It has long seemed to me that American history moves forward in bursts of spirit. Certain generations, or even certain individuals, appear with an inner fire that pulls the country out of stagnation and into a new era. In my own lifetime, the most vivid example is the generation that emerged after World War II. Many of them had grown up in the Dust Bowl and the misery of the Great Depression, then crossed oceans to storm beaches at Normandy and Guadalcanal and a hundred other killing fields. They came home, started businesses, went to college\u2014or did both\u2014built great enterprises, employed millions, and created an industrial and technological civilization that has made our everyday lives far safer and easier than anything they themselves experienced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The personality of creation is rare. It is part of what we call American exceptionalism: that mysterious \u201cstuff\u201d inside the hearts of men and women who build something that did not exist before, whether a business, a movement, or a work of art. It is not simply a matter of IQ or charm\u2014though it often draws on both\u2014but a deeper disposition toward risk, responsibility, and vision. The people who have it do not merely manage reality; they reshape it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is why the attributes of a builder or \u201cfounder\u201d are so different from those of a bureaucrat or company man. Founders live in the realm of the possible and the not\u2011yet; bureaucrats live in the realm of the existing and the already\u2011approved. Founders break rules; managers write manuals. We need both, but they are not the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his recent book Founders Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump<\/em>, historian Arthur Herman argues that American history is best understood as a recurring struggle between visionary founders and the managers and bureaucrats who later consolidate\u2014and often ossify\u2014the legacy of what the founders built. In Herman\u2019s telling, founders are risk\u2011taking builders and rebels whose imagination and willingness to start from scratch allow them to reinvent America in moments of crisis. Managers come afterward to professionalize, institutionalize, and stabilize those achievements. That stabilization is not all bad\u2014but it comes with a cost. Over time, the managerial class tends to stifle innovation, drift away from original purposes, and substitute process for principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Founders create out of chaos and upheaval. Their work is often messy, improvisational, and controversial. Successor managers and the professional bureaucratic class, by contrast, excel at regularizing and routinizing. They build systems and procedures, which can be useful, but in the process, they often smother the creative spark that made those institutions worth having in the first place. Periodic crises\u2014economic, social, and political\u2014then arise as the system grows rigid and unresponsive. Those crises create openings for a new generation of founders to challenge the inertia of the managerial class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Founding Fathers were such an audacious generation\u2014many of them astonishingly young, often under 30, yet willing to overthrow an empire and attempt a new form of self\u2011government. St. Paul, in a different context, was another such founder, reshaping the moral and spiritual imagination of the ancient world. In the modern era, Herman extends the founder label to entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, as well as disruptive political and social leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Donald Trump. Whatever their ideology, these figures share a readiness to defy entrenched systems, assume outsized personal risk, and reframe public expectations in their respective spheres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seen in this light, Herman\u2019s framework helps clarify our current political moment. It explains not only the ferocity of the conflict but also the deep distrust that now defines our public life. Donald Trump, like Thomas Jefferson, Steve Jobs, or even Ted Turner, possesses an audacious sense of the possible. His enemies are not limited to Democrats or self\u2011styled \u201cmoderates\u201d and \u201cNever\u2011Trumpers\u201d in his own party. Arrayed against him is a much broader managerial class\u2014the permanent bureaucracy, the consultant class, the credentialed experts, and the guardians of the status quo in media, academia, and corporate life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n History gives us other examples of founder personalities in politics. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill were such men. They possessed an almost stubborn belief in themselves and their moral positions, and they used the platforms of faith, rhetoric, and reason to call their people to be better than they believed themselves capable of being. Lincoln was hardly a consensus figure; without the twin Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, he likely would have lost his bid for a second term. When he first ran for president, he received less than 40 percent of the popular vote\u2014proof, among other things, of the wisdom of the Electoral College. Churchill, after leading Britain from the brink of defeat to victory in World War II, was promptly turned out of office by his countrymen and replaced by a smoother representative of the ruling managerial elite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Founders seldom seek affirmation, and that makes them poor conventional politicians. They are focused\u2014sometimes obsessively\u2014on their vision. They are relentless in the pursuit of what they believe must be done. One of the great threats that Donald Trump poses to the ruling class of sycophantic experts is that he does not share their managerial temperament or their priorities. They are invested in process, position, and predictability; he is invested in disruption and outcomes. They cannot understand entrepreneurs or risk\u2011takers because they themselves are too comfortable to take real risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Donald Trump has, in this sense, a founder\u2019s personality. He is engaged in a cultural, economic, and political struggle in which the managerial classes sense that their power and control are eroding. His vision and energies are oriented toward an imagined future\u2014toward what he thinks the country could again become\u2014whereas theirs are anchored in the present system and the privileges it affords them. One side is trying to re\u2011find; the other is trying to preserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If public polling had existed in the 1770s, our Founding Fathers likely would have discovered that only a minority\u2014perhaps a third\u2014strongly supported their cause at the outset. Visionaries often begin in the minority. I believe Donald Trump stands in that same founder tradition. He clearly sees a future different from the one favored by today\u2019s managerial class and has shown the willingness to bear personal risk, scorn, and opposition to move the country in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Truly, he is \u201cThe Founder\u201d for our time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has long seemed to me that American history moves forward in bursts of spirit. Certain generations, or even certain individuals, appear with an inner fire that pulls the country out of stagnation and into a new era. In my own lifetime, the most vivid example is the generation that emerged after World War II. 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