A headstrong president inherits an economy being remade by technology, a global climate of high tension and rising authoritarian powers, and a government whose perceived fecklessness has left Americans disgusted. He races to adopt an ambitious new program, installing true believers throughout the government, bending Congress to his will, and overwhelming opposition with the pace and audacity of his plans. Along the way, he lays the groundwork to rebuild the constitutional order and America’s very place in the world.
Such were the opening months of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. And such are the opening months of the second Donald J. Trump administration—but with some crucial differences. Almost a century ago, FDR launched a massive program that empowered the government to reconstruct a devastated economy. Today, Trump has embarked upon a massive program that dismantles the government and threatens to strangle an otherwise-promising economy.
Americans are now experiencing the historic first 100 days of the Roosevelt presidency in reverse. That was the New Deal. This is the Great Demolition.
# What FDR Wrought
As the historian Ira Katznelson shows in his book *Fear Itself*, the disaster of the Depression and the rise of European fascism led many Americans in the 1930s to ask whether democracy was up to the task of ordering modern society. This was no isolated sentiment. The nation’s most prominent journalist, Walter Lippmann, openly called for Congress to cede its powers to the president, granting, as he put it, “the widest and fullest powers under the most liberal interpretation of the Constitution.” Roosevelt himself in his first inaugural address warned that if Congress did not do what he believed necessary, he would ask lawmakers for “broad Executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”
But the darker prescriptions did not materialize. Within days, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, which retroactively blessed the bank holiday FDR had declared and created sweeping new federal powers to regulate and backstop financial institutions. There swiftly followed laws enabling major cuts to federal salaries and veterans’ benefits; establishing massive public works; creating deep agricultural subsidies; providing mortgage assistance, deposit insurance, and farm credit; and more.
It was an unprecedented burst of lawmaking that promised to give the executive branch previously unheard-of powers. In the jargon of political science, it was a surge in “state capacity”—the ability of a government to implement complex tasks while keeping electoral politics at arm’s length. Roosevelt’s programs remain pillars of the American economy today, enabling modern banking, not to mention the entire individual financial life-cycle from savings through home-buying through retirement.
But, as Katznelson notes, “the central role of Congress was maintained. Even more, the crucial lawmaking role that it undertook offered a practical answer to critics who thought the days of legislative institutions had passed.” And Congress developed new ways to supervise the administrative state it had created.
Of course, Roosevelt would later push even harder against the prevailing order, seeking to pack the Supreme Court and purge congressional Democrats who defied him. But while both efforts were norm-shattering—and also laid down important markers for the continued expansion of the presidency—neither circumvented the legal procedures for making such changes. Both ended in failure.
# The Great Demolition
President Trump’s unilateral campaign to dismantle state capacity at home and shake the postwar liberal alliance abroad resembles the first 100 days of the New Deal in terms of its ambition and the backdrop of social upheaval. But the immediate causes and implementing strategy could hardly be more different. Trump’s campaign is based on a grotesquely distorted account of the problems we face, and his solution has not been to summon Congress to action but rather to sideline it.
The American economy has made a strong recovery from the pandemic and has largely beaten off the resulting inflation, and the emergencies Trump purports to be addressing are the stuff of conspiracy theories. The president argues that illegal immigration is not merely a serious problem, but a war-like “invasion,” and that America is beset by an “enemy within” whose redoubts include the media and, crucially, the federal government (or “deep state”) itself.
His approach to this “crisis” has not been to ask Congress for extraordinary powers, but simply to take them: bullying and firing federal workers in defiance of the law, freezing appropriated funds, decapitating and shutting down agencies created by Congress. And the Republican-led Congress, far from objecting to these moves, has largely responded by applauding and approving the nominations of scandalously unqualified individuals to key posts in government. (The reduction of congressional Republicans to mere cheerleaders reflects a key difference between Trump and FDR: Roosevelt was elected with a sweeping mandate that reflected the real crisis the country was in, and his Democrats held overwhelming majorities in Congress. This made the lawful path to a constitutional restructuring much easier than it would be for today’s razor-thin, splintered GOP majority.)
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miss_shivers on
Note to future: don’t build a house out of mere administrative law that an opposing faction could simply topple.
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A headstrong president inherits an economy being remade by technology, a global climate of high tension and rising authoritarian powers, and a government whose perceived fecklessness has left Americans disgusted. He races to adopt an ambitious new program, installing true believers throughout the government, bending Congress to his will, and overwhelming opposition with the pace and audacity of his plans. Along the way, he lays the groundwork to rebuild the constitutional order and America’s very place in the world.
Such were the opening months of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. And such are the opening months of the second Donald J. Trump administration—but with some crucial differences. Almost a century ago, FDR launched a massive program that empowered the government to reconstruct a devastated economy. Today, Trump has embarked upon a massive program that dismantles the government and threatens to strangle an otherwise-promising economy.
Americans are now experiencing the historic first 100 days of the Roosevelt presidency in reverse. That was the New Deal. This is the Great Demolition.
# What FDR Wrought
As the historian Ira Katznelson shows in his book *Fear Itself*, the disaster of the Depression and the rise of European fascism led many Americans in the 1930s to ask whether democracy was up to the task of ordering modern society. This was no isolated sentiment. The nation’s most prominent journalist, Walter Lippmann, openly called for Congress to cede its powers to the president, granting, as he put it, “the widest and fullest powers under the most liberal interpretation of the Constitution.” Roosevelt himself in his first inaugural address warned that if Congress did not do what he believed necessary, he would ask lawmakers for “broad Executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”
But the darker prescriptions did not materialize. Within days, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, which retroactively blessed the bank holiday FDR had declared and created sweeping new federal powers to regulate and backstop financial institutions. There swiftly followed laws enabling major cuts to federal salaries and veterans’ benefits; establishing massive public works; creating deep agricultural subsidies; providing mortgage assistance, deposit insurance, and farm credit; and more.
It was an unprecedented burst of lawmaking that promised to give the executive branch previously unheard-of powers. In the jargon of political science, it was a surge in “state capacity”—the ability of a government to implement complex tasks while keeping electoral politics at arm’s length. Roosevelt’s programs remain pillars of the American economy today, enabling modern banking, not to mention the entire individual financial life-cycle from savings through home-buying through retirement.
But, as Katznelson notes, “the central role of Congress was maintained. Even more, the crucial lawmaking role that it undertook offered a practical answer to critics who thought the days of legislative institutions had passed.” And Congress developed new ways to supervise the administrative state it had created.
Of course, Roosevelt would later push even harder against the prevailing order, seeking to pack the Supreme Court and purge congressional Democrats who defied him. But while both efforts were norm-shattering—and also laid down important markers for the continued expansion of the presidency—neither circumvented the legal procedures for making such changes. Both ended in failure.
# The Great Demolition
President Trump’s unilateral campaign to dismantle state capacity at home and shake the postwar liberal alliance abroad resembles the first 100 days of the New Deal in terms of its ambition and the backdrop of social upheaval. But the immediate causes and implementing strategy could hardly be more different. Trump’s campaign is based on a grotesquely distorted account of the problems we face, and his solution has not been to summon Congress to action but rather to sideline it.
The American economy has made a strong recovery from the pandemic and has largely beaten off the resulting inflation, and the emergencies Trump purports to be addressing are the stuff of conspiracy theories. The president argues that illegal immigration is not merely a serious problem, but a war-like “invasion,” and that America is beset by an “enemy within” whose redoubts include the media and, crucially, the federal government (or “deep state”) itself.
His approach to this “crisis” has not been to ask Congress for extraordinary powers, but simply to take them: bullying and firing federal workers in defiance of the law, freezing appropriated funds, decapitating and shutting down agencies created by Congress. And the Republican-led Congress, far from objecting to these moves, has largely responded by applauding and approving the nominations of scandalously unqualified individuals to key posts in government. (The reduction of congressional Republicans to mere cheerleaders reflects a key difference between Trump and FDR: Roosevelt was elected with a sweeping mandate that reflected the real crisis the country was in, and his Democrats held overwhelming majorities in Congress. This made the lawful path to a constitutional restructuring much easier than it would be for today’s razor-thin, splintered GOP majority.)
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Note to future: don’t build a house out of mere administrative law that an opposing faction could simply topple.