It is unlikely that Trump is a reconstructive President. He did not run against the philosophy of Reaganism or claim that he sought to displace it. Like other Republican primary candidates, he sought to compare himself to Reagan, and his primary campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, originated with Reagan. He has strongly supported the religious right and nominated conservative pro-life judges vetted by the Federalist Society. With only a few important exceptions (to be discussed later), his policies and his judicial appointments have been very conservative and characteristic of a conservative Republican President
For the same reasons, Trump is not a preemptive President; he did not come into office from an opposition party, trying to swim against the tide of Reaganism and seeking to find a way to compromise with the dominant party or triangulate between the two parties’ positions. He is the leader of the regime’s dominant party, the Republicans. The members of his party have strongly supported him, not because they like his personal behavior or his political principles (he doesn’t seem to have many settled principles), but rather because his policies have been largely consistent with those of a very conservative Republican. The President he most sought to repudiate was not Ronald Reagan but Barack Obama, and if Obama was a preemptive President in the Reagan regime, it’s hard to see how Trump could be one too.
Trump might well be an affiliated President like George W. Bush. As noted above, after his election, Trump and his appointees have acted like very conservative Republicans on a wide range of issues. On the other hand, Trump has departed from Republican orthodoxy in several ways: his rejection of free trade, his defense of middle-class entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, and his repeated calls for huge public works and infrastructure projects. During the campaign Trump also criticized George W. Bush’s hawkish foreign policy, distanced himself from the Iraq War, and even blamed Bush for failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
Trump’s opposition to free trade and his draconian rhetoric on immigration suggest that although he is not abandoning the regime’s commitments to deregulatory capitalism, low taxes, and the culture wars, he is trying to renovate and repair the regime. He is adapting it to a changing Republican base of white, working class voters, especially those without college degrees.
Trump, in other words, seems to be trying to give the Reagan regime a new lease on life, or a new shot of legitimacy, by pushing it in a strongly populist and nativist direction. And he is offering himself as a nonideological outsider who has the special talents to fix things. According to Skowronek’s model, this style of leadership makes him most like a disjunctive President.
Cyclical theory (United States history)