The Trump presidency has taken on a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” quality. Pushing through a vast remake of the federal government and disruption of the global trade system is clearly something President Trump has wanted for a long time and now feels he has a mandate to pursue after the November election. But his poll numbers on the economy have begun to sag and his job approval ratings are upside-down. As a pollster who assesses political performance and policy impact, I keep coming back to this: What exactly did Americans elect Mr. Trump to do?

That question reflects a central mystery of this presidency so far: Are Mr. Trump’s actions in step with what voters want from him, or is he going rogue on America, doing his own thing, polls be damned? Did people want him to remake the government and disrupt the global financial order, or did they just want cheaper groceries?

How people see and judge that will help determine his ultimate success or failure in office as well as the chances of the Republican Party securing its policy agenda in the years to come.

Mr. Trump seems to view his job differently than many voters, which is one reason for his falling poll numbers. He strongly believes that he was elected to return to Washington as a disrupter, this time with significantly more experience and effectiveness than in his first term. He sees himself as bringing strength back to the Oval Office after four years of a weak Joe Biden. In this, he believes he has the latitude to go big and bold, to create some turbulence and cause some prices to rise in the short term as he asserts himself in Washington and around the globe. All of this, Mr. Trump says, is in hopes of establishing a stronger American position over the long term.

But as I dug into Mr. Trump’s polling data, it looked increasingly that American voters’ mandate to the president was more narrow than he sees it. After a prolonged period of inflation, with a Biden administration that told Americans not to believe their lying wallets, voters clearly wanted the next president to stabilize the economy and make their cost of living more manageable.

Mr. Trump and his cabinet officials have warned Americans that we are doing things “the hard way” and that access to “cheap goods” is not a priority. In doing so, they are asking the country to absorb short-term pain for the prospect of long-term gain.

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