ABSTRACT The elections of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Donald Trump in 2016 were widely portrayed as transformative political moments. While some interpretations link them within a continuous conservative trajectory, this article argues that they represent distinct political paradigms. Using a qualitative comparative approach grounded in primary and secondary sources, the study examines ideological, policy, stylistic, and coalitional differences between the two presidencies. It identifies a shift from Reagan's fusionism—combining free‐market economics, social conservatism, and anti‐communist internationalism—to Trump's hybrid of economic nationalism, nativism, and foreign policy realism. Their governing approaches diverged significantly in fiscal policy, regulatory philosophy, and international engagement. Stylistically, Reagan's optimistic and institution‐affirming rhetoric contrasts sharply with Trump's confrontational and institution‐challenging discourse. Coalitionally, Reagan constructed a broad, cross‐class alliance, whereas Trump mobilized a narrower base centered on white working‐class and evangelical voters. The findings suggest that Reagan's project sought to reconstruct the post–New Deal order, while Trump's represents a form of identitarian insurgency. The transition between the two signals not ideological continuity but fragmentation within American conservatism, with broader implications for populism, presidential leadership, and party transformation.
This article provides the first extensive investigation of President Gerald Ford's commemoration of the 1976 United States Bicentennial. Drawing on internal correspondence and Ford's public addresses, it highlights how his administration leveraged Bicentennial commemorations to situate Ford's Presidency as a reconciling and stabilizing force in the wake of Watergate and American defeat in Vietnam. In so doing, Ford's Bicentennial rhetoric advanced a law-and-order-oriented vision of America's revolutionary past, discouraging transformational change in the present and situating Ford's preference for limited governance as consistent with longer-standing national ideals. Ford's speeches thus emphasized how individual Americans could revitalize key founding values of self-reliance, thrift, and sacrifice in the upcoming "third century of the individual," if only they were liberated from heavy-handed New Deal governance. This article thus situates Ford's Presidency as a critical yet under-recognized period of intellectual formation, as a growing conservative counter-intelligentsia attained its most significant influence on the ideas and speech-writing of a postwar President. Ultimately, Ford's Bicentennial tended toward a more individualized and vernacular understanding of the American Revolution, a framing that continues to shape American political discourse during the 2026 United States Semiquincentennial.
