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.
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber at the Capitol on Feb. 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump delivered his address days after the Supreme Court struck down the administration's tariff strategy, and amid a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf threatening Iran.
Some MAGA loyalists have turned on Trump. Why the rest haven’t
I recently watched "A Face in the Crowd" for the umpteenth time.
I had a better reason than procrastination to rewatch Elia Kazan’s brilliant 1957 film exploring populism in the television age. It was homework. I was asked to discuss it with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz at the just-concluded TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles. As a pundit and an author, I do a lot of public speaking. But I don’t really do a lot of cool public speaking, so this was a treat.
With that not-very-humble brag out of the way, I had a depressing realization watching it this time.
"A Face in the Crowd" tells the story of a charming drifter with a dark side named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, played brilliantly by Andy Griffith. A singer with the gift of the gab, Rhodes takes off on radio but quickly segues to the brand-new medium of television. He becomes a national sensation — and political kingmaker — by forming a deep connection with the masses, particularly among the rural and working classes. His core audience is made up of people with grievances. “Everybody that’s got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle,” as Rhodes puts it.
The film’s climax (spoiler alert) comes when Rhodes’ manager and spurned lover, Marcia, turns on the microphone while the credits rolled at the end of “Cracker Barrel,” his national TV show. Rhodes tells his entourage what he really thinks of the “morons” in his audience. “Shucks, I can take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them for caviar. I can make them eat dog food, and they’ll think it’s steak. … Good night, you stupid idiots.”
It was a canonical “hot mic” moment in American cinema. But the idea that if people could glimpse the “real person” behind the popular facade, they’d turn on them is a very old theme in literature — think Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (1782) or Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s "The School for Scandal" (1777), in which diaries and letters do the work of microphones.
Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg were very worried about the ability of demagogues to whip up populist fervor and manipulate the masses through the power of TV, in part because everyone had already seen it happen with radio and film, by Father Coughlin in America and Hitler in Germany. But as dark as their vision was, they still clung to the idea that if the demagogue was exposed, the people would instantly turn on their leader in an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment for the mass media age.
And that’s the source of my depressing realization. I think they were wrong. It turns out that once that organic connection is made, even a shocking revelation of the truth won’t necessarily break the spell.
In 2016, a lot of writers revisited "A Face in the Crowd" to understand the Trump phenomenon. After all, here was a guy who used a TV show — "The Apprentice" — and social media to build a massive following, going over the heads of the “establishment.” Trump’s own hot mic moment with "Access Hollywood," in which he boasted of his sexual predations, proved insufficient to undo him. That was hardly the only such moment for him. We’ve heard Trump bully the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes.” He told Bob Woodward he deliberately “played down” COVID-19. After leaving office, he was recorded telling aides he shouldn’t be sharing classified documents with them — then doing it anyway. And so on.
Trump’s famous claim that he could “shoot somebody” on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters may have been hyperbole. But it’s not crazy to think he wouldn’t lose as many voters as he should.
In the film, Lonesome Rhodes implodes when Americans encounter his off-air persona. The key to Trump’s success is that he ran as his off-air persona. Why people love that persona is a complicated question. Among the many complementary explanations is that he comes across as authentic, and some people value authenticity more than they value good character, honesty, or competence.
This is not just a problem for Republicans. Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner once had a Nazi tattoo and has said things about women as distasteful as Trump’s “grab them by (the genitals)” comments, and the Democratic establishment is rallying around him because he’s authentic — and because Democrats want to win that race.
Many prominent MAGA loyalists are turning on Trump these days. They claim — wrongly in my opinion — that he’s changed and that the Iran war is a betrayal of their cause. But if you look at the polls, voters who describe themselves as “MAGA” still overwhelmingly support Trump. In short, he still has the Fifth Avenue voters on his side.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.