Can America Really Restore Itself After Trump?

The Restoration Question

Can American democracy return to its pre-2016 norms? As Donald Trump begins his second presidency, this question haunts Washington's corridors and think tank seminars. The Financial Times recently explored the possibility of a "post-Trump restoration," but the very premise reveals something profound about where America stands today.

The assumption behind "restoration" is that something was broken—and can be fixed. But what if the Trump era wasn't an aberration but a revelation of deeper structural shifts that had been brewing for decades?

The Myth of American Resilience

America has bounced back before. After Watergate, after Iran-Contra, after Clinton's impeachment, the system seemed to self-correct. Institutions held. Norms reasserted themselves. Democracy endured.

But this time feels different. Previous crises were about individual misconduct or policy failures. The Trump phenomenon represents something more fundamental: a breakdown in the shared understanding of what American democracy should look like.

Consider the numbers: 74% of Republicans still question the 2020 election results. Nearly half of Americans believe the other party poses an existential threat to the country. These aren't policy disagreements—they're competing visions of reality itself.

Joe Biden's four-year presidency was explicitly framed as a restoration project. Rebuild alliances. Restore institutional norms. Return to "regular order." Yet Trump's return suggests these efforts addressed symptoms, not causes.

The Economics of Discontent

Behind the political theater lies economic reality. The American middle class has been squeezed for 40 years. Real wages for most workers have barely budged since the 1970s, while productivity soared. The Rust Belt didn't vote for Trump because of his tweets—they voted because their factories closed.

Globalization created winners and losers, but American politics struggled to acknowledge this reality. While coastal elites celebrated free trade and technological disruption, entire communities watched their economic foundations crumble. Trump didn't create this resentment—he channeled it.

The question isn't whether America can restore pre-Trump politics, but whether it can address the underlying conditions that made Trump possible in the first place.

What Restoration Really Means

True restoration would require more than returning to 2015. It would mean rebuilding the economic compact that made American democracy stable in the first place. This includes:

Addressing inequality that has reached Gilded Age levels. Reforming institutions that many Americans see as captured by special interests. Creating economic opportunities in regions left behind by globalization.

But here's the paradox: the very changes needed for restoration might require abandoning some of the policies and assumptions that defined pre-Trump America. Free trade orthodoxy. Deregulation. The belief that markets alone can solve social problems.

Global Implications

America's internal struggles have global consequences. Allies from Seoul to Berlin built their security strategies around assumptions of American reliability and predictability. If America can't restore internal consensus, what does that mean for the liberal international order?

The irony is that authoritarian leaders from Beijing to Moscow may benefit most from American dysfunction. They can point to U.S. political chaos as evidence that democracy itself is flawed. America's soft power—long its greatest strategic asset—erodes with each constitutional crisis.