To fully account for the momentousness of the electoral reversal Republicans have just suffered, we must think back to 12 months ago, when President Trump appeared well positioned to deliver on an ambitious and still-popular agenda.
At that time, Mr. Trump presided over a country at peace and an economy that was growing (if unevenly). By fair means and foul, he had defanged the “deep state” bureaucracy that during his first term had slow-walked and stymied his trade and immigration policies. He had purged the vast United States Agency for International Development, which he suspected of advancing Democratic Party priorities abroad. His Justice Department had neutralized the civil-rights crusaders who opposed his attempts to undo diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He had even made inroads into the country’s cultural elite, especially in Silicon Valley, where people spoke of a “vibe shift.”
Yes, Mr. Trump had alienated domestic adversaries and foreign allies alike. He had frightened investors with his manic tariff announcements. But he had come within a hair of winning an outright majority in the popular vote in 2024. Almost a year into his second term, his administration was, if not beloved, at least sustainably popular. In late October 2025, there were still a few polls showing his approval rating near 50 percent.
Which is to say, there was nothing inevitable about his comeuppance on Tuesday. Mr. Trump blew it. He was dealt a good hand in 2024 and 2025, but this year — through a mix of vanity, instability and foolishness — he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Some policies that Mr. Trump ran on and brought about — like a tightened border — remain popular. The Center for American Progress, which favors expanded legal immigration and clear pathways to citizenship, found in a poll this past spring that hardened border security was still the migration policy that commanded the most voter support.
In his first term, Mr. Trump also largely won his yearslong argument with the establishment over how mass immigration affects the working class. Contrary to the views of pre-Trump policymakers, immigration to the United States is rarely a win-win proposition; it can help businesses, but often it does so by weakening the bargaining position of native workers. Even the Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton was convinced, writing in March 2024 that he no longer agreed with “the near consensus among economists that immigration to the U.S. was a good thing.”
Why, then, do polls show Mr. Trump with low approval ratings on immigration? Because he chose swagger over rational argument. Instead of allowing his policies to have their effect, he squandered his energy humiliating his opponents. He could have effectively made the case for raids of the sort he ordered in Minnesota: Just as there was a logic to tightening the border, there was a logic to enforcing that tightening in the cities by means of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But this required explaining, and explaining is something Mr. Trump has always been poor at. He is almost allergic to consequentiality and often speaks in a stream of non sequiturs — perhaps because he fancies himself a master of deal-making, in which granting a connection between two facts is often a sign that one is making a concession.
Mr. Trump and administration officials repeatedly claimed that welfare fraud was rampant among Somalis in Minnesota. It was a splashy justification for raids — but hardly the sober rationale that was needed. When ill-trained officers treated the operation as an exercise in terrorizing rather than problem-solving, Mr. Trump lost the country.
Similar things happened with his attacks on D.E.I. and political correctness, where Mr. Trump initially had considerable support. After he had changed Justice Department policies, he might simply have let his project jell, until the public got used to a country without invasive enforcement of affirmative action, speech codes and new gender orthodoxies. But he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He was like a child playing with his food. He sought to impose his own codes on campus speech, leaving a regime that was qualitatively — but not structurally — different than the censorious one that had existed in the heyday of woke.
This inability to sit still proved calamitous when it came to foreign policy. Mr. Trump’s ideas were often sound: Greenland was indeed an important strategic area vulnerable to being co-opted by hostile powers; it was indeed foolish for Democrats to worry more about Russia than China; countering China’s influence on our own hemisphere was indeed a strategic priority; industrial autonomy (whether attained through tariffs or otherwise) was indeed a must.
But again, with his insistence on humiliating his interlocutors, Mr. Trump created problems where none had existed. The Canadian conservative Pierre Poilievre looked certain to become prime minister until Mr. Trump began blurting out nonsense about annexing Canada as our 51st state, securing the election for Mark Carney, one of his most determined adversaries on the international stage. Mr. Trump’s insistence on besmirching Denmark led to the deployment of non-American NATO troops to Greenland, before resulting, in September, in a security agreement that is no better than what Mr. Trump could have had merely by asking for it at the outset.
Mr. Trump’s two worst ideas were the two wars he began against Iran. His poll numbers have never returned to where they were in June 2025, before he joined Israel in a bombing campaign meant to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. When Mr. Trump announced a cease-fire days later, he seemed to have shown an impressive ability to snap out of a delusion. But then came Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28.
That war has penetrated every crevice of the Trump administration, discrediting all of it. It has humiliated the United States not just militarily but also diplomatically. It has weakened the U.S.-Israel alliance and, as a consequence, Israel itself. And it has caused gas and diesel prices to spike, forcing Mr. Trump’s supporters to bear the brunt of inflation. Districts and states that went for Mr. Trump by large margins in 2024 shifted away from Republicans across the country.
Mr. Trump’s vanity has destroyed his second term. Part of what has made this comeuppance feel more consequential than the one he received during the midterms of 2018 is that this time around he has been empowered to let that vanity rip. Mr. Trump was able to purge the executive branch of ideological opponents and to elevate his own followers to replace them. He was aided by the Supreme Court’s June decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which upheld a more powerful conception of the presidency, greatly weakening the independence of almost all the regulatory agencies.
As far as honoring the idea of the presidency enshrined in the Constitution, the Supreme Court may well have been right to decide as it did — but it seems to have given the public pause. Henceforth, if the presidency is to be given George Washington’s prerogatives, the public is going to require of its presidents something more like George Washington’s character.
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