy not unlike Trump's proposal. So even if we are to suggest that Trump's approach might be different from, say, George W. Bush's, it still has its roots in the GOP. And the radical version of what Trump tried to implement failed while a subdued proposal was eventually ruled Constitutional. But even this was not a legislative victory. It is certainly within the purview of the presidency to be able to set immigration policy if that administration can demonstrate that their policies are rationally related to a legitimate government interest – that's what the court ruled in Trump v. Hawaii. It was a unilateral action that differed greatly from what was promised, and a subsequent presidential administration can simply reverse those policies. Therefore, their point stands: while the travel ban was what the authors refer to as an outlier of a victory, it was clearly not the permanent, radical change in policy Trump promised (91).

At the heart of what is going on here is that Trump is doing something that most Presidents have done for years: telling the public that they are new or different as a way to promote the idea that they will go to the White House and be a catalyst for change in Washington. Presidents have worked less behind the scenes in DC to get their proposals passed and, instead, have started going directly to the public. This approach is ineffective and yet Presidents consistently try it. Presidents are able to set the public agenda using this technique, but it does not mean that they are able to translate ideas into policy. As they conclude, Trump's divisive style does not make this approach more successful (157).

In international policy, we might see some of the issues that go along with trying to make this case too soon in the Trump presidency. The authors point to Trump's realist, “peace-through-strength” groundwork, but Trump's radical departure from past Presidents on Syria, for example, does not seem ordinary. To be direct, it is also the case that, when I am writing this, it is unclear what will happen. The initial decision to withdraw troops was criticized by several folks in Washington who suggested that it was inconsistent with American interests. But a recent restoration of some American presence appears to demonstrate this administration's extreme inconsistency, which may not fit neatly within the realist framework. With this in mind, we might be led to the conclusion that the authors have spoken too soon, but we know that Presidents are more successful in implementing their foreign-policy agendas than they are in implementing their domestic-policy agendas. So we might make the case here that this is what we would expect. But I would also suggest that we simply can't yet know how Trump's demonstrated unreliability might alter America's future standing in the world.

The contention that Trump's election was ordinary rests on the assertion that the biggest change that we observed, the increased support of white voters without a college degree for a Republican candidate, is consistent with historical trends. Sure, they say, Trump's rhetoric was unusual in that it was more direct than other Presidents might have been – specifically about race – but I would go further and suggest that it reflects the ordinariness of some of his strategies. Presidents have been making racially coded statements in their campaigns for years. Typically Presidents situated those racial appeals in egalitarian rhetoric which acts to deflect them from accusations of racism. I would argue that even Trump's rhetorical approach during the election was nothing more than an incremental change from what previous Presidents were doing: denying that their appeals were racist when they clearly drew on the racial resentments of voters.

There is one other issue worth mentioning. Clearly, the authors could not predict the COVID-19 pandemic, but perhaps this omission demonstrates the risk that the authors took in publishing this book so early in his presidency. The idea that the Trump administration struggled to implement a policy agenda does not account for Trump's response to a situation that required a variety of other leadership qualities that are seemingly part of the presidency, mostly centered around the promotion of domestic unity and providing a source of legitimate information for the public. Whether it be a war, terrorist attack, financial crisis, or pandemic, Presidents guide the public through these crises. And while the authors’ main point remains generally intact, their overall premise, that it would be possible to determine whether the Trump presidency might be considered ordinary based on such narrow criteria, would be easier to accept at this point with a close analysis of the events that occurred after the book's publication. There are a variety of approaches that the authors might take in response to these events, but still their analysis seems somewhat incomplete without a section on COVID-19.

Nonetheless, the authors reach three clear conclusions in response to the question of why Trump's presidency is ordinary: the constraints of the Constitution, Trump's lack of understanding of how the system works, and the failure of his tactics. In other words, as they correctly acknowledge, the system is working as intended. The founders designed a government that would make it “very difficult to get things done” (216), and this seems to be what is happening. Still, one cannot help but wonder if this new style of ineffective, bombastic leadership will become a more common way for future Presidents to act even if it is ineffective.

Second, there is a great deal that political science could offer an incoming President: we know that the bargaining environment is damaged by direct rhetorical appeals, that voters have better access to information about parties so they have become better ideologically sorted and polarized, and that the existence of echo chambers is facilitating this trend. What, then, might we say about a President who ignores all of this? One who did little to try to build a bipartisan coalition? One who still needs a handful of Democrats in the Senate to overcome the threat of filibuster? And has the support of only around 40 percent of the public? It's going to be difficult to get much done without some sort of extraordinary tactics. And, as this book so pointedly and accurately concludes, “Trump is just not very good at being president” (220).