DECEMBER 2025 – Many may remember Barton Swaim from his 2015 book The Speechwriter, which chronicles his experience on the staff of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. Even NYT reviewers came away saying the book was witty and insightful. It contained, too, a worth-repeating observation: That people’s politics are often defined by where they get their paycheck.
This week Swaim, a WSJ editorial contributor and reviewer, posted a piece that finally and efficiently explains the rise of Trump – and much of it has to do, he writes, with the cultural orthodoxy and excesses of the American Left. No one on the American Left is inclined to acknowledge that today, but Swaim goes down the familiar list of progressive cultural positions that upset conservatives and drove them to turn out to vote – and re-elect Trump.
An excerpt:
The first and most obvious thing to be said about Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again “movement” is that it isn’t a movement. MAGA, as I am not the first to observe, is Mr. Trump and nothing else. When he changes his mind or reverses course, as he often does, his enthusiasts do the same. That isn’t a movement. Nor is it a personality cult, as his detractors like to say. MAGA, as I read the acronym, is shorthand for the connection Mr. Trump has with a large segment of right-leaning voters. Their anxieties intensify and numbers grow when the progressive left gains cultural ascendancy.
Swaim’s take is that MAGA will die out with Trump, and the American right – apparently the GOP – will need to re-define itself again in the next presidential cycle.
We try to avoid recognizing works from the WSJ editorial page – for all its claims of being “Guided by Principle, Grounded in Purpose” it peddles much of the latter than the former:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/2028-is-magas-expiration-date-03de3d94