The Exhausted Center
Maybe the change that Americans keep asking for, and that the parties keep failing to deliver, is not something angry populist demagogues or self-righteous progressive ideologues can grant. Maybe it can only be delivered by choosing to seek that change within our own lives and in our own neighborhoods.
When Thomas Howes asked me to write something about the first few months of the Trump administration for the Vital Center, I pondered several different approaches. I could have offered a simple play-by-play telling of everything that’s happened so far, laying out all of the executive orders, international crises, and so forth. Or I could have taken a “rank punditry” approach and discussed the political drama that has ensued from these early months in Donald Trump’s second term. But after much consideration and thought, I decided to take a different tack.
The broader story—and the more important story, in my opinion—is how the onslaught of executive action since January 20th fits into the ongoing exhaustion of the new silent majority: the exhausted center. These are the Americans who are increasingly finding themselves withdrawing in disgust from a political culture dominated by increasingly angry, marginal, and loud factions who refuse to find the path toward normalcy that the American electorate keeps begging for.
The word that has been floated for nearly two decades now when observing the zeitgeist of the American public is fatigue, even as the word constantly floated by the would-be tribunes of the people is change.
Barack Obama offered America “change we can believe in,” which energized the American left and led the young senator from Illinois to an underdog primary victory and eventually to the White House. But even amid the election, headlines and polls were already pointing to something they termed “Obama fatigue,” such as a 2008 Pew Research poll that found 48 percent of respondents reporting that “they have been hearing too much about Obama.” And despite seemingly excited fervor for the change that President Obama had offered America, by 2014, according to a poll cited by the New York Times, Americans who would “like to see a president who offers different policies and programs” had risen to 65 percent. By the end of two terms of Obama’s brand of change, Americans seemed ready for a different flavor.
“The word that has been floated for nearly two decades now when observing the zeitgeist of the American public is ‘fatigue’, even as the word constantly floated by the would-be tribunes of the people is ‘change.’“
And sure enough, the country shifted gears, rejecting Hillary Clinton in 2016 and electing Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed bull-in-the-china-shop who embraced a perceived mandate for an arguably even more radical form of change. But it didn’t take long for “Trump fatigue” to set in. After a host of scandals, such as the firing of FBI director James Comey, and disastrous, unpopular attempts to roll out efforts to deliver on signature campaign promises, such as the attempted “Muslim ban,” polling showed 6 out of 10 Americans had already come to believe that Trump was “tearing America apart” as early as August 2017. By the time we get to the final measure of Trump’s presidential approval in his first term on January 15th, 2021, 62 percent of respondents reported disapproval of the 45th President.
Defeating Trump in 2020 was, of course, Joe Biden. Scranton Joe, the Delaware Senator who, deserved or not, had the reputation as a reliably centrist voice in Washington over many decades, promised another and different kind of change. He promised a “return to normal.” And, owing to a sense of chaos under the first Trump administration, especially as it handled the COVID epidemic, America gave Biden the chance to lead the country back to a sense of normalcy.
But, yet again, fatigue set in early under the Biden administration, though perhaps not quite as fast as it had under President Trump. By 2022, for instance, Americans had grown tired of the ongoing debate over vaccine mandates and masking related to COVID-19, sensing that President Biden was, under the determination to “follow the science,” holding the country back from being able to return to any kind of pre-March 2020 style of normalcy. One poll in 2022 found that 75 percent of respondents “described themselves as tired” of how COVID had continually disrupted their lives.
And the economic challenges of the Biden years also frustrated Americans, with one Gallup poll in August 2022 finding 67 percent of respondents disapproved of President Biden’s handling of the economy. That same month, Gallup conducted a separate survey with 72 percent of respondents saying the economy was getting worse. And by the end of the 2024 election, an Emerson poll reported a 36 percent job approval rating of the Biden administration.
Upset with almost every facet of the Biden administration, voters had begun looking back nostalgically to the pre-COVID era and, by association, to Donald Trump’s leadership, allowing him to return to the White House for the second time. Change was once more in the air, and Donald Trump promised bold leadership to upset Biden’s status quo of failed progressive policies.
But now, it seems, we are once again at the same point we keep finding ourselves in the wake of a “change” election. A President comes in with a bold declaration of a sweeping mandate and embarks upon a whirlwind of executive orders, shuffling leadership and priorities in the administrative agencies, creating new task forces and initiatives, and offering revolutionary promises. And America, yet again, is responding as can be expected when the promised change fails to deliver anything but an alternate form of chaos from that which they had hoped to escape.
Whether we discuss the ongoing drama over Ukraine, the economic consequences of the tariff hokeypokey, the upheaval resulting from DOGE, the new rightwing political correctness, the ongoing bipartisan assault on the legitimacy of the judiciary, or simply the lack of decorum and consistency Americans sense from the White House under Trump 2.0, America, already in March, is beginning to show signs of a second bout of Trump fatigue. A recent Ipsos poll found that 60 percent of respondents felt that the cost of living was on the wrong track, and a majority, or near majority, of respondents felt that the country overall was on the wrong track, as was the national economy, national politics, foreign policy, and employment and jobs. The single issue in the Ipsos poll that respondents felt was headed in a positive direction was immigration policy. And, according to the 538 polling average, President Trump’s approval ratings first dipped underwater on March 4th, standing at 47.6 percent approval and 47.9 percent disapproval.
The numbers we can observe across the Obama years, the first Trump administration, the Biden administration, and now the second Trump administration paint a very clear picture of an exhausted public, and specifically an exhausted center that keeps asking the major political parties for normalcy but keeps getting upheaval, revolution, and chaos.
It remains for us to see if the Trump administration’s revolutionary fervor will exhaust itself and palace intrigue will see the removal of the current radical bent of appointees and staff, to be replaced with “normies” who can restore elements of Trump’s first administration, which many Americans had hoped they were voting for. But for now, it seems that it’s full steam ahead.
But perhaps the best thing we can do is to stop letting the anxieties of politics turn us against one another. Whatever comes from the White House, Congress, or the Judiciary in the next few years, we can still find ways to heal our nation by simply turning to each other and trying to be neighborly again.
Maybe the change that Americans keep asking for, and that the parties keep failing to deliver, is not something angry populist demagogues or self-righteous progressive ideologues can grant. Maybe it can only be delivered by choosing to seek that change within our own lives and in our own neighborhoods.
A poem I was pleased to read on Facebook this last month really expresses the sentiment of frustration from the exhausted center and the hint at the actual solution. From cowboy poet Darell Ecker Holden:
Do not judge my silence,
As politicians rant and rage.
I despise both parties equally,
And one thing I’ve learned with age,
Is those who scream the loudest,
No matter which side, R or D.
Only care about themselves,
Couldn’t care less, for you or me.
So I will not join the chaos,
The vitriol, and pious shrieks.
Ninety nine percent of Congress,
Are just corrupt crooks and freaks.
You have your opinion,
I’ve just given mine.
Hopefully we still are friends,
Even when politics do not align.
This world is plumb determined,
To divide us and foster hate.
But it’s my prayer, that you and I,
Will not share that fate.
Respect and love and kindness,
Treating friends and family well.
Is the balm to heal our nation,
That’s on a bee line straight to hell.
So I’ll be on the desert,
Where freedom ain’t confined.
Y’all are always welcome here,
Far from the hypocrisy of mankind.
I am fed up with politics,
No matter red or blue.
And regardless of your leaning,
I sure think the world of you.
