The language of revolution already occupies the centre of American political debate.
On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump promised in his inaugural address «the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense». The phrasing combined radical change with a claim to recover something authentic that had been lost.
Days earlier, president Joe Biden had offered an opposing diagnosis. «Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America,» he warned in his January 15 farewell address, identifying concentrated wealth and influence as a danger to democratic government.
Neither statement is neutral evidence that its speaker’s diagnosis is correct. Together, however, they illustrate a striking political condition: rival presidents portrayed powerful interests as threats to the public’s control over its own future. The disagreement concerns both the identity of those interests and the institutions capable of restraining them.
In a report published on September 16, 2026, the Partnership for Public Service said 27% of respondents trusted the federal government, while 72% described it as corrupt. The underlying survey covered 1,000 American adults and was conducted between March 31 and April 5, with a margin of error of approximately 3.1 percentage points. These are spring findings published in September, rather than an October snapshot.
Pew Research Center’s separate historical series reported a 17% trust reading in September 2025. Different questions and methods mean that figure should not be placed beside the Partnership’s result as though they formed one continuous trend.
Such findings indicate a legitimacy problem, but they do not establish public support for abandoning constitutional government.
Distrust can produce demands for better administration, greater transparency or different leaders. It can encourage withdrawal from politics. It can also create an audience for leaders who promise to bypass institutions they describe as irredeemably compromised. The crucial distinction is between wanting government to work differently and accepting unlimited power as the means of making it work.
The review of Lee’s book identifies institutional rigidity as a central concern. Phar describes an argument that constitutional barriers, electoral arrangements and entrenched political competition impede renewal, while also questioning whether revolutionary replacement necessarily follows from that diagnosis – the issues is: Does that make constitutional replacement necessary?
Trump’s revolutionary language invites a distinction between changing who holds power and changing how power can be challenged.
A leader can remove established officials, reorganize agencies and overturn longstanding policies while leaving ordinary citizens with no greater capacity to influence decisions. Disruption may be extensive without producing more accountable government.
Conversely, reforms that appear administratively modest can strengthen democratic control if they improve transparency, protect political competition or make public services more accessible. This is the appropriate test for any claim of national renewal: does it expand the public’s practical ability to scrutinize, contest and replace those exercising authority?
The answer cannot rest on a leader’s assertion that he embodies the people. Citizens disagree, and political equality includes the rights of those who reject the governing program. A movement that treats opposition as inherently disloyal risks reproducing the very problem it claims to solve: authority insulated from meaningful consent.
America faces three possible paths: one possibility is reform through existing institutions. Political coalitions could connect complaints about public services, economic security and accountability to achievable legislation and changes in administrative practice. Its success would depend on visible improvements, rather than constitutional symbolism alone;
A second possibility is democratic erosion. Elections might continue while effective constraints on power weaken. In that scenario, institutional continuity would conceal a change in the substance of government. The Constitution could survive as a document while opportunities to challenge authority narrowed;
A third possibility is a prolonged crisis of legitimacy, in which political rivals increasingly reject the procedures intended to resolve disputes. Such a situation could generate pressure for a new settlement, but neither its form nor its democratic character could be assumed.
But these are only scenarios, not predictions. The clearest indicators are whether leaders accept electoral defeat, obey court rulings and protect lawful opposition.
For governments beyond the United States, the practical concern is predictability. If domestic political conflict makes commitments easier to reverse, foreign partners must assess how long agreements can endure. Businesses face a related problem when investment decisions depend on policies whose future becomes uncertain.
For Southeast Asian countries, the challenge is to preserve diplomatic flexibility and reduce exposure to abrupt changes in Washington.
The strongest insight in the debate is that democratic survival requires more than institutional longevity. A system must give people convincing reasons to keep using its procedures, including when their preferred side loses.
The historical comparison also sets limits on alarmism. Grievances do not supply a timetable, dissatisfaction does not constitute a revolutionary coalition, and constitutional difficulty does not prove that peaceful change is exhausted.
America’s unfinished revolution is the effort to make political equality effective. Whether its next transformation comes through reform or rupture will depend substantially on whether citizens can still achieve meaningful change through the institutions they already possess.
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