In the second part of Is America Broken?, US political analyst Michael Bedenbaugh reveals how Donald Trump did not emerge in isolation but from a political system that for more than a century has been drifting further from its founding principles

If Donald Trump reveals something about America, as argued in my previous piece, Trump hasn’t broken America — he’s exposed what it really is, the more important question is how a system — and a culture — came to produce a figure like him.

The instability now visible in the United States has not emerged suddenly but, instead, has developed over time through a series of structural changes — many of them necessary — that reshaped the system in ways the founders did not anticipate.

To understand that process, it helps to begin with a country that was once far more decentralised than it is today.

Before the Civil War, the United States functioned less as a singular nation than as a union of states, each with its own identity and authority. If my great-great-great-grandfather had been asked where he was from, he would not have said “the United States”. He would have said South Carolina. That was how the system operated.

James Madison, regarded as the Father of the Constitution, described federal powers as “few and defined”, while those of the states were “numerous and indefinite”. Power was meant to remain close to the people — diffused rather than concentrated.

That balance held until the system confronted a contradiction it could not resolve.

The Civil War forced that reckoning. It also forced the country to confront the compromises of 1787, when the Constitution was framed — compromises that had allowed the republic to form while deferring its central conflict: slavery. What had been postponed could no longer stand.

In response, the federal government moved to address what it saw as the root cause of the conflict through the first major transformation of the constitutional system. The 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment (1868) redefined citizenship and guaranteed equal protection. The 15th Amendment (1870) sought to protect voting rights.

The mechanisms created to enforce those changes did not remain confined to their original purpose. The 14th Amendment, in particular, opened a pathway for federal authority to extend into areas that had previously been governed locally. What began as a necessary intervention became a lasting structural shift.

The same pattern appeared elsewhere. Military power, once rooted in the states, was gradually standardised. The National Guard Acts of the early 20th century integrated state militias into a more unified, federally directed system. What had been local became national — in law, in force and in expectation.

As these changes accumulated, something more subtle shifted. Americans increasingly understood themselves not as citizens of states within a union, but as citizens of a single national system. Madison’s balance did not disappear, but it tilted.

A second transformation was unfolding at the same time.

For much of its early history, America possessed something Europe did not: a frontier. For nearly three centuries, when systems became restrictive or opportunity narrowed, individuals could move westward and begin again. That possibility shaped both behaviour and expectation — the belief that constraint was never permanent.

By 1890, that physical frontier had closed. The pressures of industrialisation, population growth and economic change no longer dispersed outward. They accumulated within the system itself. In response, the United States began to adopt solutions long familiar to Europe: zoning, land-use regulation and urban planning.

Those developments collided with something deeply ingrained — a national psychology shaped by space and movement.

At almost the same moment that internal expansion ended, external expansion began. The Spanish-American War of 1898 marked the United States’ emergence as a global power. In many respects, it was a continuation of the frontier by other means.

When land ran out, the impulse that had driven westward expansion did not disappear. Instead, Manifest destiny — the 19th-century belief that America was destined to expand westward — evolved.

Expansion moved outward through markets, trade and influence. A new frontier took shape, not of territory but of commerce. Corporate and national ambitions became increasingly intertwined, each reinforcing the other.

That shift required a different kind of state. Foreign policy, military coordination and global strategy demanded speed and continuity — qualities not easily produced by a system designed for deliberation and restraint. Power began to concentrate, particularly in the executive branch.

The Constitution had been designed for a nation governing itself, but now it had to serve a nation projecting power far beyond its borders.

The 20th century accelerated this transformation. Two world wars, followed by the Cold War, established the United States as a permanent global power. With that came something the founders had long feared: a standing military.

Where earlier America had relied on temporary forces and state militias, the postwar system required permanence — global bases, standing forces and continuous readiness. It was necessary, but it also reinforced centralisation.

Further changes reshaped the system from within. The 16th Amendment (1913) created a federal income tax, providing a scalable and reliable source of national revenue. The 17th Amendment (also 1913) shifted the election of senators from state legislatures to the public, weakening the institutional role of states within the federal system.

Both reforms moved authority further toward the centre.

After the Second World War, federal power expanded — managing economic stability, building infrastructure and enforcing civil rights.

By the 1970s, a different response emerged. Economic stagnation and bureaucratic inefficiency led to deregulation, shaped by a new intellectual framework. Economists associated with the Chicago School argued that markets should be judged primarily by efficiency, particularly consumer prices. Under that logic, consolidation was no longer inherently problematic. Scale became acceptable, and power followed.

Corporations grew larger and more closely tied to financial markets. Capital became less rooted in communities and more responsive to return. Local systems gave way to national and global ones.

The system became more efficient, and more distant. As that distance grew, something familiar returned. While the structure of American life became more centralised, more complex and more removed from local experience, the culture did not fully follow. Instead, Americans increasingly returned to an earlier version of themselves.

During the twentieth century — particularly in periods of strain — the imagery of the Western frontier came to dominate American culture. Westerns filled cinema screens and television, telling stories of open land, clear moral conflict and decisive individuals restoring order.

At the centre of that mythology stood figures like John Wayne — less an actor than an archetype. He represented clarity in a world growing more complex and self-reliance in a society growing more interconnected. It was a way of holding onto an identity that no longer matched reality.

In moments of uncertainty, many did not turn first to institutions or policy. They turned to figures who embodied clarity, strength and independence — the same qualities associated with the frontier myth.

In that sense, Donald Trump is not simply a political figure but an expression of a much older script — a modern version of the lone figure who promises to restore order.

What works in myth, however, does not translate easily into governance. The Western was built for a simpler world — one of open space and limited institutions. Modern systems require coordination, compromise and balance.

The system has evolved in one direction while the culture has held onto another. Over time, that divergence has produced a tension that now defines much of the instability visible in the United States.

For allies, this raises a difficult question: not simply what America intends, but whether it can sustain a consistent course. A system shaped by these tensions may struggle to act with the steadiness that global leadership requires.

The implication is more fundamental. The very history that produced American dynamism — its decentralisation, its expansion, its resistance to constraint — does not naturally support the role of a permanent hegemonic power.

If that is the case, the path forward may not lie in forcing stability onto a system that was never designed for it, but in reconsidering the nature of America’s role in the world — one that reflects its strengths without overextending its structure.

In Part III, I will examine whether the American system can be rebalanced — and what that might mean for its future at home and abroad.

Author and political thinker Michael Bedenbaugh is a respected voice in constitutional principles and American governance. Based in South Carolina, he is deeply involved in his home state’s development while contributing to national discussions on governance and civic engagement, most recently as standing as an independent candidate for Congress. He is the author of Reviving Our Republic: 95 Theses for the Future of America and the host of YouTube channel Reviving Our Republic with Mike Bedenbaugh.

READ MORE: ‘Trump hasn’t broken America — he’s exposed what it really is‘. For many people in Europe, Donald Trump represents a shocking break from the political norms the United States once claimed to champion. But in the first of a three-part series asking the question Is America Broken?, political analyst Mike Bedenbaugh says American history suggests something more complicated: the tensions revealed by Trump’s presidency have long been embedded in the American system itself.

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