In this episode of the Politics in Question podcast, the team discusses thermostatic politics to explain what it means and how it works.
Podcast: What is thermostatic politics?
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President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media traveling on Air Force One while heading to Miami on March 7, 2026.
(Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
A President in Sheep’s Clothing and a Democracy in Decline
Mar 16, 2026
Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, America’s president is undermining the Republic by evading checks, consolidating power, and attacking democratic norms. He disguises his malicious intentions as innocence while dismantling policies and programs that would help citizens.
In earlier opinions, I wrote about three forces that corrode democracy: hypocrisy, corruption, and confusion. Hypocrisy creates a false image of leadership; corruption erodes public trust and suppresses voter participation; confusion keeps the public from seeing the truth. Together, they weaken the Republic.
A president who once declared, “I alone can fix it" now demands concentrated power while the country crumbles. He presents himself as a stabilizing force yet governs through intimidation. He speaks of restoring order while undermining the institutions that make order possible.
This fable of The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing applies to public life. In the story, the wolf disguises himself as a sheep to confuse the flock and move freely among them. The disguise is not a costume — it is a strategy. It allows the wolf to deceive. The president uses a similar disguise. He wraps himself in patriotic language while weakening systems that safeguard the nation. He claims to defend the country while demanding loyalty to himself. He presents himself as a protector while pursuing power and money.
Confusion is not accidental. It is engineered to dull public judgment. When leaders flood public life with contradictions and manufactured crises, citizens lose the ability to distinguish governance from performance. A leader who creates chaos then presents himself as the one strong enough to control it. This strategy is not hidden. Project 2025 — a blueprint for consolidating executive power — is a public declaration of intent. Yet Congress, the branch designed to check presidential overreach, remains silent. Silence is not neutrality. Silence is permission — and it leaves citizens relying on their own judgment to see what leaders refuse to confront.
On January 20, 2025, he raised his right hand, repeated the oath, and immediately began performing duties that bore no resemblance to service to the people. Beneath the disguise, consequences were immediate: Families were separated and jailed. A violent immigration crackdown spread across the country. Innocent Americans were killed by ICE agents. DEI programs were dismantled. Journalists were humiliated and imprisoned. Personal voting data was collected. He pretended to protect the people but governed to protect himself. He pretended to be a reformer but dismantled systems that safeguard fairness.
The pattern extended beyond domestic policy. He invaded Venezuela in January 2026 and ordered strikes on Iran in February 2026, bypassing congressional authorization — a sweeping assertion of executive power. He pretends to be strong but relies on confusion, cover‑ups, and spectacle. His actions reveal a pattern of power without accountability. It is a performance — a fraudulent one — yet his loyalists ignore and excuse his overreach and abuse of power.
Americans watched as he built a cabinet designed for obedience. Nominees were individuals whose wealth insulated them from accountability and prevented them from challenging him. Those appointed to key positions were chosen not for experience, but for their role in crafting Project 2025 — a plan designed to concentrate presidential power by weakening the institutions meant to check him. These were not ordinary appointments; they were strategic placements. The very people who helped write the plan were positioned to carry it out. The intent was unmistakable: reshape the federal system so that loyalty to the president would outweigh loyalty to the Constitution.
Those strategic placements had consequences. Cabinet members and leaders in Congress have a responsibility not to the president, but to the Constitution and Americans. Yet many chose to reinforce the president’s falsehoods, applaud his distortions, and shield him from accountability. Rather than offering honest counsel and transparency, they echoed his claims. Rather than checking his excesses and overreach, they enabled them. Their silence — and their applause — do not protect us. They protect him.
On February 24, 2026, he delivered the longest presidential address in modern history — a marathon of exaggerations, self‑congratulation, and false claims. He boasted that he had taken prescription drug prices from the highest in the world to the lowest. He bragged about accomplishments that never materialized. He never mentioned unkept promises: relief on housing, food, or healthcare. And yet, despite the spectacle, his approval rating remained low — a sign the public no longer buys his lies. His loyalists applauded anyway, not because they believed him, but because loyalty has replaced judgment. That loyalty came at a cost.
He ignored the Epstein victims’ search for truth and closure, offering no acknowledgment of their suffering, while praising the hockey players he suggested had “fought on his behalf”. This is not leadership. It is favoritism disguised as strength.
Democratic decline rarely begins with a dramatic collapse. It begins with smaller fractures: norms stretched before they are broken, oversight criticized before it is weakened, elections questioned before they are undermined, institutions attacked before they are ignored. When a president claims the power to decide which laws apply to him, the public loses the ability to hold him accountable — unless citizens exercise independent judgment.
When he undermines the legitimacy of elections, the people lose their voice. When he attacks independent institutions, the nation loses its safeguards. Concentrated power does not return what it takes. It must be stopped — to prevent deepening inequality, to protect democratic processes, to guard against tyranny, and to preserve liberty itself. That is why constitutional clarity matters.
But the Constitution does not give the final word to any president. It gives it to the people. Democracy is not the property of any party or state — red, blue, or purple. For the Republic to endure, citizens must exercise their constitutional rights, demand that Congress use its power of checks and balances, and engage in civic responsibility.
Americans must see leaders as they are and refuse to surrender their judgment to noise, division, fear, or personality. Political judgment is about choosing sides. Citizen judgment is about choosing the Republic. Political judgment asks, “Which team am I on?” Citizen judgment asks, “What protects the Constitution and the common good?” One is driven by loyalty, personality, or party identity; the other by responsibility, research, and reflection.
Political judgment rewards performance, outrage, and allegiance. Citizen judgment evaluates whether leaders tell the truth, respect limits on power, and uphold their oath. Political judgment applauds a leader’s claims because he is “ours.” Citizen judgment checks whether those claims are real — and whether they strengthen or weaken democratic institutions.
Political judgment narrows the lens to winning. Citizen judgment widens it to safeguarding the Republic.
Judgment matters most when public life is clouded by confusion and spectacle. It requires research, self‑awareness, and reflection on how past choices shape the present. Voters must examine how their decisions affect the Republic, resist tactics meant to distract or divide, and demand accountability and transparency from every public official. Congress must prevent the concentration of power, exercise oversight, and uphold its constitutional responsibilities.
Citizens must vote, hold peaceful protests, challenge federal overreach, support a free press, and insist on separation of powers and judicial independence.
We must not allow the wolf to destroy our democracy. We strengthen the Republic when we let him know that we see who he is — and refuse to be misled. Democracy is not self‑correcting. It is citizen‑correcting. Judgment is not just a civic duty; it is the last line of protection between a free people and the concentrated power that seeks to weaken them.
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Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and national advocate for ethical leadership, civic responsibility, and institutional accountability. She writes about democratic norms, public trust, and the moral responsibilities of citizenship.
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President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a news conference at Trump National Doral Miami on March 9, 2026, in Doral, Florida. President Trump spoke on his administration's strikes on Iran.
(Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images/TCA)
Donald Trump’s Iran war without rhyme or reason
Mar 14, 2026
If you ask President Trump, he’ll tell you we’ve already won the war in Iran.
When asked for an update by Axios on Wednesday, Trump responded with the kind of upbeat nonchalance and flippant boastfulness you’d usually see when asked about the progress on one of his hotels.
“The war is going great,” he said. “We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period.” He then offered that there’s “practically nothing left to target.”
As for an ending? “Any time I want it to end, it will end.”
How, exactly, is it “going great”? What is the “timetable”? Shouldn’t it end when the mission is achieved and not when Trump simply wants it to?
His administration has simultaneously given no rationale to justify our strikes on Iran — failing to prove we were the target of an imminent attack — and all the reasons why we had to, from regime change, to oil, to support for Israel.
It’s sent mixed messages on timing, promising both that it’s practically over and that it could take a while. And it’s been unreliable in its own accounting of what’s actually happened. Have we decimated Iran’s nukes? (I thought we’d already done that.) And who is responsible for the attack that killed 160 schoolchildren in Iran?
We still have no answers to these important questions. When pressed on the school attack, for one, Trump has said everything from Iran was responsible to, most recently, “I don’t know about it.” But an initial report determined the U.S. was at fault, the result of a targeting mistake.
As for the nukes, which the White House declared“ obliterated” last June, our own intelligence assessment just found that Iran can still access about 60% of its enriched material stored at Esfahan. As the non-partisan Arms Control Association notes, “Although strikes can set back Iran’s nuclear program and destroy key infrastructure…military force cannot eliminate Tehran’s proliferation risk.”
Trump’s version of events, as is so often the case, isn’t based on facts, but wishcasting, projection, bombast and bluffs.
And abroad, it isn’t working.
In France, for example, Le Monde derides Trump’s treatment of the war as “spectacle,” lambasting his “celebratory tone.” It noted his grotesque joke that it’s “more fun” to sink Iranian warships than to seize them,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s boast that “we are punching [the Iranians] while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
In The Guardian, columnist Rafael Behr points out the chaos and incompetence of Trump’s war: “Regime change was the plan, but Trump finds it easier to change plans than regimes. He says he has won, but also that he has more winning to do. This is the familiar stage of rhetorical climbdown, indicating dawning awareness that a problem is more complicated than the president initially thought. Complexity resists his whim. It bores him.”
And in Germany’s Bild, Europe’s highest-circulating newspaper, the question is pointed: “Whose pockets is Trump filling with bombs?” It declares “the clearest winner in the biggest Middle East conflict in decades is the U.S. arms industry” and Trump’s sons, who are conveniently now in the drone business.
The world can see through Trump’s charade, but do American voters? Most polls show more voters oppose the war than support it, but by a slim margin.
That margin will widen with time, most certainly. And then Trump’s slick sales pitch will be less and less effective. Or maybe I’m the one who’s wishcasting.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivers the Democratic response to U.S. President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on February 24, 2026 in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Getty Images, Mike Kropf
Three Questions Linger After State of the Union Speech
Mar 11, 2026
Anyone tuning into the State of the Union expecting responsible governance was sorely disappointed. What they got instead was pure Trumpian spectacle.
All the familiar elements were there: extended applause lines, culture-war provocation, even self-congratulation, praising the U.S. hockey team and folding its victory into a broader narrative of national resurgence. The whole thing was show business, crafted for reaction rather than reflection, for clips rather than consensus.
It was a relief when Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivered the Democratic response and shifted the conversation from overheated rhetoric to three simple questions.
She asked: Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe, both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you?
The administration can try to spin them, but lived experience tells a different story. The answers are not in the chamber but in daily life: at the grocery store, at the gas pump, on a credit card statement, in the safety of our communities, and at the kitchen table.
Affordability
Start with affordability.
Inflation has cooled from its post-pandemic highs, and the White House is quick to note it. Unemployment remains low and, on paper, the indicators look stable.
But affordability is not a chart; it is a daily reality that asks whether wages keep pace with rent and insurance premiums, whether retirement savings feel secure, and whether families believe next year will bring more stability than the last.
Confidence, however, is eroding. Consumer sentiment has fallen for four consecutive months, reaching its lowest level since 2020. Americans’ outlook on income, business conditions, and jobs has dropped to a 12-year low, and credit card delinquencies more than 90 days past due have climbed to a 13-year high.
For many middle-class families, the markers of the American Dream feel increasingly distant. Mortgage rates have doubled from pandemic lows, pushing first-time homeownership out of reach, while rents have outpaced wages in many cities. Childcare rivals college tuition in some states. Health insurance premiums and deductibles keep rising. Student loan payments have resumed, tightening already strained budgets.
The result is persistent anxiety as families delay buying homes, young couples postpone having children, and retirement contributions shrink to cover short-term expenses. While certain parts of the economy may be growing, family confidence is not.
These are not partisan numbers. They are economic stress signals that raise a harder question: Is the administration calming uncertainty, or amplifying it?
Security
The second question follows: Are we safe?
At the State of the Union, the language of safety was everywhere: border security, military strength, law and order. The president cited deportations, renewed border barriers, and rebuilding the armed forces as proof that America was regaining control. The imagery was calculated; strength projected from the podium was meant to reassure a jittery nation. Yet reassuring words carry little weight when daily life tells another story. Security, like affordability, rests not on rhetoric but on durable governance.
By the end of the week, the administration launched military strikes against Iran, a war of choice that risks destabilizing the Middle East and drawing the United States into another prolonged conflict. The question is not whether strength should ever be used, but whether its use makes Americans safer or merely signals resolve.
True security in a constitutional republic is measured not by how quickly a president acts alone, but by whether policy withstands scrutiny, commands legislative backing, and strengthens institutions rather than bypassing them.
In recent months, the administration has leaned heavily on executive orders and emergency authorities to reshape immigration enforcement and national security posture. Executive action is swift but also reversible; what one president builds by decree, the next can erase with a signature. That cycle may project decisiveness, but it does not build stability.
Alliances require consistency. Deterrence requires credibility. Border policy requires coordination with Congress, courts, and states. When governance turns unilateral, security becomes personality-driven rather than system-driven.
Personality is not a strategy.
Is the President Working for You?
The third question cuts deeper: Is the president working for you?
In a constitutional system, that question is answered not by rally size or executive speed, but by whether power flows through institutions designed to represent the public. Congress controls the purse and should be consulted before taking the country to war. Courts review executive action. Agencies implement laws shaped through deliberation and compromise. When those structures function, citizens may disagree with outcomes yet still recognize the process as legitimate.
When they weaken, the shift is subtle but significant. Budgets are deferred through continuing resolutions. Policy moves through executive orders rather than legislation. Loyalty begins to outweigh expertise in the civil service. The visible story is decisive leadership; the deeper reality is institutional erosion.
A president working for the public strengthens the mechanisms that translate disagreement into policy and works through them, even when it is slower and less dramatic.
The State of the Union was performative, the applause loud and partisan, the imagery vivid, but the real test is quieter: whether families feel more secure, whether the nation is safer in ways that endure, and whether the institutions that bind us are stronger, not thinner. When the chamber empties, the lights dim, and the clips circulate, the serious questions remain.
Robert Cropf is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University.
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U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House February 20, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
When Secrecy Becomes Structural
Mar 08, 2026
Secrecy is like a shroud of fog. By limiting what people can see and check for themselves, the public gets either a glimpse (or nothing at all), depending on what gatekeepers decide to share. And just as fog comes in layers, so does withholding: one missing document, one delayed detail, one “not available” that becomes routine.
Most adults understand there are things that shouldn’t be shown. Lawyers can’t reveal case details to people who aren’t involved. Police don’t release information during an active investigation. Doctors shouldn’t discuss your medical history at home. The reason is simple: actual harm can follow when sensitive information is revealed too early or to those who shouldn’t be told.
But another kind of secrecy has been developing over time. It’s less about protection and more about insulation. It’s the kind that says, “You don’t get to ever know.” This veil isn’t meant to protect a person or preserve an investigation. It protects the system from questions.
And when it becomes routine, it’s not just transparency that gets limited. Restricting what the public can verify is how legitimacy begins to fray.
Silence isn’t being used as an occasional tactic anymore. Concealment has become the new normal: the structure of how systems work.
When reticence becomes a framework, lawfulness starts wobbling.
Permissibility isn’t a mood. It’s a public agreement that power is being used in fair, limited, accountable ways, not perfectly, but enough that consent isn’t something authorities simply demand.
Consent needs visibility. Not full transparency. No sane person is asking for live-streamed investigations or open-source intelligence files. But we do need enough clarity to verify claims, understand guardrails, and recognize consequences when boundaries are crossed.
When documentation is withheld, trust doesn’t vanish overnight. It erodes. And over time, people stop treating official claims as “true by default” when the supporting facts can’t be checked, all while drifting toward the “most credible” narrative minus receipts.
Sometimes obscurity shows up in quiet ways: disclosures that arrive too late to matter; carefully framed details that feel vacuum-sealed; paragraphs blacked out. Other times it’s more direct: sealed investigations, buried records, decisions made behind closed doors—followed by the public being told that transparency is dangerous.
Not all secrecy is bad. Some information must be kept secret: cases can be ruined by publicity; witnesses can be intimidated; a vulnerable person can be dragged through a digital town square as punishment. But there’s a point when “necessary confidentiality” becomes power without visibility. That’s when legitimacy starts rotting — not with a dramatic collapse, but with a slow administrative shrug.
The public doesn’t need to know everything. We need enough to answer one basic question:
Is power being used with limits, or for convenience?
That question stops being abstract when a state announces an investigation tied to something as infamous as Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico. Investigation doesn’t automatically mean conviction. Allegations aren’t proof. But when officials announce a serious inquiry connected to a high-profile network of harm, headlines aren’t enough. People want to know what is demonstrable, what can be documented, what will be sealed (and why), and how the inquiry is structured.
This is where obscurity shows up. High-stakes cases often follow the same pattern: statements that sound informative but deliver less; more hedging, highlights, and half releases; even when officials insist they’re doing the work well. The structure can still feel engineered to limit scrutiny, not because everything is unfair, but because scrutiny is inconvenient.
This is the purity gap: systems request belief while delaying the information that makes belief reasonable.
Silence doesn’t have to be deliberate to disrupt. Too many people can benefit (quietly, for a wide range of reasons) from withholding. It limits responsibility. It controls accountability. It leaves the public in a fog of jumbled discourse. The system it was meant to safeguard begins to disintegrate, gradually enough that what once would have triggered an alarm becomes normal.
It starts as a choice: a move to keep something out of the public view. What starts as a decision becomes a rule. Habits are normalized. Then they turn into a process.
One method is the hardening of “need to know.” Intended for sensitive information, it gets stretched beyond recognition — because it becomes useful for hiding what’s embarrassing, politically costly, or simply inconvenient. In this climate, the definition of “need” retracts, the circle of access tightens, and suddenly “need to know” isn’t just about confidentiality.
It’s about who gets to hold power and who gets protected while rank is enforced.
And plausible deniability doesn’t require lying. By learning where not to seek facts (what questions not to ask, what records not to request, what concerns not to connect), people learn how not to know. Cultural signaling does the rest. So does the quiet math of saving your job.
The process often starts with a legitimate reason: safety, privacy, diplomacy, or an active investigation. Over time, withholding becomes a way to avoid oversight, conflict, or dissent. New people arrive and are told, “This is just how things are done.” No longer a tactic, it becomes cultural inheritance.
Opacity rarely arrives all at once. Each step looks reasonable by itself. Add one more approval. Include one more restricted folder. Tag on another redaction. Slap on more intermediaries. Tack on legal reviews. Eventually, a black box appears.
People adapt to the “new normal.” Informationalism replaces explanation; sound bites replace evidence; proof becomes optional. When evidence isn’t forthcoming, believable narratives get accepted. When proof is consistently inaccessible, suspicion becomes the default operating system.
“Trust the process” can be sincere. More often than not, it’s used as a substitute for explanation.
People don’t flip trust on and off like a light switch because they were asked nicely. Acceptance is a conclusion reached after repeatedly witnessing: consistent rule of application, consequences for broken rules, justified secrecy, and credible oversight.
A system that conducts itself as if it’s being scrutinized earns trust. A legitimate system doesn’t treat review as a threat. It may dread misunderstanding, but it recognizes that accountability is part of stewardship, not an enemy of it.
The last decade has produced a strange shift: institutions increasingly behave as though citizens’ questions aren’t “friendly.” Sometimes there’s a cause. People can be righteously
angry. Values can change without explanation. People can feel lied to. But the answer to anger isn’t doubling down on hidden facts. It’s improved oversight for what must remain confidential—alongside truthful, irrefutable transparency about what can be seen.
So, the question is no longer “secrecy or transparency.” It’s this:
Where is the line—and who enforces it?
People can tolerate confidentiality when given clear standards, narrow definitions, and the ability to review records later. People can accept “not yet.” They cannot live with “never” dressed up as “trust us.”
As long as secrecy remains in place, accountability must be structurally built in. It must be a design choice, not a public relations campaign.
There should be a framework for what is held back, why, for how long, and what triggers disclosure later. Predictable rules matter more than constant detail. There should be a default timeline, with exceptions that are convincing.
Too many systems don’t give ordinary people a credible path to contest secrecy decisions. There should be an avenue for challenge that doesn’t require bleeding retirement funds into lawsuits.
This doesn’t require full disclosure. It requires a reviewable reason, a time limit, and independent appeal options when “confidential” becomes a familiar tune. Agencies can be protected with an open framework. When review is possible (even later), people are less likely to assume the worst now. Eventual disclosure robs conspiracy thinking of oxygen.
At present, the vacuum is filling itself.
The deeper issue is volatility: the public can’t discern fact from fiction and becomes susceptible to the most emotionally charged story. Distrust turns into currency. Whether deserved or not, every agency gets treated like a defendant before trial.
Volatility compounds: legitimate rules aren’t followed strictly; eagerness to bypass systems increases; conversations unmoor from facts; division accelerates; and every action is presumed malevolent, which makes governance harder.
Believing they’re protecting themselves, institutions respond by tightening secrecy even more. And the loop goes like this: more privacy, less trust. Less trust, more silence. That’s how secrecy becomes infrastructure, all while everyone else tilts at windmills.
This isn’t a philosophical complaint about “clearness.” It’s a warning about system stability.
It’s also a moment where information is plentiful, but review is limited, and artificial intelligence (AI) can generate logical nonsense at scale. In that climate, institutions can’t afford to treat legitimacy as an emotional public relations problem. Legitimacy is operational: it’s the difference between challenging opinions being accepted with clean boundaries—and every decision being treated as a power grab because the lines aren’t visible.
Otherwise, you aren’t asking for trust. You’re demanding it. And people don’t follow demands for very long. They either conform out of fear or rebel out of resentment. Neither is stable.
At some point, fog stops being weather.
It becomes architecture.
And whether we like it or not, fog shapes behavior.
Linda Hansen is a writer and the founder of Bridging the Aisle, a nonpartisan platform fostering honest, respectful dialogue across divides and renewed trust in democracy.
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