Policy Studies

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Donald Trump’s Jacksonian and Jeffersonian

Foreign Policy

Jan Niklas Rolf

To cite this article: Jan Niklas Rolf (2021): Donald Trump’s Jacksonian and Jeffersonian Foreign
Policy, Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2021.1934431

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POLICY STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2021.1934431

Donald Trump’s Jacksonian and Jeffersonian Foreign Policy

Jan Niklas Rolf
Faculty of Society and Economics, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences Kleve, Germany

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

While the presidency of Donald Trump has come to an end, the Received 22 February 2021
debate about its theoretical classification is in full swing. Some Accepted 20 May 2021
have argued that Trump’s foreign policy stands in the tradition of
KEYWORDS
Jacksonianism – one of the four schools of thought identified by Donald Trump; Trumpism;
Walter R. Mead. Others believe Trumpism (or, for that matter, Jacksonianism;
Trumpianism) to constitute a school in its own right. This article Jeffersonianism; US foreign
suggests that Trump’s foreign policy is both old and new in that policy
it draws on Jacksonianism but combines it with Jeffersonianism –
a combination unseen since, at least, the end of the Cold War.
Examining the foreign policies of the five American post-Cold
War presidents through the lens of Mead’s four schools of
thought, the article shows that Trump’s Jacksonianism-
Jeffersonianism contrasts sharply with the Wilsonianism-
Hamiltonianism of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but that it
is only a partial departure from the Wilsonianism-Jacksonianism
of George W. Bush and the Wilsonianism-Jeffersonianism of
Barack Obama. What strikes many observers as odd about
Trump’s presidency, it is claimed, has less to do with the content
than with the style of his foreign policy, which, again, can be
explained by the unlikely coalition of Jacksonianism and
Jeffersonianism the president embraced.

Introduction
When winning the presidential election after a smear campaign unseen in US election
history, he presented himself as the long-awaited voice of the forgotten people whose
popular movement had defeated a candidate of the Washington establishment looking
to continue a political dynasty in the White House. When losing the presidential election
after a not much less dirty campaign, he fabricated the conspiracy theory that the election
had been stolen from him. Talk is of the 7th president of the United States, Andrew
Jackson – even though this equally applies to the 45th president of the United States,
Donald Trump. And the parallels continue: A comparison of the electorate maps of
1828 and 2016 shows that all states but Illinois that had been won by Jackson were
also won by Trump almost two hundred years later.1 On a county-level, voting in
2016 was more correlated to voting in 1828 than to voting in any other presidential elec-
tion until 1968 except for the one in 1856 (Darmofal and Strickler 2019, 130–131). In
addition to the elections and the electorate, the elected also share some striking

CONTACT Jan Niklas Rolf jan-niklas.rolf@hochschule-rhein-waal.de Faculty of Society and Economics, Rhine-
Waal University of Applied Sciences, Marie-Curie-Straße 1, 47533 Kleve, Germany
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 J. N. ROLF

similarities. Although Jackson and Trump had come to great influence and wealth,
both presidents styled themselves as outsiders with a disdain for what they portrayed
as corrupt and crooked elites and a rigged and self-enriching political system. In
domestic policy, both were supportive of immigration control and law enforcement,
and in foreign policy, both were sceptical of trade liberalization and international
commitments.
Against this background, it does not surprise that political advisers and analysts have
likened the 45th president to Jackson (Giuliani 2016; Inskeep 2016; Baker 2017) and his
foreign policy to Jacksonianism (Cha 2016; Fay 2016; Mead 2016, 2017; Dimitrova 2017;
Jones and Khoo 2017; Clarke and Ricketts 2017a; Bannon, cited in Glasser 2018; Spata-
fora 2018; Kilgore 2019; Lowry 2020; Holland and Fermor 2021) – one of the four tra-
ditions of US foreign policy that Walter R. Mead (2001) identified in his celebrated
book Special Providence. Others disagree with this analysis, pointing to some substantial
differences between Trump and Jackson (Meacham 2016; Cheatham 2017; Lomazoff
2017), Trumpianism and Jacksonianism (Thompson 2017; Daghrir 2020), and even
between Jackson and Jacksonianism (Gullotta 2020). With Jackson(ianism) providing
little guidance, Trump’s presidency has been characterized as “unpredictable” (Boot
2016; Wyne 2017), “un-American” (Pitney 2020; Cohen 2021), “unprecedented” (Azari
2020; Sommerlad 2021) and – taking on a telling neologism of the president himself –
“unpresidented” (Brockenbrough 2018).
This article seeks to demonstrate that Trump’s foreign policy is not unprecedented
because it, indeed, draws on Jacksonianism. But it is without recent historic precedent
as it combines Jacksonianism with Jeffersonianism – an alliance we have not witnessed
since the end of the Cold War, if not since the inter-war period.2 While Trump’s Jackso-
nianism-Jeffersonianism stands in sharp contrast to the Wilsonianism-Hamiltonianism
of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, I argue, it is only a partial departure from the
Wilsonianism-Jacksonianism of George W. Bush and the Wilsonianism-Jeffersonianism
of Barack Obama (for an overview, see Table 1). Being more concerned about domestic
polls and elections than about diplomatic protocol and etiquette, I further argue, it is not
Trump’s foreign policy but the unorthodox way in which it was conducted that marks a
sharp break between his presidency and that of his two predecessors. What is transfor-
mational about the presidency of Trump, thus, is not policy outcomes – at least as far as
foreign policy is concerned – but leadership style (Nye 2014, 119; see also James 2021 in
the introduction to this special issue).
The article goes beyond Mead’s book and subsequent publications in three important
respects: First, Mead (2002, 95) deems his portrayal of the four schools of thought pri-
marily as a theoretical contribution that “may or may not … be sustained by the historical
record”. It is not his “intent to ‘prove’ from documents or other sources that these visions
existed throughout American history” (Mead 2002, 89). This article, in contrast, seeks to
determine the extent to which these schools manifest themselves in American foreign
policy. Along with the general approach of this special issue, the article adopts a first-
image perspective that views the president as the chief interpreter and principal driver
of foreign policy. It therefore analyses the presidents’ quadrennial inaugural addresses
(in which the newly elected political leaders outline their general agenda), the presidents’
annual state of the union addresses (in which the office holders report on their priorities
and legislative proposals) and compares these to the presidents’ actual policies. The
 POLICY STUDIES 3

American Presidency Project, an independent website for presidential public documents

based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, proved a valuable source in this
regard. Second, as Mead’s book was initially published in 2001, it only engages with
the post-Cold War presidencies of George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) and Bill Clinton
(1993-2001). Looking at the twenty years since the book’s publication, this article also
sheds light on the presidencies of George W. Bush (2001-2009), Barack Obama (2009-
2017) and Donald Trump (2017-2021). Third, while Mead has subsequently commented
on the Bush (Mead 2002), Obama (Mead 2010) and Trump (Mead 2016, 2017) presiden-
cies, his classification of the presidents partly deviates from the one presented in this
article. Whereas Mead believes Obama and Trump to represent only one school, I
argue that the two presidents – like the two Bushs and Clinton before them – adhered
to two traditions at the same time, which explains their often inconsistent and sometimes
non-existent foreign policies.
In doing so, I modify a metaphor that Mead (2002, 304) entertains in his discussion of
the late Clinton administration: That of a car with Jacksonians as its engine, Hamilto-
nians and Wilsonians wrestling for the wheel, and Jeffersonians complaining about the
car taking wrong turns.3 In my metaphor, the car has four passengers: Hamilton,
Wilson, Jefferson and Jackson. The two passengers occupying the front seats determine
the car’s direction, whereas the two passengers in the back seats have no control over the
course of the car. With a roadmap in his hands, the passenger in the co-driver’s seat
determines the general direction. With the steering wheel in his hands, the passenger
in the driver’s seat determines the actual course. While the driver generally follows the
instructions of the co-driver, he is the one that steers through the traffic, turning left
and right, taking a detour here and there, occasionally stepping on the brake and some-
times even going into reverse gear. This metaphor, I hope, helps us to better understand
the drivers and co-drivers of American post-Cold War foreign policy. Since it is only a
metaphor, though, we should not interpret too much into this heuristic device.
The article is structured into three sections: After this introduction, section one
depicts Mead’s four schools of thought that are associated with and named after the
four American historic figures of Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas
Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Section two classifies the five post-Cold War presidencies
of George H. W. Bush (henceforth: Bush senior), Bill Clinton, George W. Bush (hence-
forth: Bush junior), Barack Obama and Donald Trump into these schools, demonstrating
that each presidency was driven by two schools of thought. Based on these findings,
section three takes issue with Trumpianism as a school in its own right, showing that
both the content and the style of Trump’s foreign policy – a continuation of his domestic
policy – can be sufficiently explained by Jacksonianism and Jeffersonianism.

I. Mead’s Four Traditions of US Foreign Policy

Hamiltonians, to begin with, put the national interest first. But unlike the nations of Con-
tinental Europe, who, due to their exposure to powerful neighbors, understood their
interests primarily in military terms, Americans, separated from Europe by an Ocean,
traditionally defined their interests in economic terms (Mead 2002, 101). Regarding
the British Empire as a role model, Hamiltonians have become strong supporters of a
global trading system that, they believe, is to everyone’s advantage and to the greatest
4 J. N. ROLF

advantage of a hegemonic power that is the US.4 To ensure free trade, Hamiltonians
promote the free navigation of commercial vessels, the free flow of money between
trading partners and an open-door policy for goods. This requires a strong navy to
protect the freedom of the seas, a solvent national government to supply the military-
industrial complex, and an international financial and legal order to provide credit
and enforce the rights of American investors and merchants overseas. A positive side
effect of such a global market economy, Hamiltonians assert, is that countries are less
likely to resort to war as that would interrupt their mutually beneficial commerce.
Whereas Hamiltonians seek to export American goods, Wilsonians seek to export
American values. Less interested in the economic than in the moral aspects of a liberal
world order, Wilsonians are devoted to the promotion of “human rights, democratic gov-
ernance, and the rule of law” (Mead 2017, 2). This idealistic engagement also has an
instrumental element to it in that Wilsonians believe democratic government, rather
than economic interdependence, to be the best safeguard against international conflict
and aggression. Unlike Hamiltonians, who have settled on free trade as the best means
to further the national interest (see endnote 4), Wilsonians disagree about the right
means to advance American ideals: While one branch, “liberal institutionalists, focus
… on the promotion of international institutions and ever-closer global integration”,
another branch, “neoconservatives, believe … that a liberal agenda could best be
advanced through Washington’s unilateral efforts” (Mead 2017, 2). Following Max
Boot (2002), the two branches may also be called “soft Wilsonians” and “hard Wilso-
nians” or, given that the former follow a liberal and the latter a conservative agenda,
“left Wilsonians” and “right Wilsonians” (see Mead 2002, 92–93).
Jeffersonians opine that foreign policy is not so much about spreading American
values abroad than about preserving and perfecting them at home. As with Wilsonian-
ism, we can distinguish between a left and a right branch of Jeffersonianism: While
the former subscribes to an egalitarian agenda that promotes civil rights, social welfare
and direct democracy, the latter follows a libertarian agenda that advocates individual lib-
erties, small government and private property (Mead 2002, 179–180). What unites them
is the conviction that the reification of America’s founding principles – the rights prom-
ised in the Declaration of Independence and the liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights
– is work in progress and that excessive entanglements in the world will only endanger
that project of building a more perfect union at home. Fearful of strategic overreach and
imperial overstretch, Jeffersonians want America to keep a low international profile and,
should engagement become unavoidable, to conduct its foreign policy with the least
possible risk, cost and application of force, and always in accordance with the ideals of
the Constitution (Mead 2002, 189–190). These insular tendencies, however, should not
be equated with indifference towards the wider world. It is simply that, for Jeffersonians,
the causes of peace and democracy are best served “by setting an example rather than by
imposing a model” (Mead 2002, 182).
Bound together by a frontier tradition of military pride, honor and courage, Jackso-
nians distinguish between the members of the folk community, whose well-being is
put first, and outsiders, whose intrusion is opposed on economic and cultural
grounds. Like Jeffersonians, Jacksonians hold the Constitution in high regard, yet not
so much for protecting minority rights than for defending the majority from the machi-
nations of the political elites that, they suspect, serve the interests of big business and
 POLICY STUDIES 5

foreign countries (Mead 2002, 239). Suspicious of Hamiltonian free-trading and Wilso-
nian state-building, Jacksonians take little interest in the outside world, which they per-
ceive in terms of threats rather than opportunities and duties. Unless provoked,
Jacksonians prefer a protectionist and isolationist foreign policy of “live and let live”
(Mead 2016). However, once provoked, Jacksonians respond with overwhelming force,
both domestically, where they are prepared to take the law into their own hands, and
internationally, where they stand ready to kill and die for family and flag regardless of
international norms and conventions to deliver victory at all cost (Mead 2002, 235).
This explains their support for a tough hand on crime and a large military budget in
spite of the school’s general scepticism towards federal power.

II. US Foreign Policy After the Cold War

Having outlined the key tenets of Mead’s four traditions, this section examines to what
extent these schools manifest themselves in American post-Cold War foreign policy.

The presidencies of Bush senior and Clinton

Since the end of the Cold War, the concerns and values of Hamiltonians and Wilsonians
have been at the center of the formation of American foreign policy. Under both the first
Bush and the Clinton presidency, the construction of a global trading system and the exten-
sion of democracy were the central themes of American foreign policy. (Mead 2002, 175).

While it is beyond dispute that US foreign policy during the 1990s was dominated by a
globalist coalition of Hamiltonianism and Wilsonianism, the exact relationship between
the two schools is less understood. Using the metaphor of a car in which the co-driver
determines the general direction (of foreign policy) and the driver the actual course
(of action), this subsection argues that under Bush senior, Hamilton was sitting in the
co-driver’s seat and Wilson in the driver’s seat, and that under Clinton they swopped
seats.
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union formally ceased to
exist in 1991, “Hamiltonians very naturally felt that their hour had come” (Mead 2002,
270). It was during the presidency of Bush senior, a businessman from New England
who had made his fortune in the Texan oil industry, that the term “Washington Consen-
sus” as a metaphor for the neoliberal lending practices of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and World Bank was coined. At the same time, plans to establish a
World Trade Organization (WTO) and a North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), which go back to the time when Bush served as Vice President under
Ronald Reagan, made headways. In his last state of the union address, Bush (1992) prom-
ised to “continue pushing to eliminate tariffs” in order to “break down the walls that stop
world trade” and “open markets everywhere”. But the end of the Cold War not only
created an unparalleled opportunity for American merchants to do business in every
corner of the world; it also provided a unique opportunity for American missionaries
to spread their values through the world. In his address before Congress on 11 September
1990, Bush (1990) called for a “new world order” in which “the rule of law supplants the
rule of the jungle”. To deliver on this, the president sent troops to Panama, the Persian
Gulf and Somalia. Whereas the engagement in Central America was primarily motivated
6 J. N. ROLF

by a Hamiltonian desire to ensure free navigation of the Panama Canal, and the Gulf War
by both, a Hamiltonian concern to restore international order (but avoid regime change)
and a Wilsonian wish to liberate Kuwait, the establishment of Iraqi no-fly zones in the
aftermath of the conflict and the intervention in Somalia were clearly driven by Wilso-
nian do-gooding. In the preface to the 1993 National Security Strategy, published just
before Bush left office, the president even proclaimed “an enduring democratic peace
based on shared values” as the “one overriding goal” of US foreign policy (The White
House 1993). It thus seems that in the later stages of Bush’s presidency, Wilson in the
driver’s seat was no longer willing to blindly follow the instructions of Hamilton in
the co-driver’s seat.
When Clinton denied Bush a second term in office, it was on the Democrat to
develop the Republican’s “new world order” and to implement WTO and NAFTA.
Clinton (1997) largely followed Bush’s globalist Wilsonian-Hamiltonian path, as is
evident from his second inaugural address in which he asked government to “do
more, not less” when it comes to promoting “our values and interests in the world”.
America’s “purpose”, as Clinton (2000) saw it, is nothing less than “to bring together
the world around freedom and democracy and peace”, not least because the spread of
free governments and free markets is the best strategy to guarantee America’s security
at home: “Democracies don’t attack each other” (Clinton 1994) and “people who raise
each other’s living standards through commerce are less likely to become combatants”
(Clinton 1993a). In accordance with his announcement to “stand mighty for peace and
freedom”, Clinton (1997) spearheaded the peace talks of Oslo, Dayton, Belfast and
Camp David, and assisted the former communist countries in their transition
process towards liberal democracies and market economies. Whereas “Operation
Restore Hope” in Somalia and “Operation Uphold Democracy” in Haiti testify to
the president’s Wilsonianism, the humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo
were about both, Wilsonian “engagement” and Hamiltonian “enlargement” (The
White House 1994). Clinton’s withdrawal from Somalia in response to the death of
18 US troops, his inaction in Rwanda in face of a genocide and his extension of
most favored nation status to China in spite of the country’s alarming human rights
record indicate that Hamilton was sitting in the driver’s seat.

The presidency of Bush junior

If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll
welcome us. (Bush 2000)

A few months into the presidency of Bush junior, Mead (2001, 176) predicted a nation-
alist backlash as Bush, during his 2000 presidential election campaign, had adopted “key
themes from Jeffersonian and Jacksonian ideas”. While it is true that in his presidential
debate with Al Gore, Bush (2000) had drawn the Jeffersonian image of a “humble nation”
to contrast it with the Wilsonian image of an “indispensable nation” (Clinton 1996), in
his inaugural address, Bush (2001a) asked to “make no mistake, America remains
engaged in the world by history and by choice”. The Wilsonianism his administration
coupled with Jacksonianism, though, was not a multilateralist and institution-prone
left Wilsonianism, but a unilateralist and institution-wary right Wilsonianism stemming
from the president’s evangelicalism and his associates’ neoconservatism.5 As such, it fit
 POLICY STUDIES 7

well with the Jacksonian contempt for international institutions, and it is not surprising
that one of Bush’s first actions in office was to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol and the
Rome Statute. Bush’s push for a missile defense system, in turn, was a project close to
the Jacksonian heart that Wilsonians had no general objections to, given that it was
directed against what Bush (2002) – with strong moral undertones – liked to call “the
axis of evil”.
Unlike Wilsonians, Jacksonians do not “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy”
(Mead 2002, 335), but if attacked, they know no pardon and “no substitute for victory”
(Mead 2002, 257). This explains Bush’s (2001b) resolute response to the terror attacks of
9/11, declaring “a war on terror” that “will not end until every terrorist group of global
reach has been found, stopped and defeated”. By linking Osama bin Laden to Saddam
Hussein and by accusing the latter of a weapons of mass destruction program, Bush was
also able to garner Jacksonian support for the invasion of Iraq. What seemed to resonate
most strongly with Jacksonian sentiments, though, was Bush’s obsession to “take revenge”
for Hussein’s assassination attempt of his father and to “get the business done” after Bush
senior had refused to insist on an unconditional surrender of the Iraqi dictator. When
Hussein was captured and no weapons of mass destruction found, Jacksonians became
increasingly fatigue of the on-going war. In his second inaugural address, Bush (2005) there-
fore deemed it necessary to appeal to the Jacksonian code of pride, honor and courage, invok-
ing the “pride whenever America acts for good”, warning that it would be “dishonorable to
abandon” one’s obligations and asserting that “courage triumphs”.
Suspecting that Jacksonian militarism may not carry him through all his misadven-
tures in the Middle East, Bush had embraced Wilsonian missionarism early on: In his
first state of the union address after the toppling of the Taliban, Bush (2002) announced
that “we have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing resentment. We
seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror.” This is reminiscent of his
father’s state of the union address after the first Gulf War in which he declared that
“our responsibility to be the catalyst for peace in the region does not end with the suc-
cessful conclusion of this war” (Bush 1991). With a successful conclusion of the second
Gulf War a long way off, democracy and freedom replaced defense and revenge as the
prime motives behind the war: “So it is the policy of the United States to seek and
support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and
culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world” (Bush 2005). This,
Bush (2005) was keen to insist, “is not primarily the task of arms”:
We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our
relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. America’s belief in
human dignity will guide our policies. (Bush 2005)

We have also changed the way we deliver aid by launching the Millennium Challenge
Account. This program strengthens democracy, transparency, and the rule of law in devel-
oping nations. (Bush 2008)

By the end of Bush’s presidency, virtually all tools of US foreign policy – military,
diplomacy, foreign aid – had been transformed to serve one goal: Making the world
“safe for democracy” (Wilson 1917).
If Jeffersonianism was ever a feature of Bush’s presidency, it was buried with the
signing of Patriot Act and the establishment of the US Department for Homeland
8 J. N. ROLF

Security, curtailing some basic civil liberties at home, and the unlawful internment and
inhumane interrogation of detainees, undermining the very values America was fighting
for. The torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, once again,
can only be explained with a Jacksonian ethos of honor. As Mead (2001, 245–246),
writing on the eve of 9/11, notes:
Jacksonians believe that there is an honor code in international life … and those who live by
the code will be treated under it. But those who violate the code, who commit terrorist acts
against innocent civilians in peacetime, for example, forfeit its protection and deserve no
more consideration than rats.

With the benefit of hindsight, then, there is little doubt that “Bush’s presidency was
defined by an effort to bring Jacksonians and Wilsonians into a coalition” (Mead 2010,
60). After following the directions (or better: instincts) of Jackson for some time, Bush
steered an increasingly Wilsonian course.

The presidency of Obama

America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs, and as long as I’m President,
I intend to keep it that way. (Obama 2012)

Obama has been pictured as a Jeffersonian who broke with the Wilsonian agenda of his
predecessor (Boot 2016; Clarke and Ricketts 2017b) or was partly drawn to it (Mead
2010; Holland 2016). Jack Holland (2016, 46), for example, attributes the president’s Wil-
sonian leanings to the fact that Jeffersonianism is irreconcilable with America’s hegemo-
nic position in the twenty-first century, calling Obama a Jeffersonian by belief and an
internationalist by necessity. On my alternative reading of it, Obama was not a Jefferso-
nian but a Wilsonian, who, due to the Wilsonian excesses of his predecessor, combined
his Wilsonian conviction with Jeffersonian caution. Like Bush junior, Obama (2013)
believed that “our interests and our conscience compel us” to “support democracy
from Asia to Africa, from the Americas to the Middle East”. However, as he had been
elected precisely on the promise to reduce America’s presence in the world, and in the
Middle East in particular, the newly elected president embraced Jeffersonian reservation:
While America is “ready to lead once more”, Obama (2009) proclaimed in his inaugural
address, it must do so with “the tempering qualities of humility and restraint”. It is this
uneasy amalgam of engagement and disengagement that came to define Obama’s eight
years in office.
In Afghanistan, Obama deployed an additional 30,000 forces, only to withdraw them a
little later. In Iraq, he pulled out combat troops, but escalated drone strikes. Obama’s
drone program, allowing for continued military engagement without becoming
embroiled in ground-war, became a symbol for his “leading from behind” (Rogin
2011) approach to foreign policy, which has also been dubbed “smart power” (Nye
2012) and “surrogate warfare” (Krieg 2016). What is certainly smart about drone
warfare is that it constitutes a compromise between Wilsonian activism and Jeffersonian
passivism. This being said, the desire of Jeffersonians to bring the means and ends of
foreign policy into alignment (Mead 2010, 64) and their concern for a “constitutional
conduct of foreign policy” (Mead 2002, 190) put further limits on it: For the same Jeffer-
sonian reason that Obama had called for the closing of the detention center at
 POLICY STUDIES 9

Guantanamo Bay, namely, “remaining true to our constitutional ideals and setting an
example for the rest of the world” (Obama 2014), he asked that the “use of new technol-
ogy like drones is properly constrained” (Obama 2015). “Leading from behind”, thus,
soon became supplemented by “leading by example”.
During the Arab Spring, Obama was once again torn between Wilsonian action and
Jeffersonian inaction. In Libya, he hesitantly took on “the responsibility to protect”, but
refused to assume “the responsibility to rebuild” after the toppling of Muammar al-
Qaddafi. In Syria, he stood up for human rights, only to back down when his self-
imposed red line was crossed. That the use of chemical weapons did not change his cal-
culus on military intervention, as the president had insisted it would, Obama (2016)
would later explain as follows: “I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures
and think through in my own mind what was in America’s interest, not only with
respect to Syria but also with respect to our democracy”. This is just another example
for how Obama’s Wilsonian impulse to act was restrained by the Jeffersonian rationale
that overseas adventures only undermine democracy at home.
With nation-building abroad having been discredited by the Bush administration,
Obama (2011) focused on “nation-building here at home”. Once again, he resorted to
Jeffersonianism, as this school not only calls for reservation abroad, but also for revolu-
tion at home:
As long as women suffer discrimination, as long as racial and ethnic minorities are excluded
from full participation in the political and economic life of the nation, as long as lesbians and
gays suffer discrimination based on sexual preference, today’s Jeffersonians tell us, the great
promises of the Revolution remain unfulfilled. (Mead 2002, 178)

The similarities between Mead’s characterization of Jeffersonianism above and the

passage from Obama’s second inaugural address below are, indeed, striking:
[O]ur journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living
equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are
treated like anyone else under the law … . Our journey is not complete until no citizen is
forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. (Obama 2013)

Obama’s fight against gender, homosexual and racial discrimination, notably, is charac-
teristic of left Jeffersonianism, which can be contrasted to the right Jeffersonianism of his
successor (see below). Likewise, Obama’s devotion to multilateralism, as testified by his
commitment to international agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership on con-
straining China’s hegemonic ambitions,6 the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on lim-
iting Iran’s nuclear activities, and the Paris Agreement on reducing global warming, is
reflective of left Wilsonianism, which can be contrasted to the right Wilsonianism of
his predecessor (see above). Thus, when Obama took office – to make use of our car
metaphor – Wilson took a left turn. Meanwhile, Jefferson stepped on the brake which
he would release only hesitantly and very carefully.

The presidency of Trump

We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism. The
nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of
international unions that tie us up and bring America down. (Trump 2016a)
10 J. N. ROLF

When Trump was elected as the 45th US president, political commentators took a new-
found interest in Mead’s book Special Providence, and in the author’s account of Jackso-
nianism in particular, which they, and Mead (2016, 2017) himself, saw as a precise
description of Trump’s election campaign and unfolding presidency. While Jacksonian-
ism, indeed, accounts for many of Trump’s policies, an account of his presidency is not
complete without Jeffersonianism: Not only does Jeffersonianism provide a better expla-
nation of some of Trump’s policies than Jacksonianism; it is also able to explain policies
that Jacksonianism cannot explain at all.
Trump’s zero-sum view of the world, as epitomized by his claims that “we have
enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry” (Trump 2017a) and
that “we are rebuilding other countries while weakening our own” (Trump 2016a),
could not be further apart from the positive-sum view of Hamiltonianism and Wilso-
nianism, according to which a more prosperous and democratic world is also to the
benefit of America. Scholars have attributed Trump’s renunciation of Hamiltonian
and Wilsonian globalism to his Jacksonian nationalism (see, for example, Fay 2016; Spa-
tafora 2018; Daghrir 2020). Antagonism towards the fundamentals of the liberal post-
Cold War international order, though, is not a unique feature of Jacksonianism: “Oppos-
ing both the Hamiltonian and the Wilsonian policies of involving the US in costly econ-
omic or political alliances,” Anna Dimitrova (2017, 39) reminds us in her recap of Mead’s
four traditions, “Jeffersonians seek to replace commercial engagement and democracy
promotion with nation-building at home.”
When during his first presidential election campaign Trump spoke out against the
global trading regime, he usually did so not only with America’s prosperity but also
with the country’s sovereignty in mind: “[U]nder my administration,” Trump (2016a)
promised in his foreign policy speech on 27 April 2016, “we will never enter America
into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs”. In his nomination
speech on 21 July 2016, Trump (2016b) renewed his “pledge to never sign any trade
agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom or independence”,
appealing to both a Jacksonian concern for the welfare of the folk community and a
Jeffersonian concern for the independence of the country. Seeing that the former
appeal had resonated most strongly with his voters, Trump fully subscribed to the Jack-
sonian narrative in his inaugural address on 20 January 2017 and in his state of the union
address on 27 February 2017, suggesting that “[t]he wealth of our middle class has been
ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world” (Trump 2017a)
and that “[f]or too long, we have watched our middle class shrink as we have exported
our jobs and wealth to foreign countries” (Trump 2017b). But even if the global
trading system worked to the benefit of American workers and farmers, as it had for
decades (and, by and large, continues to do), the Jeffersonian in Trump would probably
be troubled over US entanglement in the world.
Concerned about what Jefferson (1801) called “entangling alliances”, Jeffersonians
have been particularly eager “to scale down or end American troop commitments in
Europe and the Far East” (Mead 2002, 297–298). Tapping into this, Trump (2016b)
repeatedly entertained the idea of withdrawing from NATO which he called “obsolete”
and of retreating from allied countries in Europe and East Asia that are not bearing
the cost of their protection. His complaint about allies not paying “their fair share”
(Trump 2017b) – much like his protest about “unfair trade practices” (Trump 2018) –
 POLICY STUDIES 11

seemed to be a pretext for greater disengagement. Even though Germany committed

itself to the goal of spending two percent of its GNP on defence by 2024, as agreed
during NATO’s Wales Summit in 2014, Trump approved a plan to withdraw 12,000
troops from that country. But the president not only ordered the withdrawal of troops
from allied countries; he also pulled back forces from adversary countries like Afghani-
stan, Iraq, Somalia and Syria, speaking of a plan “to not be policing agents all over the
world” (Trump 2019a).
In accordance with the Jeffersonian belief that America “could better serve the cause of
universal democracy by setting an example rather than by imposing a model” (Mead
2002, 182), Trump (2017a) claimed in his inaugural address that “[w]e do not seek to
impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone
to follow.” The energy saved from not getting bogged down in foreign quarrels, Jefferso-
nians tell us, should be expended on domestic reform, or – in Trump’s words – on
making America great (again). Unlike Obama, who followed an egalitarian left Jefferso-
nian reform agenda, Trump subscribed to a libertarian right Jeffersonian reform agenda
that found expression in massive tax cuts, an attempt to repeal Obamacare and various
other measures to roll back the state. What the two Jeffersonian branches have in
common is that “they are constantly involved in a bitter struggle against counterrevolu-
tionaries, those who would deny the rights promised in the Declaration of Independence
or infringe on the liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights” (Mead 2002, 179). But
whereas left Jeffersonians like Obama hold particularly dear the words of the Declaration
of Independence that “all men are created equal”, embarking on “a never-ending journey
to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time” (Obama 2013), right
Jeffersonians like Trump see the First and Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the
right to freely practice one’s religion and the right to bear arms, as liberties “under siege”
and worth “totally defending” (Trump 2019b, 2020). Imposing a “Muslim ban”, tear-
gassing peaceful protesters and attacking the freedom of the press, Trump seems to
have a rather selective reading of the American Constitution, and the First Amendment
in particular. Nor does he seem to value the constitutional system of checks and balances,
refusing to accept the 2020 elections results, inciting an armed insurrection against the
US Capitol and being impeached twice.7 When Trump vowed to bring back the Consti-
tution, he thus had in mind the aspects of it that are in line with his right Jeffersonian
reform agenda.
We can see that Trump’s slogans of “America First” and “Make America Great Again”
spring as much from Jeffersonian reformism as from Jacksonian nationalism. But, of
course, there are also distinctively Jacksonian traits of Trump’s policies. One such trait
is a tough hand on crime, another one a large military budget. In spite of the president’s
troop withdrawals, Trump’s four years in office saw a surge in military spending. Here,
Jacksonianism clearly trumped Jeffersonianism, which opposes military buildups on the
ground that they tend to increase the national debt, making the central government more
accountable to its creditors than to its constituents, and that they empower the military-
industrial complex, further eroding democratic accountability (Mead 2002, 187–188). A
third defining trait of Jacksonianism that Trump embodied is a general fear of everything
foreign. In degrading and vulgar language, Trump referred to undocumented immi-
grants as “animals” (Trump 2017c) from “shithole countries” (Trump, cited in CNN
2018) and to radical Islamists as “bloodthirsty monsters” (Trump 2019b) that he
12 J. N. ROLF

would “bomb the shit out of” (Trump, cited in CNN 2016). In line with the Jacksonian
populist belief that “solutions are simple” (Mead 2002, 241), Trump issued executive
orders on building a wall on the US-Mexican border and on imposing a ban on
people from seven Muslim-majority countries. The fear of intruding and insurgent
foreigners went hand in hand with a rejection of moral limits when dealing with
them, as evidenced by Trump’s family separation policy at the Mexican border and his
advocacy of enhanced interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay. Here again, Jefferso-
nianism clearly gave way to Jacksonianism.
In foreign policy, though, this is all but clear. Considering Trump’s (2017d) martial
“fire and fury” rhetoric, it might come as a surprise that Trump was the first American
post-Cold War president not to start a war (and the first one to oversee the conclusion of
multiple peace agreements between Israel and its former enemies). For those who see in
Trump a Jacksonian, this will be even more surprising, given that Jacksonianism is the
most easily provoked and trigger-happy of the four schools. Not so, however, if we con-
sider Trump as a Jacksonian who was partially restrained by Jeffersonianism. If Trump
was a pure Jacksonian, we would probably have witnessed some kind of military confron-
tation with North Korea, whose leader hardly missed an opportunity to provoke and
offend the US president. But Trump put his faith in a combination of intimidation, econ-
omic sanctions and diplomatic talks, becoming the first sitting US president to meet Kim
Jong-un and to set a foot in North Korea. While his endorsement of the North Korean
dictator (and other autocratic regimes from Riad to Moscow) fits uneasily with the Jeffer-
sonian concern for a values-based foreign policy, it is very much in line with the Jeffer-
sonian gradual approach to war, preferring negotiations to sanctions, and sanctions to
war (Mead 2002, 189–190). Those who attribute Trump’s restraint vis-à-vis North
Korea to the country’s nuclear weapons program cannot readily explain his restraint
vis-à-vis Iran, which does not possess a comparable nuclear deterrent (yet). While it is
true that Trump refused to negotiate with Iran, opting out of the Iran nuclear deal, he
did not – against the advice of his national security advisor John Bolton – militarily esca-
late the conflict either. This distinguishes him from the other Jacksonian post-Cold War
president, Bush junior, who did not hesitate to attack Iraq in sight of a similar, if not
lesser, security threat.
The closest thing to war that we witnessed during Trump’s presidency was when the
president ordered a number of missile strikes against Syrian governmental facilities. Pro-
ponents of the Trump-a-Jacksonian thesis have been quick to point out that these attacks
did not stem from a humanitarian concern but from a concern with America’s reputation
in light of Obama’s failure to enforce his red line (Dimitrova 2017, 43; Kilgore 2019)
which Trump (2016b) had called a “humiliation” to the country. And yet the limited
and surgical strikes – much like the “flawless precision strike” (Trump 2020) against
Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani – were more reminiscent of the Jeffersonian
principle to pursue one’s foreign policy goals “with the least possible application of
force” and “the least possible risk and cost” (Mead 2002, 189–190) than of the Jacksonian
creed “that wars must be fought with all available force” and “with everything you have”
(Mead 2002, 254).
It thus seems that Trump embraced a coalition of Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism
– ironically the two schools whose namesakes, Jefferson and Jackson, are considered to be
the founders of the Democratic Party.8 As such, Trump has more in common with his
 POLICY STUDIES 13

two predecessors than is generally thought (and than the three presidents are probably
willing to admit): With his pre-predecessor, Trump shares a Jacksonian outlook (or
better: inward look), even though Bush was not able to hold on to it for the entire
length of his presidency. With his predecessor, Trump shares a Jeffersonian outlook
(or better: inward look), although Obama followed an outspoken left Jeffersonianism.
Metaphorically speaking, when Trump took office, Jefferson took a right turn while
Jackson went into reverse gear. After revoking and renegotiating some deep-seated Ham-
iltonian and Wilsonian projects – NAFTA, TPP, the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris
climate agreement – Jackson shifted into forward gear, accelerating to a pace unseen
under his pre-predecessor.

III. Domestic Policy(,) Trump(’)s Foreign Policy?

Having examined American post-Cold War foreign policy through the lens of Mead’s
four schools of thought, we can see that the schools, if paired together, can account
for the foreign policies of Bush senior, Clinton, Bush junior, Obama and Trump.
Table 1 illustrates that each president was driven by two traditions, indicating that one
has to resort to more than one tradition to win a presidential election. In the 30 years
since the end of the Cold War, Wilsonianism has been embraced by four presidents,
and Hamiltonianism, Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism by two, respectively. While
we can discern a general shift from the outward-looking schools of Hamiltonianism
and Wilsonianism to the inward-looking schools of Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism,
it took almost three decades for this shift to be completed. This is because no incoming
president was a mirror image of the outgoing president, implying that one cannot break
completely with the foreign policy of one’s predecessor to get elected. At the same time,
each president – with the exception of Clinton, who continued Bush senior’s foreign
policy but challenged him over domestic policy – broke partly with the foreign policy
of his predecessor, suggesting that one also has to offer some alternative to the status
quo to become elected. The last three transitions, thus, were marked by as much conti-
nuity as change. But if Trump’s foreign policy does not constitute a radical but only an
incremental change to that of his two predecessors, why was it so different from every-
thing seen before? The answer, it seems, has to do less with the content than with the style
of his foreign policy, which, once again, can be explained with his Jeffersonianism-
Jacksonianism.
Trump’s blending of Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism went hand in hand with a
blending of domestic and foreign policy. This, in itself, was all but new. Already
Clinton (1993b) had claimed that “[t]here is no longer division between what is
foreign and what is domestic”. Indeed, during the Cold War, US presidents had

Table 1. Mead’s traditions in US post-Cold War foreign policy.

President \ Tradition Hamiltonianism Wilsonianism Jeffersonianism Jacksonianism
Bush senior x x
Clinton x x
Bush junior x x
Obama x x
Trump x x
14 J. N. ROLF

largely followed Martin Wight’s (1995, 17) famous dictum that “domestic politics is the
realm of the good life; international politics is the realm of survival.” Inside, there was
democracy, freedom and the rule of law; outside, there was autocracy, oppression and
the rule of the jungle. The distinction between a liberal America – or, by extension,
“West” – and an illiberal “East” started to crumble in the 1990s when the Soviet
Union collapsed and Bush senior and Clinton seized the opportunity to remake the
rest of the world in America’s image. Domestic policy, thus conceived, became foreign
policy. Under Bush junior and Obama, the world began to strike back in the form of
global terrorism and global warming.9 Foreign affairs, in important respects, became
domestic affairs. As such, the mutual penetration of the domestic and the foreign was
already a reality when Trump entered into office and when he was faced with yet
another foreign infringement on the domestic: The COVID-19 pandemic. But unlike
his two predecessors, who turned the war on terror and the fight against climate
change into foreign policy priorities, Trump responded to the pandemic with a
mixture of fatal ignorance and blatant accusations, which was very much in tune with
his Jeffersonianism-Jacksonianism.
Trump’s presidency, however, was marked by more than just another penetration of
the dividing line between the domestic and the foreign. As Table 2 tries to illustrate, it
was marked by the collapse of the line as such. This is because the two schools of
thought that informed his presidency, Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism, regard
foreign policy as an outgrowth of domestic policy. While it is true that the school of
thought that had informed every single post-Cold War presidency before Trump, Wilso-
nianism, also clings to the belief that foreign policy has to serve domestic ends, it, at the
same time, sticks to the idea(l) that foreign policy constitutes an end in itself. Jefferson, in
contrast, “insisted that the objectives of foreign policy were but a means to the end of
protecting and promoting the goals of domestic society” (Tucker and Hendrickson
1990, 139), and Jackson, too, did not see foreign policy “as a field of concern in its
own right but as an instrument of domestic policy” (Mead 2002, 176). For them, as
for Trump, foreign policy is domestic policy. Trump may have spoken to foreign states-
men, but he addressed his domestic supporters. When he took on his allies, he did so to
please his Jeffersonian base. When he messed with his enemies, he did so to satisfy Jack-
sonian sentiments. Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism, then, do not only account for the
content but also for the style of Trump’s foreign policy: Since his foreign policy was solely
directed at a domestic audience, Trump was able to disregard diplomatic conventions. He
cared little about his image in the world because he had realized early on that the target
audience of his foreign policy was not foreign countries but those that were able to grant

Table 2. Relationship between the domestic and the foreign

in US (post-)Cold War foreign policy.10
President \ Domain Domestic Foreign
During Cold War
Bush senior
Clinton
Bush junior
Obama
Trump
 POLICY STUDIES 15

him a second term in office: his constituents. Foreign leaders such as Ukrainian president
Volodymyr Zelensky were only embraced when Trump deemed them to be useful in
winning his re-election.

Conclusion
Political advisors and analysts have pointed to the substantial parallels between the per-
sonalities and presidencies of Trump and Jackson. Trump admired Jackson to such an
extent that he suspended Obama’s proposal to remove Jackson’s portrait from the $20
bill and, instead, hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office, calling him “an
amazing figure in American history” (Trump, cited in New York Times 2017). From
the fact that Trump likes Jackson, however, one should not conclude that Trump is
like Jackson. As it has been shown in this article, Trump mixed the Jacksonianism of
his pre-predecessor with the Jeffersonianism of his predecessor. Nor would it be right
to conclude that Trumpianism constitutes a school in its own right, given that the con-
stituent schools of Trump’s foreign policy were all but new. What was new, was their
combination: Whereas Bush senior and Clinton forged an outward-looking alliance of
Hamiltonianism and Wilsonianism, and Bush junior and Obama balanced their
outward-looking Wilsonianism with an inward-looking Jacksonianism and Jeffersonian-
ism, respectively, Trump built an inward-looking coalition of Jacksonianism and Jeffer-
sonianism that sees foreign policy merely as an extension of domestic policy, allowing the
president to conduct US foreign policy in a style unseen before. While the style of US
foreign policy has certainly changed under Joe Biden, we should be careful not to
frame his presidency – whatever school(s) the president may subscribe to – as a return
to normalcy. This would neither account for the fact that Trump’s foreign policy, in
certain aspects, was a continuation of that of his two predecessors, nor would it do
justice to the diversity of American post-Cold War foreign policy as a whole.

Notes
1. States that split their electoral votes (Maine, Maryland and New York) or became split them-
selves (Virginia) were excluded from this comparison.
2. According to Mead (2002, 224), even “during the Cold War, members of the two schools
were on opposite sides of most important foreign policy questions”. While Jacksonians
and Hamiltonians built a hawkish alliance that favoured an activist and aggressive approach
towards the Soviet Union, Jeffersonians and Wilsonians came together in a dovish alliance
that preferred a strategy of containment and engagement (Mead 2002, 264–265).
3. Mead does not further capitalize on this metaphor. Instead, he invites us to picture US foreign
policy as a sheet of paper covered with iron filings. Forming four big clumps, Mead suggests that
the filings are attracted to the magnets of Hamilton, Wilson, Jefferson and Jackson that lie under
the paper. Yet, as Mead (2002, 94) has to acknowledge, “not all the filings fall into neatly pat-
terned lines”, with some of them being “under the influence of more than one magnet”.
4. Note that Hamilton was not a Hamiltonian by today’s standards in that he was actually in
favor of protectionism. As Mead (2002, 90) writes: “The school I call Hamiltonian followed
in the master’s protectionist footsteps for almost 150 years after his death, but by the end of
World War II, the leading figures of American business either had embraced or were just
about to embrace the doctrine of free trade”, which, ever since, has been the hallmark of
Hamiltonianism. This was possible because for Hamiltonians the specific means by which
to advance the national interest is of secondary order and depends on circumstances. In
16 J. N. ROLF

the 19th century, when the American economy was not competitive yet, the best way for the
US to promote its national interest was to protect its infant industries through high tariffs. In
the 20th century, when many of these industries achieved technological lead, “Hamiltonians
dropped their historic support for protection and supported free trade as a necessary econ-
omic policy for a hegemonic power” (Mead 2002, 89).
5. Bush’s (2003) quasi-religious foreign policy is evident from his self-proclaimed “crusade”
against radical Islam and his determination to “sacrifice for the liberty of strangers”. The
most prominent champions of neoconservatism in Bush’s administration were Vice Presi-
dent Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz.
6. While the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an agreement on trade, Obama primarily saw
it as means to bind China’s neighbors more tightly to the US. Being “the first one to admit
that past trade deals have not always lived up to the hype”, Obama (2015) hardly qualifies as
a Hamiltonian free-trader. Like his successor, Obama (2015) expressed his unease about
“countries that break the rules at our expense” and his resolve to “protect American
workers”.
7. I thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this.
8. In commemoration of which the Democratic Party hosts its annual Jefferson-Jackson Day
fundraising dinners.
9. Through its many military missions and high CO2 emissions, the US, of course, bears a
certain responsibility for the rise of global terrorism and global temperatures.
10. For the sake of simplicity, I included only a few arrows that point in only one direction. As
mentioned above, there was also a considerable domestic infringement on the foreign
during the presidency of Bush junior (war on terror) and a notable foreign infringement
on the domestic during the presidency of Trump (COVID-19 pandemic).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Jan Niklas Rolf is a postdoctoral researcher at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. He
completed his PhD on the domestic analogy in International Relations at Royal Holloway Univer-
sity of London. His research interests include international political theory, security studies and
US foreign policy.

ORCID
Jan Niklas Rolf http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0563-1173

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