Trump’s 2025 strategy: Use power while you have it and don’t worry about the polls

During President Trump’s speech to Congress on March 5, he offered no olive branch to Democrats, nor to the people who did not vote for him last November. Instead, he made clear his intention to use what he described as a “mandate” to usher in a “golden age” for America.

Along the way, the president showcased things he has done in his first weeks in office which, so far, have little appeal to the American public. He is betting the House that he can ignore the polls and do what he wants.

Whether that will be an effective governing strategy remains to be seen.

For as long as people have been writing about politics, they have been trying to figure out the most effective strategies for governing. In democracies, that would seem to be easy: do what wins elections. But on closer examination, even that is not as simple as it appears. Public opinion is not fixed; what is popular in one moment may be rejected in the next.

Moreover, keeping a finger in the wind to see how it blows can make a party look weak or indecisive. Or the party in power may decide it is worth accomplishing something, even if it comes at a political cost. It may be hopeful or confident that it can recover in time for the next election.

Whatever the policy, polls show that many Americans crave strong leadership that can bring radical change. That desire is registered in surveys showing that 55 percent of the respondents say “the current political and economic system needs major changes, with another 14 percent saying it should be torn down completely.”

A president who is weak cannot accomplish that because, as political commentator Bill Schneider writes, weakness “invites defiance, even from members of his own political party. Other politicians need to understand that they cannot defy the president with impunity.”

Strong leaders also are in vogue because of the deep fissures that mark contemporary American politics.

“Many Americans view those in the other party as existential threats to the country," political scientist Tarah Williams and her colleagues write. "Many citizens prefer leaders who are willing to undermine democracy if it means protecting people like themselves from groups that threaten their values or status.”

Republicans seem to have learned the lesson Machiavelli taught hundreds of years ago: “All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively.” Or, as Bill Clinton put it in 2002, "When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right."

Beyond offering strong leadership, let’s look at a few things the Trump administration is doing or planning to do and the way the American public views them now.

First, the president has given the billionaire Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency extraordinary authority. Musk is using it to cut government programs and fire thousands of people who work for the federal government.

Even though he is deeply unpopular — over half of the public has an unfavorable view of him personally — Musk has been given a starring role in an Oval Office press conference, at the Trump Cabinet’s first meeting, and in Trump’s speech to Congress Tuesday night.

The extent of the public’s distaste for Musk is revealed in a Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Feb. 20, in which a majority worried his cuts "could hurt services their communities depend on," and 71 percent agreed that "billionaires have too much influence" on the Trump administration. Another 62 percent of respondents did not think that the president “has the right to fire any federal employee who disagrees with the president.”

Musk himself would hardly win a national popularity contest — only one-third of Americans approve of what he is doing, though there are stark partisan differences. Regardless, the president and his Republican allies are steadfast in their public expressions of support for Musk and DOGE.

A similar damn-the-torpedoes approach has characterized the rollout of the Republican budget blueprint, which promises massive, regressive tax cuts and severe cuts in social programs. Here again, surveys show that voters strongly oppose this.

According to Groundwork Collaborative, Americans “want to protect or even increase funding for many of the programs that Republicans are putting on the chopping block." In addition, most believe that the wealthy do not pay enough in taxes.

Nonetheless, on Feb. 25, Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pushed through their deeply unpopular budget plan. By running against that plan, Democrats hope to replicate in 2026 what happened in 2018, when House Republicans lost 42 House seats and their majority.

Finally, there is the party’s about-face on Ukraine and Russia, which was on public display on Feb. 28 in Trump's Oval Office flare-up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Republican members of Congress quickly lined up behind Trump, in the face of clear evidence that the public is not on their side. Even most Republicans disagree with Trump on Ukraine.

For now, Trump and his party have not flinched from pursuing unpopular policies. That is partly because, as prominent libertarian Jerry Taylor observes, they know they can craft “compelling, easy to understand” political messages, and that “public opinion and the political landscape can be moved by powerful rhetoric and political leadership.”

Trump and the Republican Party seem untroubled by polls, living by the maxim that political power is a terrible thing to waste — use it while you can.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

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