THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY WAS NOT JUST A POLITICAL EVENT. It was an intellectual one — and no one has written that book. Until now.
The Regime Change Doctrine is the intellectual history of the Trump era — the ideas that powered it, the philosophical traditions it drew on, the thinkers who shaped it, and what the doctrine it produced reveals about the fault lines of democratic theory that the Trump years exposed. Thomas E. Calloway takes ideas seriously, presents the strongest versions of every argument, and delivers the account that the political and institutional narratives have left unwritten.
Where did America First come from intellectually? Calloway traces the line from Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures through Pat Buchanan's insurgency to Peter Navarro's trade doctrine — and shows that what looked like economic heterodoxy was, in important respects, the revival of a serious tradition the free-trade consensus had suppressed. Where did the civilizational conservatism that shaped the immigration agenda come from? He traces it through Huntington's clash of civilizations thesis to Bannon's governing philosophy — and takes it seriously enough to show both what it gets right and what it gets dangerously wrong.
The chapter on the truth problem — the epistemological challenge the Trump communication style posed to the shared factual reality that democratic deliberation requires — is unlike anything written elsewhere about the era. And the intellectual genealogy appendix, tracing every major tradition to its primary texts, makes this book the essential reference for students of ideas and politics alike.
Four traditions. The complete intellectual reckoning.
This is the book that asks: what did the Trump era reveal about democratic theory — and what work must democratic thought now do to address what the era exposed?
For readers of Hannah Arendt, Jan-Werner Muller, and the Federalist Papers — this is the ideas companion to the most intellectually significant presidency of the modern era. Scroll up. The war of ideas is not over. This book shows you where it stands.
