An ideological revolution needs 12 years in power

It seems that Curtis Yarvin and I agree: The Donald Trump administration is not making the most of its mandate, and it may be setting conservatism up for defeat in 2028.

- Ross Douthat

Supporters of President Donald Trump stand off with the police outside the US Capitol grounds in Washington on Jan 6, 2021. ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES

(©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Where Yarvin, the great proponent of absolute monarchy, and I differ is on where and why the administration is struggling. I think the Trump White House is leaning too hard into an unpopular form of postliberalism - deploying Caesarist power on behalf of the president's longstanding obsessions (tariffs!) rather than the issues that actually elected him (inflation!), and turning too forcefully and obsessively against internal enemies while the concerns of swing voters are neglected.

Yarvin, predictably, thinks the administration is not being postliberal enough. In a recent Substack post, he argues that going after specific enemies is a poor substitute for, say, abolishing the entire judicial branch by fiat, and that the only thing lamer than what the Trump administration is doing already would be some sort of desperate pivot to "bread-and-butter governance".

Since Yarvin's thought assumes that the American project went astray in either 1688 or 1789, not in 1932 or 1964 or 2014, it's fair to say that he will always be dissatisfied with the half-measures of presidents who don't simply restore the Stuart monarchy.

But the present-day right is filled with nonroyalists who nonetheless find Yarvin's zeal for the use of power bracing, and who suspect that appeals to swing voters and kitchen-table concerns are an excuse for selling out and letting the liberals win by degrees.

So I thought it might be worth offering a case for bread-and-butter governance as a necessary - though by no means sufficient - path to ideological transformation, by simplifying that case to an even simpler rule: A true revolution should be seeking a minimum of 12 years in power.