On January 22nd, Walter Russell Mead was interviewed on the Global Politico podcast.
Following is the full transcript of the interview:
Susan Glasser: This is Susan Glasser, and welcome back to The Global POLITICO. This is basically our one-year anniversary of the Trump presidency. We鈥檙e still trying to figure it all out, and I can鈥檛 think of a better decoder to have with us this week than the fantastic scholar, writer, and general wise man, Walter Russell Mead, who has been delightfully challenging the conventional wisdoms of American foreign policy for as long as I鈥檝e been paying attention.
And he has a really interesting and unique story to tell, both about his own thoughts regarding Trump and foreign policy but his interactions as well with some members of the team and those trying to figure out what Trumpism is. So Walter Russell Mead, we鈥檙e at the 华体会 where he hangs his hat these days. It鈥檚 right across from the Trump International Hotel. It鈥檚 a couple of blocks away from the Trump White House. So I can鈥檛 think of any better place to be a year to the day more or less exactly after Donald Trump became our most unlikely new president. What have we gotten wrong about him in this year one?
Walter Russell Mead: Well, it鈥檚, you know, we鈥檝e been through so many cycles of鈥擨 don鈥檛 know that we鈥檝e gotten a lot wrong in the sense that Trump鈥擳rump doesn鈥檛 surprise you. He surprises you on a tactical level, but the Donald Trump who ran for office in 2016 is pretty much the Donald Trump who is there now. He鈥檚 still tweeting. He is still driving everyone crazy. He is still somehow鈥攋ust when everyone has concluded he is totally incompetent he still manages to pull some rabbit out of a hat. It鈥檚 a really strange presidency, but it was a really strange campaign.
Glasser: Well, yes, I鈥檝e been using the framework that he manages to stun us and shock us pretty much every day, even multiple times a day, but somehow we鈥檙e not surprised really.
Mead: Yes, but it鈥檚 also interesting we haven鈥檛 become immune to the effect. He still will tweet something and have the entire civilized universe going, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 happening here?鈥� Even after a year of campaigning and a year of presidency he still has this immense capacity to surprise.
Glasser: Well, and I think that鈥檚 why I was so looking forward to having this conversation with you as a sort of Trump decoder or Trump whisperer. Some of your work, ironically, which began long before Donald Trump was even a twinkle in the Washington establishment鈥檚 eye鈥攜our framework for understanding the different schools of thought in American foreign policy, a lot of people feel like that has become one of the more accurate ways of trying to understand how this outsider figure could have come to town and triumphed.
You have basically compared Trump to this unlikely avatar of the Jacksonian school in American politic. Now, we all know Donald Trump is not the kind of guy who thinks of himself in Jacksonian or any other terms. He is not an ism person. But basically looking at the historical antecedents, which are long, of a kind of rabble-rousing, populist, outsider figure, do you still think that Jacksonian analogy applies to Trump? He campaigned as one, but is he governing as one?
Mead: Well, you know, I certainly think the kind of Steve Bannon side of the Trump presidency remains very Jacksonian. Bannon isn鈥檛 in the White House, and he鈥檚 not welcome I think, but his influence is still felt. And I think Trump鈥檚 base remains Jacksonian. And Trump knows how to play to this base. So even as Trump has kind of adjusted in some ways to the necessities of the Washington establishment and, you know, 鈥淲ell, you can鈥檛 just completely reinvent American foreign policy,鈥� he continues to orient in this way. He still has a portrait of Andrew Jackson hanging in the Oval Office.
Glasser: Well, and by the way, were you perhaps very unintentionally the man responsible for that?
Mead: That鈥檚 what Steve Bannon told me. In that Bannon had read Special Providence and thought that this Jacksonian鈥�
Glasser: Which is your 2001 book giving us this typology of American foreign policy.
Mead: Right. And so what he told me was that he had talked to Trump about Jackson and Jacksonianism and that鈥檚 why at the beginning of the administration the president went down to Andrew Jackson鈥檚 old home. And so there was this kind of Jacksonian moment. I have to say, as a scholar of foreign policy this was sort of an odd feeling where these abstract typologies that you write about suddenly seem to be happening in front of you.
Glasser: Right. Some guy named Steve Bannon who you didn鈥檛 know.
Mead: No.
Glasser: It鈥檚 not like you have a long relationship with him.
Mead: No.
Glasser: Now, tell me about that. You told me once. You got basically a phone call out of the blue from Steve Bannon.
Mead: A text. A text saying he wanted to talk.
Glasser: And this was last summer, right, when he was already running into trouble in the White House?
Mead: Right. He was still in the White House, he was still with the administration, but he had about a week, I think, to go. And he seemed to know that that was ending. And then we had another conversation sort of later in the summer, a kind of a long, late-night conversation after he was out of the White House about things.
And it does seem to me that there is a real connection between the kind of Jacksonian populism which has its positive and negative aspects. I mean, I think America wouldn鈥檛 be a democracy without Jacksonian populism, but at the same time there is a kind of this鈥攜ou know, certainly Jacksonianism itself was a whites-only kind of movement, and the Jacksonian populist community in America is usually not the leader on any kind of civil rights or sort of reaching out to the other. So in its more negative moments you can call it xenophobic. And yet somehow the health of our democracy historically has rested in many ways on exactly this sometimes quite problematic strain in American politics.
Glasser: What do you think? When you talked to Bannon, what was he seizing on about it in particular? Why did he think Jackson? In many ways Jackson was totally, totally unlike Donald Trump. Why did he think those two had a kinship?
Mead: Right. Well, the obvious one is trade, where Jacksonians, as I write in Special Providence, are not free traders by instinct. But also more profoundly I think it鈥檚 in questions of sovereignty and power. Jacksonians are not liberal Wilsonians. They don鈥檛 actually think that the world is headed toward a kind of a peaceful universe where international institutions and international鈥攂asically they don鈥檛 think that the European Union is the model of where humanity is trying to go or that the purpose of American power should be to try to make the world more like the European Union. And they believe in a kind of an unfettered American sovereignty as being at the core. They really tend not to believe much in democracy promotion as a national policy.
Glasser: And there is a lot of establishment bashing, which I think is something that Bannon clearly showed Trump how to deploy to great effect.
Mead: That鈥檚 right.
Glasser: And Trump naturally gravitates towards that.
Mead: There鈥檚 a sense that legitimacy resides in the grassroots and the further government or institutions get from the grassroots, the less legitimacy they have. So U.N. bashing, the U.N. is the least grassroots of all institutions. And the roots of this go deep into American, even American colonial history. And in some ways the revolution was kind of a Jacksonian populist revolt against those aristocrats of England and their Tory hirelings in America.
Glasser: So did he have any specific questions for you, like, 鈥淗ow do I apply this model to the present day?鈥�
Mead: I mean, we only had a couple of conversations. I didn鈥檛 get the feeling that Steve was coming to me for advice. He had, and I think still has, a clear political vision. He thinks he鈥檚 got a better sense of where the country is going. He was also a little bit shocked when I told him, 鈥淲ell, you know, Steve, I write about Jacksonianism. That doesn鈥檛 mean I am a Jacksonian.鈥� And I think he had this kind of moment when I said, 鈥淲ell, actually I voted for Clinton in the election.鈥�
Glasser: Well, I was going to ask you that. I鈥檓 glad you made that point, because I do think since there are so few people who have offered kind of historical and intellectual frameworks for understanding Trump鈥攜ou know, mostly it鈥檚 been sort of a big cry of agony from the anguished elites鈥攖hat sometimes when I look at people鈥檚 writing about your writing or their efforts to pigeonhole you, it does seem as thought they want to conflate you, the scholar of Jacksonianism, with a proponent of it.
Mead: Right. And I think you have to have a little bit of sympathy to write about something. I divide American foreign policy into these four schools: Jackson, Hamilton, Wilson, Jefferson. And I try to make the point in the book and since that we actually need them all, that any one of them, if it goes too far, is likely to get us in trouble, but that somehow our country works better with having this kind of multiplicity of ideas in it, and they open up different policy alternatives.
Glasser: Well, and your point, which I think is a very interesting point鈥攚e can talk more about this鈥攊s basically that over the last few decades in essence it鈥檚 been the Wilsonians and the Hamiltonians who have been ascendant, that basically in both parties there have been sharp debates between neocons and Democrats who are more wary of military power, but basically the proponents of what we would call kind of the liberal international postwar order have more or less operated as a rock-solid consensus in American politics.
Mead: That鈥檚 right.
Glasser: And your view is that actually this current debate about foreign policy that Trump has opened up is arguably the biggest ferment since before World War II, since FDR鈥檚 time.
Mead: Right. And certainly since 1990.
Glasser: The end of the Cold War.
Mead: The end of the Cold War. And the problem is with post-Cold War policy, in that during the Cold War the Hamiltonians and Wilsonians were busily building a world order and how great that was in the free world. The Jacksonians were on board not because they believed in building a liberal world order but because we had to contain communism. So Jacksonians operate out of fear. They see the outside world as a source of danger, not a source of opportunity.
Then when the Cold War ended the Wilsonians and Hamiltonians went ahead. In a sense they said, 鈥淥kay, we鈥檙e now going to globalize. Instead of containing the Soviet Union, we鈥檙e going to make the entire world a world of free market democracies. Russia will become a democracy. We鈥檙e going to open up. And, yes, China will become richer through trade, but it鈥檚 going to become a liberal democratic partner. It鈥檚 going to be a pillar of the international system.鈥� And, you know, very optimistic ideas, very characteristic Wilsonian and Hamiltonian ideas.
Glasser: Right. This notion of integration.
Mead: Yes.
Glasser: Which certainly as someone who has paid a lot of attention to Russia over the last couple of decades, that was literally the definition of our policy toward Russia after the collapse of the Cold War, whereas a different narrative has obviously taken hold inside Russia, that this was American triumphalism.
Mead: Yes.
Glasser: The Americans in both parties who I鈥檝e spoken with over the last couple of decades, they viewed their policy as one of integrating Russia in the world order. Certainly it was an America-led world order. But that鈥檚 the part that people are now recognizing didn鈥檛 work.
Mead: Right. That basically Russia and China after the Cold War would do what Germany and Japan did after World Ward II and become reliable partners in this world system. And so it hasn鈥檛 worked. And that means that in American foreign policy, first of all, it鈥檚 the world is much more dangerous, and the American people are probably going to have to spend more money on defense dealing with China. We clearly haven鈥檛 even鈥攜ou know, there are a lot of questions of Russian influence. We鈥檙e going to have to rethink a lot of our policies for living in a world where there is actual hostility and there is no global consensus about a liberal world order.
Glasser: So you see Trump as a response to that, not creating it?
Mead: Right. Well, the gap between the establishment predictions about where the world would go and then the reality of where the world is opened a gap that enabled Trump basically to run as the little boy saying the emperor has no clothes.
Glasser: Although ironically now a year into his presidency, in fact, the debate we鈥檙e having is whether he has become the emperor with no clothes.
Mead: Right. Well, again, he ran essentially on a negative agenda, that the establishment didn鈥檛 know what it was doing. And his proposals tended to be pretty vague and often contradictory. So, yeah, now he has the difficulty of, you know, 鈥淗ow do you govern?鈥� This is always a problem for populism, is once you鈥檙e in office what do you do?
Glasser: And you鈥檝e written about this. You know many of the people. It鈥檚 not just Bannon who you鈥檝e encountered. But actually you are close to, have talked extensively with the 鈥済lobalists鈥� that Bannon would dismiss as his internal rivals, people like H.R. McMaster, the national security advisor; Senator Tom Cotton, who has emerged as probably one of Trump鈥檚 closest outside advisers on Capitol Hill. f He is a huge fan of yours. You鈥檙e friends with him, you know, went to his birthday party. They don鈥檛 seem to share the same foreign policy views as Trump. How is that working out?
Mead: Well, again, I think it鈥檚 hard to say. Trump鈥檚 foreign policy team is not very Trumpian. And one of the interesting things about the last year has been to watch how this sort of, let鈥檚 say, the wilder figures in the Trump entourage on both foreign and domestic policy have generally been pushed to the margins. Now, I think some of this is just due to circumstance, that by the time Trump entered the race, A, all of the serious foreign policy types who associate themselves with candidates were already lined up. So, you know, he could either have nobody on foreign policy or he could have people who nobody else wanted on foreign policy.
Glasser: Right. And military folks.
Mead: And military. And so a guy like Mike Flynn would have looked like a real godsend to the Trump campaign at a certain point. But once he becomes president he has a much broader range of people who are willing to work with him and work for him, and it looks to me as if he鈥檚 used that freedom fairly consistently to bring military people in. That, by the way, is a very Jacksonian trait, that the military is pretty much the one branch of the federal government that Jacksonians tend to support. So respect for generals is very much a Jacksonian tradition.
Glasser: Although, of course, it鈥檚 a big difference with Trump in that Jackson himself served.
Mead: Was a general, right. Again, right, Trump is not Andrew Jackson. He is not the second coming of Andrew Jackson. But there was such a hunger in America for a Jacksonian figure that people were willing to project a lot of qualities onto this sort of very unlikely Queens real estate developer who becomes the folk hero of Americans who hate New York and are suspicious of big business.
Glasser: Yeah, and he seems to be extremely skilled at speaking to them, both in the campaign and now, but he does have this team of 鈥済lobalists,鈥� as Steve Bannon has called them.
Mead: Right. Well, it鈥檚 interesting, though: Andrew Jackson鈥檚 actual foreign policy was a lot less inflammatory than his rhetoric. And I think Trump, for one thing, understands that Jacksonians like for America to sound tough. They don鈥檛 like long, grinding wars, inconclusive wars. And, in fact, they would rather not fight wars unless America is attacked. So it鈥檚 logical in a way and it builds to his base for Trump to take a tough line, but he鈥檚 been rather cautious about where does he actually commit troops and how much war is he willing to get into.
Glasser: Well, this is an important point. Right? You know, the question of what are we to make of the president鈥檚 inflammatory rhetoric, his at times extremely confrontational tweets on North Korea and other issues? Do you think that鈥檚 just mere bluster? Some defenders of the president basically say, 鈥淒on鈥檛 pay attention to his tweets.鈥� Do you agree?
Mead: I鈥檒l tell you this. If somebody were going to be my defender, I would rather they not start by saying, 鈥淒on鈥檛 pay attention to him.鈥� Look, I think for Trump everything is show business. And he comes to international politics from the perspective of a real estate business guy. In diplomatic culture there鈥檚 certain ways of conveying your鈥攜ou know, there are a lot of conventions in diplomacy about how you let somebody know that you鈥檙e really angry, that you might use force, that you鈥檙e not angry. And there鈥檚 a lot of emphasis, particularly in American diplomatic culture, on clarity, on not sending confusing signals. But for Trump in business I think one of the things you try to do is you confuse the other side so that they have no idea where you are, and then you see what that elicits. So you鈥檒l hear him; to North Korea he鈥檒l go in a week from, 鈥淚鈥檓 ready to bomb you now,鈥� to, 鈥淲ell, you know, everything is open and we really could be friends.鈥� I think if you鈥檙e in business you do that as a way to try to then find out, 鈥淥kay, what does that elicit? What do they put on the table?鈥�
Glasser: So you have talked a lot with some of the people who are trying to figure out how to advise him or how to make his foreign policy successful. How do you think they are working through that puzzle of understanding both the president himself but also what they can get done given that?
Mead: I actually think it鈥檚 very useful to read the National Security Strategy carefully.
Glasser: This was what was just put out by General McMaster written by scholar Nadia Schadlow, who is now, it looks like, going to be the deputy national security advisor.
Mead: Yeah, right. And what they really tried to do, it seems to me, is put together a lot of the themes that you find in Trump鈥檚 speeches and themes that seem to be important to him and try to bring that together with a National Security Strategy statement that starts from a lot of the premises that classic post-World War II American strategy has involved. So they鈥檙e trying to build a bridge between a more conventional American strategic take and a Jacksonian take.
Glasser: And you feel like that works? I mean, a lot of people felt like it got basically positive reviews from conservatives and more progressive types, more Democratic types, but I think most people were left wondering, 鈥淏ut does Donald Trump actually believe any of this?鈥�
Mead: I mean, again, this is the problem. I think I wrote at one point that nobody in the history of American policy has ever said鈥攜ou know, there is a heated policy argument and you settle it by saying, 鈥淲ait a minute. It says right here on page 37 of the National Security Strategy.鈥�
Glasser: Well, that鈥檚 right. Those documents are often overlooked.
Mead: That鈥檚 right. But I think this one is more important than most. Not that Donald Trump is going to be bound by it. He doesn鈥檛 think himself bound by anything his employees write. But that it does, I think, represent a serious intellectual attempt to strike a balance between where Trump and his voters are coming from and where American foreign policy has been. So I think in a surprising number of cases policy may end up evolving along the lines that are laid out there.
Glasser: What do you make of those who say that Trump is much worse than we think on foreign policy? Right? You know, there is this case, 鈥淲ell, he鈥檚 not got into any wars.鈥� You鈥檝e already laid out some of it, but that, you know, the destruction that he鈥檚 doing to America鈥檚 image in the world, his volatile personal interactions with world leaders. I just did a big reported piece and was really kind of stunned actually. I was surprised by the reporting. There is so much that we haven鈥檛 even heard about that, you know, world leaders, he鈥檚 met with more than 100 of them so far. Many of them have come away stunned that this is how the president of the United States is talking to them.
Mead: Look, I guess I don鈥檛 write more about the downsides of the Trump presidency because it looks as though it鈥檚 being鈥�
Glasser: It鈥檚 well covered?
Mead: It鈥檚 being really well covered.
Glasser: Absolutely.
Mead: And that trying to stay a little bit back from the noise and the screaming is a useful analytical contribution. It鈥檚 not the only response people should be making to this president, but it鈥檚 probably the one that鈥檚 getting least attention that could benefit.
Glasser: And, again, that鈥檚 why we鈥檙e having this conversation, because I do think that the effort to take this seriously, at face value, to try to understand both historically what鈥檚 going on here, why did this most unconventional political phenomenon arise, number one. And then number two, to help us decode seemingly puzzling aspects of the Trump presidency as it unfolds in real-time. So do you take away from this that we shouldn鈥檛 be as alarmed about the prospects of war with North Korea, for example?
Mead: Well, look. You know, what keeps me up at night about the North Korea situation is that this is one of these things that鈥檚 been clearly getting worse since the 1990s, and it鈥檚 one of those places where I think in general the foreign policy establishment has been willing to sort of pretend that we are doing something effective when it鈥檚 quite clear that we鈥檙e not.
Glasser: 鈥�Strategic patience鈥� was the phrase used.
Mead: Yeah, that鈥檚 a beautiful phrase. It鈥檚 a beautiful phrase. It means nothing. And it means sort of hoping that something will turn up. Okay, so, yeah, the situation is now bad. It鈥檚 hard to see a good outcome to the situation. And now we have Donald Trump as the person in charge at the time when it comes to the head. Well, maybe the Clintons could have done a little more in the 鈥�90s, or Bush or Obama could have all done something, but they didn鈥檛, so here we are. So, yes, the North Korea situation is worrying. It would be worrying if George Washington were president or Abraham Lincoln were president. Is there an extra layer that is Donald Trump? Yes, of course there is.
Glasser: But Donald Trump says he is the best president, actually that he鈥檚 even better than Abe Lincoln in some respects.
Mead: Well, let鈥檚 hope that a year from now we鈥檒l all be agreeing with him.
Glasser: So what, as you use your framework of thinking about the different strands of American foreign policy and where we are today, is it over for the Wilsonians and the Hamiltonians? Are we seeing the death throes of the liberal international order? Was Obama responsible for this?
Mead: Well, you know, I think first of all American foreign policy is very cyclical. You know, no one has ever counted out鈥攖his has been at least so far over 200 years. All the schools have had their ups and downs. So I don鈥檛 think anything is permanent here. But I do think that Wilsonians have some intellectual homework to do. If you think about, well, first of all, the end of history misperception and how that swept across so much of the American establishment.
Glasser: Right. At the end of the Cold War, this idea that democracy had won.
Mead: Yes. And that we wouldn鈥檛 even have to work hard to make it prevail everywhere.
Glasser: Yes, this week Freedom House released its annual report on freedom in the world. Twelfth straight year that democracy in the world has gone down.
Mead: That鈥檚 right. So Wilsonians clearly didn鈥檛 understand a lot about the world. Then whether you look at the neocon efforts to cure terrorism by curing the causes of terrorism, by bringing democracy and development to the Arab world. The neocon approach under George W. Bush had little to no real success. The Obama embrace of the Arab Spring and all of this has left wreckage, not to mention the invasion of Libya. So I think that Wilsonian ideas about the world are really appealing at a level of emotion and American ideology, but it鈥檚 really clear; there鈥檚 a demonstrated track record that the American human rights, Wilsonian foreign policy agenda has failed pretty frequently.
Glasser: Well, what鈥檚 so interesting about Obama鈥攁nd you wrote this. We were talking about this before. You wrote this my first year as editor of Foreign Policy magazine. You wrote a cover story for us that tried to look at Obama鈥檚 foreign policy. And this was only one year into his eight-year presidency. But you at the time pegged him as a unique combination of Wilsonianism, certainly in his rhetoric, and Jeffersonianism, which is a more pragmatic, what鈥檚 associated with realism in modern-day international relations.
Mead: And less intervention.
Glasser: And less intervention. And I would argue that actually he was kind of both of those things all the way through to the end.
Mead: Yes, I think so. And that the difficulty I said back in the beginning was that the Wilsonian side of him will write checks that the Jeffersonian side won鈥檛 want to cash.
Glasser: Look at Syria.
Mead: Exactly.
Glasser: And how he resisted his own advisers, his own team who wanted him to intervene.
Mead: Right, but he would continue to make large-sounding proclamations. So there has been this sense鈥攁nd then, you know, so that鈥檚 the Wilsonian problem. And it鈥檚 a problem of political and policy credibility. My own sense with the many Wilsonian friends I have is they haven鈥檛 really taken this to heart, that it鈥檚 still other people aren鈥檛 good enough to appreciate the wisdom and invest in what we want. And on the Hamiltonian side, again, well, there鈥檚 a lot of things to be said for free trade, but in practice has it made the American working class so much better off in ways that you promised?
Glasser: And that鈥檚 the interesting dilemma for the Republican Party today, is that free trade, we thought, was the core precept and principle, the bedrock upon which mainstream Republicanism was built in the United States.
Mead: Right.
Glasser: And yet they鈥檝e proved once Trump came in and took over the party standard鈥攖hey鈥檝e seemingly abandoned that willy-nilly and not replaced it with anything.
Mead: Well, I think the significant argument is that China is a mercantilist power. And while free trade remains, in my view, theoretically correct in a best-case scenario, when the world鈥檚 second-largest economy is both aggressively mercantilist economically and aggressively revisionist geopolitically you can鈥檛 simply look at economic equations when you鈥檙e making policy. You have to look鈥攜ou have to try to take a more holistic view. My guess is that鈥檚 where both Republicans and Democrats are kind of evolving on this issue.
Glasser: So to come back then to the practical realities of Washington in this unique age of Trump. I was struck by the effusiveness of the praise of Senator Cotton for you and your work. It goes to this issue again of almost conflating your analysis of Jacksonianism with an embrace or an endorsement of it as well. But he had some interesting things to say when he was on this podcast. And he talked basically about not only the glorious history of the Jacksonian mindset but the idea that Barack Obama had gone to war with this strand of America and that that in effect was the reason why we had Trump.
He has reemerged as a very controversial figure. You know, and not only a very hardliner on immigration but clearly taking President Trump鈥檚 side on almost all issues even where it wouldn鈥檛 seem to go with his principles, even taking his side on this disputed account of the 鈥渟hithole countries鈥� meeting. What is the dilemma for somebody like Senator Cotton? What do you think he鈥檚 getting at when he is touting your Jacksonianism? What is he trying to do there?
Mead: Well, he鈥檚 obviously trying to help my book sales, and that鈥檚 a wonderful thing. And so thank you, Tom.
Glasser: He is a real reader. That鈥檚 clear.
Mead: No, he is a reader. And look. I think, again, Tom comes from Arkansas, which is a pretty Jacksonian state in its way. I think Trump won overwhelmingly there. And one of the things about Jacksonians is that not many people have taken Jacksonian history seriously enough to think about it and write about it. And, again, not in this like, 鈥淥oh, it鈥檚 racist. Ooh, kill the beast. Kill the ugly beast.鈥� But this is a part of the American political system. It鈥檚 not going away.
We need to think about how it fits with others. And, in fact, I mean, I pointed out in Special Providence, we can all say how terrible some aspects of Jacksonianism are, but if France had been more Jacksonian in 1940 it might have fought on a bit longer. And without the Jacksonians who actually in many cases are the people who fight and win wars, war and peace, support our defense budgets, people around the world wouldn鈥檛 be that interested in what the Wilsonians and Hamiltonians have to say. So somehow integrating Jacksonian America into our institutions and our politics is something we need to do. I鈥檓 not saying it鈥檚 easy.
So I think for somebody like Senator Cotton when you hear somebody who is trying to think about what in some ways for many politicians in America is part of their personal dilemma, how do they fit their own instincts into a system in which Jacksonian isn鈥檛 the only political tradition in America and it鈥檚 not necessarily a majority tradition.
Glasser: Well, okay. So that鈥檚 what I want to ask you about. There is certainly a notion with the original Andrew Jackson that his version of populism was actually popular. Donald Trump is ending his first year as president as the most unpopular first-year president we鈥檝e had in recent history. So his populism isn鈥檛 that popular.
Mead: Right. Well, you know, we鈥檙e going to see how this鈥攜ou know, this is an experiment. And I can imagine any outcome from a premature end to the Trump presidency to a second term. You know, I can picture all of these. That鈥檚 the way Donald Trump is; you can鈥檛 use a lot of your conventional ideas. One thing I would say is that while he is very unpopular, he wasn鈥檛 really popular when he won the election. A lot of people voted for him who thought he was kind of a skunk and a second-rater and not trustworthy. They still voted for him. So I鈥檓 not sure that those polls actually are good indicators of how he might perform in a reelection campaign. But, again, that is so鈥攖hree years鈥攅specially in the Trump presidency when it鈥�
Glasser: Right. That seems like a million years.
Mead: A day under Trump is like a month under anybody else. So three years is an eon.
Glasser: Well, it鈥檚 funny. I鈥檓 reading this very good biography of Lenin that came out last year. And there鈥檚 a great line in there about, like, 鈥淪ome decades it feels like nothing happened, then there are some weeks that feel like 10 years.鈥� And I felt like that was a really good description of year one of the Trump presidency. Do you think that if things go on as they are, will that mean that Jacksonianism is discredited after the Trump presidency? What does it do to the future of the fight within the Republican and Democratic parties about foreign policy?
Mead: Right. Well, again, there will be a question of whether Jacksonian politics are the same as Trumpian politics. Because I think there certainly are other politicians active in America who are probably better sort of avatars of Jacksonianism than Trump might be.
So let鈥檚 suppose the Trump administration is considered a failure by the people in four years, three years from now. Some will say, 鈥淲ell, it鈥檚 because he and the horse he rode in on both stank.鈥� And then there鈥檒l be some people who said, 鈥淣o, it was him, but there are good ideas there, and we need to go further in that direction.鈥� And then, of course, there鈥檒l be people who said, 鈥淣o, you鈥檙e all wrong. He was really a great president.鈥� So how all of those things balance out.
And I do think there is one big trend that may be going on in the world now that could be good for Trump鈥檚 reelection but may be bad for Trumpianism in the long term, and that is as power over oil price moves away from OPEC and Russia to the U.S. basically we鈥檙e likely to see oil, while the price will go up and down, is going to stay maybe $50 or $57 a barrel cheaper than it would have been when you had the monopoly rents of OPEC and so on. That is like a gigantic tax cut in not only the U.S. but Europe, China, many other places.
Look historically. When OPEC came in and jacked up the price of oil, that鈥檚 actually when you see the stagnation in real wages begin. It鈥檚 when the European economies, which had been really galloping ahead after World War II鈥攖hey kind of stabilized. So in some ways we might be seeing if this energy revolution continues a boost to the living standards of a lot of regular folks. If that happens, on the one hand, the president鈥�
Glasser: Benefits.
Mead: 鈥攚ho benefits, who is in office at this lucky time, benefits. But also maybe people won鈥檛 be as alienated and angry about the way things are going.
Glasser: Right, that anxiety clearly was powering a certain amount of this return of Jacksonianism to the American public stage. So, okay, final thought. As we鈥檙e here at the end of year one of this most unusual and remarkable presidency, do you think Donald Trump is a believer in Trumpism, or is it silly of us in our sort of academic mode to try to impose ideologies and isms on a guy like Donald Trump?
Mead: I try not to read other people鈥檚 minds. I鈥檝e found I鈥檓 not very good at it. I think if you look at the pattern, at the record of things that President Trump has said over many decades, things like dislike of democracy promotion as a foreign policy, of limited wars, of trade, free trade, there are definite patterns. And it seems to me that we鈥檙e not going too far when we say, 鈥淵es, the man does seem to have some core beliefs that persist.鈥� But, you know, how he fits those in with what he is learning every day as president of the United States, you know, whether it鈥檚 from the briefings he gets from various advisers or whether it鈥檚 you try something and the whole country screams that they hate it and your poll numbers go down, well, that鈥檚 an education too. So every president changes in office. I don鈥檛 think Donald Trump will be an exception to that.
Glasser: But he really hasn鈥檛 changed that much so far, has he?
Mead: 奥别濒濒鈥�
Glasser: I like to call it the bad boyfriend theory of the case of Donald Trump. You know, the man is 70 years old. He鈥檚 not changing.
Mead: Well, I鈥檓 not going to argue for a good boyfriend theory of Donald Trump, but I would say that at least in foreign policy, which is what I鈥檝e been tracking, while his tweets have not changed, his personnel decisions and the sort of settled intentions, who does he have running Treasury, who does he have running State, who does he have running the Pentagon, his own office, and so on, have shown more of a penchant for stability than I think any of us expected a year ago today.
Glasser: Walter Russell Mead, I suppose that鈥檚 going to count as a note of optimism on which to end this conversation.
Mead: Okay.
Glasser: No, seriously. And you can follow Walter鈥檚 writings in The Wall Street Journal, The American Interest I believe you鈥檙e a contributing editor at. You鈥檙e here at the 华体会. Your book from 2001 still very relevant today, Special Providence. Thank you for being this week鈥檚 guest on The Global POLITICO. And thanks to all of you for listening and making this the best politics podcast in 2017, at least according to our fantastic friends at Quartz magazine who had the brilliance to honor us. But you can listen to us on iTunes or whatever is your favorite podcast platform. Thank you.
Mead: Thank you.