The Veep and the Influencer-in-Chief
The Emergence of the Participatory Presidency
J.D. Vance has been playing a critical role as Trump’s liaison to the Senate. This is not unusual, lots of VPs have played a similar role including Walter Mondale, Joe Biden, and even Dan Quayle. The nature of Vance’s role is different, he is leveraging the power of Trump’s massive online presence. This difference signifies something deeper, a change to the nature of the presidency.
Sherpa-in-chief or Good Cop
Multiple media reports have described Vance’s work shepherding Trump’s most controversial nominees through Senate confirmation. Vance was the deciding vote for Pete Hegseth, but he also dissuaded a doubting Thom, Senator Tillis of NC. He worked closely with Senator Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana to advance RFK Jr.’s confirmation. Cassidy is a doctor and a firm believer in vaccines. But, with Vance’s help, RFK Jr. agreed to back-off his anti-vax rhetoric and to consult regularly with Cassidy. Indiana Senator Todd Young, a Marine like Vance, was deeply skeptical of Tulsi Gabbard becoming Director of National Intelligence. But Vance heard out his concerns and persuaded him.
Good for J.D. Vance. If he wants to stay in Trump’s good graces, have influence, and even become his successor, Vance needs to win. This is also important because he faces a pair of internal rivals in Musk and Rubio.
But Vance’s success on the Senate is a little surprising. In the past, VPs liaising with the Senate requires a soft touch and well-established relationships. The power dynamic is different. The subtext of the stories about Vance is that the Senators are afraid of Trump.
When Young expressed his doubts about Gabbard he received a full-on social media assault from MAGA-world (spearheaded by an attack by Elon Musk), as well as a threat of being primaried. Vance was able to get them to lay off, allowing Vance to play “good cop” and highlight his own influence in the White House. The same occurred to both Tillis and Iowa Senator Joni Ernst when they signaled the opposition to Hegseth.
This shift in power dynamic between the president and the Senate is profound.
The Roots of Trump’s Power
I take no pleasure in having been completely right about Donald Trump almost a decade ago. I predicted that eventually he would call a mob and a mob would come. I wish I hadn’t been right.
Trump (and Musk and to a lesser extent Vance) can—almost instantly—blast an opponent and trigger a massive cascade of vicious assaults across social media. Is this nothing? Hardly. Ask the Sandy Hook parents. This attention strengthens the hand of Trump’s bigger threat, a primary challenge. Finally, it comes with threats of violence. Withstanding this requires stern stuff and many of our politicians don’t have it.
Trump may sui generis, but the ability to use social media to power the presidency in new ways is now a feature of American politics. Some background and context follows.
Cycles in American History
About 15 years ago, when I was prepping for my PhD comprehensive exams I read a pair of books on cycles in U.S. politics. One was Samuel Huntington’s American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony and the other was Stephen Skowronek’s Presidential Leadership in Political Time. Skowronek charts how political regimes are established and overtime decay. (Here’s my summary of Skowronek’s take on the presidency.) At their final stages you get the hapless presidencies of John Quincy Adams, Herbert Hoover, or Jimmy Carter. It is no accident that they are followed by presidential giants because with the collapse of the old political regime presidents like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Reagan are free to establish new regimes and new political commitments. Reading this in 2010, it seems the GOP order established by Reagan was in decline. Obama had been unable to repudiate Reaganism, but after a hapless Carteresque Republican, in the 2020s a new Democratic regime would be established. While some aspects of this pattern occurred, given Trump’s return to the White House it is hard to argue that Biden successfully repudiated Reagan and established a new political order.
Huntington (better known for the controversial Clash of Civilizations) argues that the United States goes through occasional (every 50-70 years) bouts of Creedal Passion. The ideals of the United States, beautifully expressed in the Declaration of Independence, are inspirational, but we don’t live up to them. Mostly we just ignore this gap or convince ourselves that the glaring contradictions between our ideals and our reality don’t exist. But in a bout of Creedal Passion, we cannot ignore our shortcomings and try to remake ourselves in line with our ideals. The last such era was the Sixties, which saw the end of legal segregation, efforts at reform in all corners of society, advancement of women and minority rights, and of course a huge push back against the growth of presidential power. Other eras include the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, the Jacksonian era, and the American Revolution itself (two and a half centuries later, it is difficult to remember just how radical the American Revolution was.)
First and foremost, these eras are characterized by widespread frenzy, the rapid emergence of movements and causes to address injustices, declines in public trust, and a spread of fads, quackery, and conspiracies. For purpose of this analysis, the most consistent thread is that eras of Creedal Passion see communications revolutions that enable the rapid spread of ideas, rumors, and passion. Writing in the 1980s, Huntington predicted the second and third decades of the 21st century would be another era of Creedal Passion. All the signs are present.
The American Creed is rooted in liberty and equality and rejects hierarchy and concentrations of power as threats to liberty and equality. It is not partisan. In the Jacksonian Era, Andrew Jackson attacked established elites and powerful institutions, most notably the Bank of the United States, on behalf of the common man. The Whigs organized against Jackson both because of his treatment of Native Americans and, because he was concentrating power in the presidency, they dubbed him King Andrew. Across the country movements like abolitionism, public education, and temperance became popular, mass causes. Their goals were to expand individual liberty and equality.
The Creedal Passion of the Sixties is usually associated with the left, but on the right Barry Goldwater railed against “concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism.”
Today, Bernie Sanders advocates economic rights to protect us from “the tyranny of oligarchs.” Trump, with his promises to “drain the swamp” and end “the deep state” is also tapping into the American Creed by attacking the accumulation of power by the government.
My revelation, 15 years ago, was that in the 2020s these cycles would meet and things would be crazy with a powerful president establishing a new political order and mass ferment for change. That has been true. I wrote several conference papers on this, but here’s a shorter stab I took at examining how these might cycles interact.
The Presidency and Creedal Passion
The clearest connection between the two cycles is that during eras of Creedal Passion, the basis of presidential power changes. Skowronek writes that presidential time is internal to the rise and fall of political regimes. (For an excellent take on how Skowronek’s cycle fits with the present day, see this essay by the always excellent and very fashionable Julia Azari, a student of Skowronek.)
But secular time, broader history, shapes how the presidency works. Presidential authority, the formal powers of the presidency have generally expanded over U.S. history. The basis of presidential power, that is the political power that underpins the authority, that gives the president the warrant to proceed, changes. It changes during eras of Creedal Passion and one of the factors in these changes are the communications revolutions that accompany ages of Creedal Passion.
In the early days of the Republic presidential power was rooted in managing relations between the political elites. That model was overturned by Andrew Jackson (and Martin Van Buren, his second VP) who established the patronage-based party system. In an age of Creedal Passion, the power of these political elites came under fire. At the same time the industrial revolution enabled truly mass printing and rapid communications throughout the United States (first by steamboat, then train, and ultimately the telegraph). This technological revolution allowed Jackson and Van Buren to establish and direct a network of local parties and affiliated newspapers.
In the early decades of the 20th century the patronage system was displaced by pluralistic politics in which the president managed relations between key interests and power centers. Many of the injustices of the day were exposed by the new mass-circulation magazines. Teddy Roosevelt had close relations with many of their authors and publishers—even writing for The Outlook after leaving the White House.
In the 1960s this was overturned by the plebiscitary presidency, in which television and the ease of travel allowed the president to reach out beyond Washington and gather public support for their policies. Television was also central in highlighting the injustices of segregation and the Vietnam war.1
The power of the plebiscitary presidency is fading. Nixon could give a national address and shift public opinion, buying himself time to manage an issue or support for his decisions. Reagan was the great communicator. George W. Bush was able to rally the American people to support him and persuade them through the bully pulpit—but this required the tragedy of 9/11. Obama was a supremely skilled orator, and he did persuade some, but not to the extent of his predecessors. Donald Trump has been fascinated with television his entire life, but his own efforts to give addresses that build broad public support have been unsuccessful (the same is true of Joe Biden.)
What type of presidency will the social media revolution bring?
Donald Trump and the Participatory Presidency
The great shaking out, in which the major parties have become divided on ideological line (moderate Democrats and Republicans are closer to their party’s center than to each other), has shrunk the persuadable public. Now the key to presidential power is to maximize one’s own base and shrink, dissuade, and discourage the opposition’s base. Donald Trump has proved all too capable at this.
Social media isn’t just the mainstays of Meta, X, and other major platforms, there are now innumerable platforms with unique features and appeal. These platforms can incorporate text, audio (podcasts), video, images, memes, and mashups of all the above. Items can quickly and easily cross between different platforms. A rumor started by a relative unknown individual can, under the right conditions, become a global item seen by millions within hours.
All of this enables the volume and velocity of communications that can keep opposition off balance, overwhelm people, and lead to an intellectual paralysis and sense of hopelessness. That much of this information is false, rumors, and conspiracy theories only makes it more effective. Much of the disinformation catches on, and addressing it only drains its targets.
For supporters, social media helps in sense-making, giving a continual and evolving narrative that makes them feel like an in-group that is in the know about how things really work. People need ways to make sense of the complexity in the world, and this becomes particularly compelling in eras of Creedal Passion when complex institutions face greater distrust and come under deeper scrutiny. The narratives disseminated are designed to appeal to the emotions (anger and hate are particularly potent.) These narratives continually refresh the energy needed to maintain a movement and bring in recruits. More practically it can also be used to organize and communicate and transfer resources and techniques.
Social media also acts as an effective testing ground for conspiracy theories and other disinformation. When a particular narrative takes off, it can then be laundered through allied traditional media (looking at you FoxNews, but others as well.)
I’m not breaking any new ground here, there are lots of great people studying social media and how it is used and is changing us. A few great places to start are Joshua Foust, Jen Golbeck, and Kate Starbird. I know the first two personally. Dr. Starbird has used the term “participatory disinformation,” which is like my own term the participatory presidency.
Two key and linked features of social media enable the construction of the participatory presidency. It is, unlike the other communications mechanisms, not one to many, but many to many. Dr. Foust has observed that social media is a game. You can win through likes, views, and reposts. The winning gives the dopamine hits of scoring points, but it can also translate into social capital. For a regular Trump supporter, attention of a third-tier influencer can result in a big change in standing within the social media ecosystem. The ability of the an active president (or at least one with a good team) to “touch” followers directly and interact with them scales enormously. Far beyond what can be achieved in a rally (not that those aren’t part of the ecosystem as well.) Being able to be involved with the campaign online further engages supporters and expands their feeling a part of something bigger than themselves.
Social media’s effect on the real world goes beyond the psychological (not to downplay its importance. Talking up stocks and cryptocurrency can have financial implications. Trump and Musk have used social media as a source of information (Musk’s ire at USAID was sparked by a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast). They’ve also used it as a mechanism for governing. Tweeted orders may not have legal standing, but the targeted agencies take notice. Further, social media is international. People, organizations, and governments can all participate in Trump’s online army. It also gives Trump levers to influence politics in other countries.
Trump, Musk, et al may be unique in their readiness to break norms and voice their thoughts with little reflection. Future presidents may be more politic, but surely they will also use this new capability.
Looking Ahead
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
Hate and anger are ultimately hollow. The big feelings of Creedal Passion subside. There is no reason other organizations and movements cannot also use social media effectively to build, uplift, and perhaps with a greater respect for values. Social media has been used to a positive effect during disasters, allowing people not accepted in the mainstream to form communities, and for all kinds of organizing. None of this has coalesced into anything approaching the scale and focus of Trump’s online mob. But it isn’t impossible to think that something could. The medium exists, what is missing is the message and perhaps the messenger.
The types of presidential power co-exist to some extent. It may not be dominant, but patronage politics continues today. Before the rise of mass communication presidents attempted to go to the well of popular support, but it was a lot harder doing it in person by train.