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Former congressman Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration for attorney general prompted much debate about whether President-elect <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> had overreached and underestimated the spine of Senate Republicans. It is not unusual for presidents to feel invincible and claim broad mandates after victory. However, voters choose the president for an array of reasons, so a mandate is a political fiction. In Trump’s case, many picked him specifically because they disbelieved his grandiose promises.

Instead of debating whether Trump has a broad mandate (and if so, for which policies), we can learn more from examining how one president overstepped his mandate and sacrificed what was left of his domestic agenda. Although many Democrats like to point to Trump’s failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act in his first term, a more interesting comparison is President George W. Bush’s doomed Social Security plan after his reelection in 2004.

Terrorism and the economy, with the Iraq War slightly behind, were the leading issues that year, <a href="https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/2004PresidentialElection" target=_blank>according to polls</a>. Bush emphasized his strong leadership in the fight against terrorism while painting his opponent, John F. Kerry, as a weak flip-flopper. However, as the <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/gwbush/campaigns-and-elections" target=_blank>Miller Center</a> at the University of Virginia pointed out, he also managed to slip in pledges “to modernize Social Security, reform the immigration system, and overhaul the tax code, while continuing No Child Left Behind and the faith-based initiative [and] implementing Medicare reform.”

After winning reelection, Bush seized upon Social Security reform (partial privatization) as his major domestic initiative. “By mid-January of 2005, the White House had launched a huge initiative … to mobilize public opinion and build public support for Social Security reform,” Brookings Institution scholar <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-the-2005-social-security-initiative-failed-and-what-it-means-for-the-future/" target=_blank>William Galston wrote</a>. Bush made it a centerpiece of his 2005 State of the Union address and then spent months traveling around the country to push it. However, neither Congress nor the public were interested. Despite a huge Senate majority (55-44) and a smaller House one, the effort stalled. Even with a popular vote margin and a Senate advantage far greater than Trump’s, Bush could not muscle through conservative ideologues’ pet project. He lost precious time, delayed getting to immigration reform, and wound up being consumed by Hurricane Katrina and the deteriorating state of the Iraq War.

Though it is true that Bush’s effort departed from the main thrust of his campaign, the episode illustrates how presidents overestimate the public’s willingness to indulge dramatic policy shifts. Now, unlike Bush’s Social Security lark, Trump has certainly made a huge deal about mass deportation.

That said, voters cast their ballots in 2024 for diverse reasons, according to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls" target=_blank>exit polls</a> showing which issue was most important to them: foreign policy (4 percent), <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/abortion/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">abortion</a> (14 percent), the economy (32 percent), immigration (11 percent) and democracy (34 percent).

What can Trump claim as his mandate? Tariffs that don’t hit consumers (an impossibility)? Certainly, he does not feel obliged to respond to the 34 percent concerned about democracy — not when retribution against his political enemies is the order of the day. (Incidentally, after promising voters he would not cut entitlements, <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/trump-and-allies-plot-cuts-to-medicaid-food-stamps-to-fund-tax-cuts-for-wealthy/" target=_blank>any plan</a> to <a href="https://fortune.com/well/article/dr-oz-trump-medicare-medicaid-changes/" target=_blank>do so</a> would probably unleash a firestorm.)

Even if many voters wanted a tougher immigration stance, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/republicans-try-tone-trumps-mass-deportation-threats-rcna179326" target=_blank>many Republicans</a>, including Hispanics, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79zxjj0j55o" target=_blank>insist</a> he <a href="https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/10/25/mass-deportation-is-actually-very-unpopular" target=_blank>doesn’t mean</a> to round up hardworking people like them. Wanting a tougher immigration approach is a far cry from consenting to drag off law-abiding people, separate families and put employers out of business due to lack of workers. We should not conclude that Americans endorsed the most extreme and inhumane deportation plan imaginable.

The scope of Trump’s plan will be key. Republicans’ insistence that he will target 3 million to 4 million criminals <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/20/johnson-says-there-are-3-4-million-dangerous-migrants-not-even-close/" target=_blank>vastly overstates</a> that pool of people. If Trump goes beyond the actual population of deportable criminals (roughly 600,000) to round up Dreamers or revoke the temporary status of legal refugees, the reaction may be fierce. Even before the rollout of a specific plan, <a href="https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/11/20/congress/rand-paul-trump-immigration-deportations-00190666" target=_blank>Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky)</a> has slammed Trump’s pledge to deploy the military.

In addition to Congress and the public, Trump’s billionaire backers and the business community may trip him up. They have <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2024/11/17/how-a-mass-deportation-of-immigrants-could-impact-businesses/" target=_blank>already begun to get cold feet</a> as they consider the plan’s consequences. (The construction sector employs about 1.5 million undocumented workers — 13 percent of its workforce — so mass deportation would further push up home prices, already exacerbated by labor shortages, according to reporting by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/30/trump-deportation-plan-economic-disaster" target=_blank>Guardian</a>.) One economist told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/business/economy/trump-immigration-inflation-prices.html" target=_blank>New York Times</a> that the “gargantuan shock [of mass deportation] will cost trillions of dollars in economic growth, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs held by U.S. natives.”

Likewise, the deportation plan has triggered widespread <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4c6e379b-d4e6-4514-a37b-d820be59f51d" target=_blank>“panic” among farmers</a> who will lose pickers. Red state House and Senate members who represent them will be alarmed. If voters complain about food prices now, imagine their reaction when a farm labor shortage sends them skyrocketing.

No matter what mandate Trump thinks he has, the plan’s scope, the resulting visual images, the public reaction and the impact on the economy will determine whether he succeeds. In Trump’s first term, after an election also focused on his immigration proposals, the child separation policy proved disastrous and was one of the few initiatives Trump was forced to reverse.

Reality, voters’ version of buyer’s remorse and lawmakers’ political self-interest can once again force Trump to retreat. As Galston told me via email, “He has led his supporters to believe that ‘drill, baby, drill’ will make prices go down across the board, that tariffs will force manufacturing jobs to return to the U.S. without increasing inflation, that opening up federal lands for construction will solve the housing crisis, and that illegal immigrants can be removed with means that Americans are prepared to support (unlike family separation, against which both parties revolted).”

In short, an unrealistic deportation plan as absurd as Trump’s intention to nominate Gaetz might similarly collapse. It happened once before. And Trump never did get Mexico to pay for the wall.

University of California at Berkeley, BA in history

University of California at Berkeley, JD

Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion for The Washington Post. She is the author of “Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump” and is host of the podcast Jen Rubin's "Green Room."

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