By Steve Huntley

March 1^st, 2026

Is Donald Trump, as his MAGA base hopes, a transformative president, one who will be succeeded by a favored Republican, cementing as lasting his disruption of business-as-usual in Washington?

Or, as progressives dream, will he be followed in theFWhite House in 2029 by a Democrat who will work tirelessly to erase Trump’s agenda, making his presidency a flash in the pan, a tale full of sound and fury signifying not much?

It may seem early to speculate about all that with the 2028 election still 2 1/2 years in the future.

Yet Trump has big ambitions and limited time to accomplish them as the Constitution restricts him to this final term in office. And he faces challenging mid-term elections in the fall that may increase Democratic power in Washington.

Trump bestrides the world like a colossus- as dramatically demonstrated Saturday when he ordered “major military operations” against Iran. The attack- supported by air strikes by Israel and expected to last several days- targeted the radical Islamist leadership of the country as well as military objectives.

As always, Trump has ambitious goals. The military strike was aimed at ending forever the threat of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons and, in Trump’s words, to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats” from Iran. The president said the operation also gives the Iranian people an opening to overthrow a murderous regime that has killed tens of thousands of it citizens.

Even before this weekend’s attack on Iran Trump was dominating the world stage, reordering alliances, upending trade with tariffs, dispatching mighty warships, stealth bombers and elite troops to work his will, having leaders of countries large and small currying favor with him, invoking U.S. dominion in the Western hemisphere with his Donroe Doctrine, all the while lusting for a Nobel Peace Prize.

In a recent speech to allies in Europe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio eloquently described Trump’s, and his, mission of standing up for Western civilization — defending, celebrating and promoting its history, values and ideals, and America’s role in it.

At home, Trump’s aims are no less grand: Close borders and deport millions of illegal aliens, gut the “swamp” Washington bureaucracy, exert White House supremacy over so-called “independent agencies,” restore the buying power of the family wallet, return manufacturing to towns and cities crippled by unfair trade practices, among other goals.

Many Trump initiatives were surefooted and much needed. Others were ham-fisted or counterproductive — government ownership stakes in private companies, suspect vaccination policy, trying to muscle the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, being too soft in opposing Russian President Putin’s war, alienating allies. And there’s no escaping the ugly side of Trump’s personality, his gratuitous and petty insults.

To call Trump unpredictable is a staggering understatement. Any day can bring a new goal, a new ambition or a new outrage.

Trump’s brash personality and equally brash political style were on full display in the State of the Union speech last Tuesday night.

He bragged about a recovering and expanding economy, boasted about closing the border, complained about a U.S. Supreme court decision limiting his tariff initiative, declared time is running out for Iran to give up its nuclear program or face the consequences.

Ever the showman, he introduced to cheers and applause American heroes. First up was the Olympics champion U.S. hockey team. Then came members of the armed services who risked their lives in combat or in rescue operations. Emotional moments erupted in his recognizing the suffering of victims of crime and illegal immigration.

But perhaps his best move, politically, occurred when Trump asked everyone — senators and representatives — to stand who agreed with this statement: “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal immigrants.” Republicans leaped to their feet applauding while the foolish Democrats remained sitting in their seats — landing directly in the trap he had set for them.

Democrats shouldn’t be surprised if videos of that moment show up regularly in political ads in heavily contested elections in the fall.

And Republican candidates will need all the help they can get then. Trump’s sunny view of “we’re winning so much” — inflation slowing, employment remaining strong, Wall Street hitting records — isn’t reflected in polls. Families don’t see all that winning when shopping at their supermarkets, while paying bills for goods and services, and in their hopes of buying a home. Turmoil and violence in ICE raids arresting illegal aliens haven’t worn well in polling either.

Mid-term elections, nearly always a loser for the man in the White House, are looking glum for Trump. Democrats are favored to take the House of Representatives, leaving the president with a divided Congress and a House eager to frustrate him, investigate his government and maybe impeach him.

Worse, the political climate now is deemed bad enough for Trump that the betting is starting to edge up that Democrats might even corral the Senate, confronting Trump with an openly hostile Congress.

So, with those rosy prospects, Democrats are looking to the future.

“Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years,” said California Gov. and perhaps presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom recently, voicing to European allies the Democrats’ hopes of erasing the Trump presidency.

Former Democrat White House official Susan Rice went even further, assuming the role of Madame Defarge by threatening retribution against anyone — businesses, law firms, universities, media — whom she finds guilty of taking “a knee to Trump.” She said “it’s not going to end well for them.”

But Democrats hoping to roll back America to some pre-Trump idyll are dreaming. Whatever may come, Trump has changed the way America and the world work.

There’s no returning to the corrupt bargain where American taxpayers do the thankless labor of Atlas in shouldering the cost of defending Europe while that continent’s nations spend ever-increasing sums to fund generous welfare state programs for their populations.

The days of wide-open American borders are over. A new Democrat president might resume the flow of illegals crossing into America and feasting on government aid but never at the astonishing levels seen during the Biden presidency. It’s a ballot box loser. Even former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have recently acknowledged that sovereign nations must control their borders.

A new Democrat president could open the federal spending faucets but never at the gushing Inflation-Reduction-Act levels of the Biden presidency. That debacle decimated household wallets with a cumulative and crushing 20 percent jump in the cost of the living. Another ballot box killer.

The era of climate panic is over. Lower gas prices, cars free of expensive environmental mandates and the need for reliable energy will temper progressive ambitions to use the environment to pummel the American standard of living. Costly U.S. climate-change measures have done nothing to reduce global greenhouse emissions.

A new Democrat president would no doubt try to rebuild the administrative state bureaucracy that Trump has taken a sledge hammer to. But Trump has reestablished the constitutional principle that “executive power shall be vested” in the presidency — the White House is the boss of those myriad agencies and can fire virtually anyone.

Since his first term, Trump’s three appointments to the Supreme Court have solidified the high court’s return to a sensible reading of the Constitution, ending the progressive trend of viewing it as a “living document” that can mean almost anything liberals want it to.

A new Democrat in the White House might be tempted to “reform” the court by adding justices. Such judicial packing would mark the death knell of the court as an independent governmental body, a move that’s been a red line for those moderate Democrats who can still get elected.

And evidence of the court’s vital independent role in our system of government was reinforced only a little over a week ago when a majority of the high court, including two Trump appointees, ruled against what the media termed the president’s “signature” approach to tariffs.

Identity politics, racial and gender preferences, and hatred of American history persist in too many of our cultural institutions, but it’s hard to see a big future for men in women’s sports or the chemical and surgical mutilation of children in the name of “gender affirming care.”

These are just some of Trump’s accomplishments so far. Even if the Democrats’ best hopes are realized in November and he faces a troublesome Congress, he still has the enormous executive authority of “I’ve got a pen and a phone” as Obama put it.

The modern presidency has a lot of power, as Trump showed in making war on Iran this weekend without consulting Congress. And he sees lots of work ahead. For example, he is bringing tremendous military/and/or economic pressure on some of the worlds bad actors- Cuba Venezuela, as well as Iran. Who knows what changes may come to Tehran, Havana, and Caracas in the months ahead? And there’s the unfinished business of ending the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Constitution grants a president wide latitude in foreign affairs. Trump is pushing that to the limits- and he surely will be challenged in Congress, by some Republicans as well as Democrats. But for the moment at least, he is in the driver’s seat.

Yes, Donald Trump will be gone in three years, but a hundred years from now historians will still be writing books about his transformation of the presidency. Add to that the political earthquake he triggered in tapping into the discontent of tens of millions of Americans unhappy with the status quo.

More history — good and bad, for the country and for Trump — will be made in the next couple of years.

Given his ground-breaking and convention-defying deeds and actions as well as the chaos he’s brought to Washington, there’s no denying Trump will loom large in the history books-as the most consequential 21st century president to date.

Steve Huntley is a retired Chicago journalist living in Austin, Texas, who spent most of his career, almost three decades, with the Chicago Sun-Times, where he was a feature writer, metro reporter, night city editor, metropolitan editor, editorial page editor and a columnist for the opinion pages. Before that he was a reporter and editor with United Press International (UPI) in the South and Chicago, and Chicago bureau chief and a senior editor in Washington with U.S. News & World Report. Northwestern University Press has issued soft cover and eBook editions of Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America by Truman K. Gibson Jr. with Steve Huntley, a memoir of a Chicagoan who was a member of President Roosevelt’s World War II Black Cabinet working to desegregate the military.