Donald Trump Is What Some Historians Call a ‘Transformative President’

After Donald Trump’s first presidential victory, supporters and opponents alike argued that he was an aberration—a fluke winner who was a stark, but temporary, departure from long-standing political traditions.

But Trump’s second victory quieted the myth that he was a temporary detour. Stylistically, Trump has shattered norms for presidential conduct with regularity. Substantively, he has pushed an agenda that challenges policies, which were, up until Trump’s first victory, considered to be unassailable. Accurately understanding the political implications of Trump’s presidencies requires treating him as the newest example of a recurrent phenomenon in American political life. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Whatever one feels about Trump’s return to the White House, he is what some historians call a “transformational” or “transformative” president, whose victories serve as a forceful indictment of the status quo, and who has reshaped politics, ensuring that they will be played on new terms for decades to come.

This reality becomes easier to see when looking at the similarities between Trump and another transformative president: Franklin D. Roosevelt. Politically, Roosevelt had little in common with Trump. Yet, like Roosevelt’s first election in 1932, Trump’s success potentially signals the overturning of decades of political orthodoxies and the beginning of a new era.

As political scientist Stephen Skowronek has argued, American politics tend to be cyclical. The beginning of each cycle is marked by a trailblazing president whose victory reshapes politics around a new set of ideas, and ushers into power a new group of supporters who are selected for their loyalty to the president’s program. When a transformative president leaves office, successors from his party work to apply his vision to new problems until, eventually, this governing program fails to offer plausible solutions to the problems of the day. Voters grow dissatisfied, they lose confidence in presidents espousing what has become a tired message, and seek candidates promising something new.

Skowronek suggests that because the first president in this cycle gives an electorate the fresh set of solutions they crave, they aren’t constrained by the rules, norms, and expectations that stymied the aspirations of predecessors. When voters are hungry for change, transformative presidents are able to upend long-settled policies, reimagine the boundaries of what is politically possible, and reorient collective notions of normal.

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No one epitomized this type of president better than Roosevelt. 

A conservative, laissez faire philosophy had largely governed American politics between the Civil War and 1932, with the exceptions of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. As Americans soured on Wilson, Republicans won the 1920 election in a rout. The GOP would go on to hold the White House for 12 years. Republicans took a business-friendly approach, working to reduce government regulations, balance the budget, cut spending, lower taxes, and let the economy function without interference. Calvin Coolidge, president from 1925-1929 expressed the prevailing sentiment when he explained, in 1926, that “if the federal government should go out of existence, the common run of people would not detect the difference in the affairs of their daily life for a considerable amount of time.”

Voters found this familiar message attractive during the roaring 20s—as the economy boomed and society thrived, there seemed little reason to shift gears politically. That all changed with the Great Depression. Conservative President Herbert Hoover responded to the economic cataclysm by holding steadfastly to his small government principles, declaring that it was the “American way” to leave the people to “fight their own battles in their own communities.”

This prevailing orthodoxy, however, promised little relief to the millions of Americans now suffering through prolonged economic crisis. 

Roosevelt challenged Hoover in the 1932 election, promising in a campaign speech at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, that he would seek to develop an “economic declaration of rights, an economic constitutional order.” Roosevelt declared that the federal government would “assume the function of economic regulation” and “provide work and economic security to the mass of the people.” His program represented a significant break with inherited tradition.

Roosevelt scored an overwhelming victory, providing a clear mandate to enact major changes and to unleash government power to address the Depression.

The new president recognized that his political project aimed to be transformative. He described his New Deal as a program to “replace the old order of special privilege in a Nation which was completely and thoroughly disgusted with the existing dispensation.”

Speaking to the significance of the change he represented in an October 1936 campaign speech at Madison Square Garden, Roosevelt reminded voters that, “never before in all our history have [the forces of the status quo] been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

Roosevelt understood that selling this program would require reimagining the way presidents communicated with Americans. He inaugurated “fireside chats” and personal appeals that broke with past practice to explain what he was doing and why. The “establishment” condemned him, and fought back, but could not prevent him from inaugurating a dramatic new relationship between government, economy, and society.

That didn’t mean Roosevelt always won. By 1938, two years into his second of a record four terms, a “conservative coalition”—comprised of Southern Democrats and Republicans—formed and blocked everything from Roosevelt’s court packing proposal to one reorganizing the executive branch. It also kept the president from involving the U.S. in World War II until the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

Nonetheless, the politics shaped by Roosevelt would limit and direct what presidents in both parties could do for almost a half century. Americans grew to accept what were new forms of bureaucratic intervention introduced by Roosevelt and the Democrats for the purpose of managing capitalism. They also came to expect the kind of personal presidential leadership that he provided through both the Depression and World War II. 

By the end of the 1970s, however, the order Roosevelt had created was exhausted. Jimmy Carter took the reins at the end of the cycle Roosevelt had inaugurated and found himself up against a revitalized conservative movement, led by Ronald Reagan, which was promising its own reconstruction. Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980 signaled the beginning of a new, “neo-liberal” era.

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The order Reagan ushered in reigned until Trump shocked the political world in 2016. While there wasn’t an acute crisis like the Depression, scores of voters had grown dissatisfied with a system that they felt was hurting them. They were looking for someone who would upend the order that had been in place for 35 years.

Trump’s victory seemed surprising to many observers, because he lost the popular vote, his party affiliation was muddled, he had no experience in politics, and he said and did things that had typically ended political careers.

In light of Trump’s return to the presidency, however, it’s clear that he’s not an anomaly. Instead, he may be a transformative president like Roosevelt. The traits and behavior that made Trump stand out and led people to wrongly conclude he was aberrant could just reflected his tendency to overturn, in Roosevelt’s language, “the existing dispensation.”

As Roosevelt did, Trump has remade presidential communications through his use of X—and now Truth Social. Further, like Roosevelt, Trump’s agenda has also discarded traditions long valued by both parties: a commitment to free trade, an acceptance of birthright citizenship, and a belief that America should play a leading role in the world, among others. Similar to Roosevelt, Trump also seems prepared to challenge the authority of the courts. Like other transformative presidents, the outrage that Trump provokes among lawmakers inside and outside of his own political party also lends credibility to his promise of “real change.”

Understanding Trump this way also helps explain why he won in 2024. Some historians might argue that President Joe Biden was tied to a political regime at the end of its cycle. Biden was forced to embody his party’s failures, but received no credit for his policy successes. He recognized the need to shore up the existing order by adjusting elements of it, but like so many end-of-cycle presidents before him, Biden couldn’t persuade Americans of the regime’s overall integrity. Effective leadership in this situation was therefore likely difficult.

It is worth remembering that even presidents who embody transformative change face significant opposition—as Roosevelt did. Just as he precipitated the formation of a potent opposition coalition, Trump probably may run into resistance. The historically narrow majority that Republicans hold in the House of Representatives means this opposition will probably continue. Even if that happens however, Trump may be remembered as historically transformative—a man whose style, leadership, and program will impact the shape of our politics for decades to come.

Justin Peck is assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.