When Donald Trump was first elected president, foreign policy seemed like the zone of greatest danger, the place where a political novice promising to remake the world order was most likely to blunder into true catastrophe.
Instead, Trump’s first-term foreign policy was broadly successful, with more stability, fewer dramatic stumbles and more breakthroughs than his domestic policy efforts. And it was much more successful than the rolling crises and debacles of the Biden presidency, a contrast that was one of the underrated cases for Trump’s restoration.
Now, with the provisional deal to end the war in Gaza, the pattern of Trump 1.0 is reasserting itself. As a domestic leader the president is powerful but unpopular, with a scant legislative agenda and an increasingly vendetta-driven public image. But on the world stage he is currently much more successful (allowing, yes, for strong skepticism about the administration’s China strategy).
If peace in Ukraine remains elusive, Trump has induced Europe to bear more of the burden without yielding to the Russians, as many critics feared. The Iranian nuclear program and terror networks have been hammered without major blowback. And now there is the possibility of a real breakthrough in Israel and Palestine, an achievement that’s clearly the result of the White House’s strong-arming diplomatic efforts.
All of which raises a question: What if Trump’s domestic policy were more like his foreign policy? Yes, presidents stymied at home often find it easier to maneuver overseas; that pattern is hardly unique to Trump. But there are still a few keys to his success on the world stage that, if applied at home, might make his domestic efforts more popular.
First, float above ideology. Trump’s first-term foreign policy team was staffed by traditional Republican hawks; his second has been divided between hawks and would-be realists, who have often feuded viciously with one another. But in both periods Trump himself has moved easily between different orientations — sometimes behaving like a conventional hawk, sometimes like a realist or a dove, going hyper-Zionist one moment and putting extra pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu the next, and generally refusing to let any single ideological camp rule his agenda.
On key domestic issues, by contrast, Trump has never quite shaken free of the pre-existing G.O.P. consensus, which is why his populist presidency has repeatedly delivered unpopular tax-and-spending legislation, overweighted to the interests of corporations and the rich. Meanwhile, various potential projects that might break this mold, from infrastructure and industrial policy to family policy, have been disappointing or stillborn.
That’s partially because Trump has never found a consistent way to make deals with his political opposition, a contrast to the second key to his foreign policy success: Be open for dealmaking with everyone. Iran’s mullahs, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, the Taliban … even when nothing comes of it or the whole thing ends in bombing raids, Trump is eager to have the conversation, to look for the unexpected bargain, the outside-the-box deal.
Critics will say that this is because Trump likes strongmen like Kim and Putin more than he likes fellow Americans who happen to be Democrats. But he’s also made deals with overseas figures whom he definitely doesn’t love, from left-leaning Eurocrats to now the leaders of Hamas.
It’s only in domestic politics that he’s been unable to consistently execute the pivot from insulting rivals on social media one day to making important bargains with them the next. And despite all the “America First” talk, it’s only in domestic politics that he’s been a true unilateralist, exploring the frontiers of executive power in ways that a future president could reverse — as opposed to a situation like the Gaza deal, where the hopes for its durability rest on Pan-Arab commitment, not just American power.
One reason for this difference is that in foreign policy he has followed a third rule: Let business-oriented outsiders run your negotiations. The fact that figures like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have seemingly done better — or at the very least no worse — than credentialed diplomatic professionals has striking implications for how we think about expertise in foreign policy. But it also contrasts with Trumpian domestic policy, where in the first term outsider figures like Kushner and Steven Mnuchin played notable roles, but where more second-term power is in the hands of committed partisan fighters like Stephen Miller and Russell Vought.
It is Trump who has given them that power, to be clear, and many of the differences I’m describing have clearly been consciously chosen by the president. Foreign policy is for grand achievements and the pursuit of Nobel Prizes, it seems, while the domestic front is where he hopes to get revenge for years of investigations and prosecutions.
If there’s anything that Middle Eastern politics should teach the president, though, it’s that true success lies somewhere outside the cycle of vengeance — if, that is, you want your victories to last.
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Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is also the host of the Opinion podcast “Interesting Times.” He is the author, most recently, of “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” @DouthatNYT • Facebook
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