There is reason to believe that Donald Trump will not be president forever. There is considerably less reason to believe that American politics will return to normal when he leaves.
Trump has assembled one of the strangest political coalitions in modern American history. Blue-collar workers, white nationalists, Christian nationalists, technology billionaires, traditional business interests, and voters who simply despise the political establishment have found themselves supporting the same man.
Their interests are hardly identical. Some are natural antagonists. Yet Trump has held much of this coalition together through political instinct, personal persuasion, grievance, and ruthlessness.
He has been both its architect and its chief salesman.
But those are not necessarily the same jobs.
The question is whether the political machinery assembled during his presidency will remain available to whoever succeeds him.
Consider the American media.
Fox News has long provided Republicans with a powerful and generally sympathetic voice. Now CBS News and CNN operate under the same corporate ownership, controlled by the Ellison family, whose relationship with Trump has been notably friendly. The networks retain separate editorial leadership, but the concentration of major news organizations under politically connected ownership raises obvious questions about independence.
Meanwhile, journalists, television personalities, and comedians work in an atmosphere in which unfavorable coverage can provoke extraordinary hostility from the White House.
Trump treats routine questions as acts of personal disloyalty. Reporters asking about matters as serious as war and national security can find themselves insulted, questioned about their backgrounds, or accused of hostility toward the country.
A president need not personally order a journalist’s dismissal to influence the decisions of media executives. They understand perfectly well where political power resides.
And traditional television is only part of the story.
Elon Musk owns X, while a handful of technology executives control much of the infrastructure through which Americans search for information, communicate, and encounter the news.
The newspaper barons of an earlier age would have been astonished.
The next Republican president will also inherit relationships with technology companies, energy producers, defense contractors, and other corporations with enormous stakes in federal policy. Personal access, political accommodation, and commercial opportunity have become increasingly difficult to separate.
And then there is the Supreme Court.
The Court has given Trump much of what he wants, although it has rejected some major claims of authority, including his attempt to impose sweeping tariffs under emergency powers.
Its conservative majority has embraced an expansive understanding of presidential control over the executive branch, weakening longstanding protections for independent federal agencies.
These constitutional principles may survive Trump’s presidency. At least as long as there’s a president the Court agrees with.
For decades, advocates of the so-called unitary executive have sought greater presidential control over the federal government. That project did not begin with Trump, and it will not necessarily end with him.
Indeed, the next Republican president may inherit a more powerful office than the one Trump first occupied.
And here is where the story becomes particularly interesting.
Trump himself may be growing less useful to the political structure he has helped assemble.
Tariffs have increased costs for businesses and consumers. The war with Iran has contributed to higher energy prices. Immigration enforcement and restrictions on the low-wage workforce have created additional strains.
Yet Trump’s explanations often consist of declaring success, assigning blame, or attacking whoever asks an inconvenient question.
He remains extraordinarily effective at identifying enemies and persuading his followers that they are being mistreated. He has been considerably less effective at explaining complicated policies or preparing Americans for difficult sacrifices.
War requires more than declarations of strength. Economic hardship requires more than assurances that everything is going wonderfully.
A president must sometimes persuade people to accept unpleasant realities.
Trump has rarely demonstrated much interest in that part of the job.
And so we arrive at a curious possibility.
The man who brought this coalition together may eventually become an obstacle to its continued success.
Imagine a successor who shares much of Trump’s agenda but possesses greater discipline. Someone who can explain an economic policy without contradicting himself three times. Someone who does not insult every journalist asking an uncomfortable question.
Someone who understands that political power is often exercised more effectively when it is not constantly advertised.
Such a president might inherit sympathetic media institutions, powerful corporate relationships, and a judiciary receptive to an expansive conception of executive authority.
He might also know how to use those advantages without turning every afternoon into a national emergency.
Of course, Trump’s coalition may prove impossible to maintain without Trump himself. Technology billionaires and Christian nationalists do not necessarily want the same country. Neither do corporate executives and the populists who distrust them.
His departure could expose divisions that his personality has managed to conceal.
But even if the coalition fractures, the institutional changes may remain.
Media companies will not automatically acquire new owners. Corporate relationships will not evaporate. Supreme Court precedents will not reverse themselves.
Institutions outlive presidents. Economic power survives elections. And political habits, once established, can prove remarkably difficult to abandon.
There is comfort in believing that the country will return to normal when Donald Trump leaves the White House.
Perhaps some of it will.
The daily insults may diminish. We may once again have a president who can answer a straightforward question without turning it into an occasion for national embarrassment.
But the next Republican president may inherit much of the political machinery assembled during the Trump years, along with an executive branch whose authority has been substantially enlarged.
He may also possess something Trump has often lacked: the discipline to exercise that power without constantly drawing attention to it.
We may discover that Donald Trump was not the culmination of a political movement, but the man who prepared the ground for what comes next.