After nearly a decade atop national politics, Trump has weathered sustained Democratic attacks and wrested away control of the Republican Party from an old guard that viewed him with suspicion. Now the Bushes and Cheneys who preceded him have been all but marginalized within the GOP and Trump is turning his attention to challenging the Left’s cultural power as never before.

But Trump is also rapidly spending the political capital he amassed in his nearly unprecedented comeback, unleashing Elon Musk to wage war on the federal bureaucracy, hitting major U.S. trade partners with far-reaching tariffs, engaging in high-stakes diplomacy to end the Russia-Ukraine war amid increasingly open resistance from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, uprooting racial preferences and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives throughout the government, and issuing a stream of executive orders that delight his supporters and enrage his foes.

The outcome of any one of those pitched political battles, much less all of them collectively, could shape Trump’s legacy in history and the long-term direction of the Republican Party.

If Trump is able to deliver on his promises of an economic renaissance at home and peace abroad, arguing that this was more or less the state of the country during his first term before the pandemic struck, he will at a minimum join the pantheon of great Republican presidents alongside Ronald Reagan. If instead he presides over chaos and economic calamity, Trump may end more like his intraparty rival George W. Bush, who was for eight years the unquestioned leader of the party but whose influence over it proved temporary. 

“Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush said after winning his second term in 2004. Bush wanted to grab the “third rail” of American politics by reforming Social Security and transforming Iraq into a functioning democracy aligned with the United States.

The electorate judged the Iraq War a failure and the Social Security reform initiative never got off the ground, despite Republicans holding 55 Senate seats and unified control of the federal government. What instead happened was a meltdown in the financial markets, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and Bush ending his last full year in office with a 29% job approval rating (which was actually an improvement over some previous polls).

Trump’s goals are even more ambitious: rearrange and rebalance U.S. trade and defense relationships, exert greater political control of a vast federal bureaucracy, and ramp up domestic production. Trump is working with smaller Republican congressional majorities than Bush had 20 years ago. He is facing the prospect of a government shutdown despite the GOP trifecta and critics are warning he risks even greater disruptions in federal services thanks to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.  

Like Bush in 2004, Trump’s second win felt decisive on Election Day but is less so by pre-2000 historical standards. Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote and 271 electoral votes. Trump’s Electoral College majority was bigger at 312, but his national plurality was smaller at 49.8%, with no third-party or independent candidate cracking 1 million votes.

Without taking anything away from the breadth of Trump’s victory, it would not take massive electoral shifts to disrupt or divide his coalition.

At the same time, Trump is a political survivor. He has now defeated more than 20 prominent Republicans en route to winning the GOP presidential nomination in three consecutive elections. He has beaten the Democrats in two out of three general elections. He has persevered through two impeachments, the 2020 election loss and its aftermath, multiple indictments, a state felony conviction, an civil judgment against his business empire, and numerous controversies that individually would have ended most politicians’ careers. 

THE GREAT REALIGNMENT: WHAT TRUMP’S VICTORY MEANS FOR THE GOP COALITION

On Tuesday night, Trump is going to tout his fast start: the executive orders, the substantial improvement at the southern border, investments in the U.S., and attempts at deal-making. There are reports he will return to the American renewal theme of his inaugural address.

Yet for Trump, the biggest challenges of his administration lie ahead.