It may seem obvious that a president should prioritize the interests of his country. But when Mr. Trump arrived in Washington, too many politicians seemed to view America as one of the world’s problems. Barack Obama began his presidency with a series of overseas speeches in which he described American flaws. In 2016 he visited communist Cuba where he noted that the U.S. had once sought to “exert control” over the country. Many suffering Cubans wish that we’d succeeded.

Mr. Trump doesn’t apologize for America. When it comes to foreign relations, he thinks that in many ways the U.S. has been too nice. But he also brought the nicest news to the Middle East in decades, a series of historic peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In contrast with the expansive ambitions of the Bush era and the apologetic retreats of Obama days, Mr. Trump leads an America that is ready but not eager for war and that encourages former foes to engage in peaceful commerce.

The pursuit of commercial vitality at home has defined his presidency, as it defined his unconventional candidacy. “Is Donald Trump Serious?” asked a New York Times headline in September 2015. A columnist mocked him for seeking to sharply reduce the tax on corporate profits. The real mockery was the damage the levy inflicted. When combined with state and local taxes, the tax rate on corporate income amounted to nearly 40%, the highest in the industrialized world. U.S. companies were fleeing for business-friendly countries.

In 2017 Mr. Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which reduced the top federal corporate tax to 21% from 35%. The law triggered an increase in business investment and a surge of optimism among employers, which turned out well for employees. The Trump economy was characterized by historically low unemployment rates, massive job openings, and rising wages for low- and middle-income workers. The Covid pandemic and shutdowns wrought historic economic destruction, but it’s now being followed by a historic rebound.

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Joe Biden needn’t worry too much, perhaps. Mr. Siegel, 75, has only twice backed a winning presidential candidate since he reached voting age. But while he’s no bellwether, he does make an energetic case for the incumbent.

Mr. Siegel, a professor emeritus at New York’s Cooper Union and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, says he overcame his distaste for Mr. Trump for three reasons. First, foreign policy: “Crushing ISIS, pulling us out of the Iran nuclear deal, moving our embassy to Jerusalem, and making fools of those people who insist that the Palestinian issue is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Second, by his “ability to withstand a prolonged coup attempt by the Democrats and the media,” which started with the Steele dossier: “If I’m saying what I find impressive about Trump, it’s that he’s survived. He has an extraordinary amount of arrogance, egotism, and self-confidence.”

Mr. Siegel’s third reason goes to the heart of his own political philosophy. He sees the president as a champion of “bourgeois values,” under threat from the “clerisy,” Mr. Siegel’s word for the dominant elites who “despise” those values. He regards Mr. Biden as a “captive” of this clerisy, and running mate Kamala Harris as the “embodiment of it.”

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