Just six months in, Trump’s a lame duck in paralyzed presidency
Donald Trump has been president of the United States for just over six months. Usually, at this stage of a presidency, the talk is still about the beginning: hopes, ambitions, progress.
With Trump, after six months, the talk is about the end: frustration, defeat, paralysis. In coastal Maine — a state that gave one of its electoral votes to Trump in 2016 — the questions have the same urgency this summer as they do in Washington.
Will Trump last four years? Will he resign, be impeached and convicted or forced out for mental incompetence under the 25th amendment?
Good presidents have had bad beginnings. In his early months in 1861, Abraham Lincoln endured the secession of four more states and the outbreak of the Civil War.
In 1961, John F. Kennedy endured the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, a bruising summit with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, and the rise of the Berlin Wall.
If Trump knew history, he could say that his first half-year has not been nearly as disastrous as Lincoln’s Civil War or Kennedy’s Cold War. Trump does say that he has appointed a deeply conservative judge to the Supreme Court and that he has reversed much of Barack Obama’s environmental and regulatory regime.
He boasts that he has banned some Muslims from entering the country, banned transgender people from serving in the military, withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and approved the Keystone XL pipeline.
All true, with caveats. The transgender ban has not been approved by the military, leaving the Paris Agreement will take years and Trump’s power to reverse Obama’s policies is being challenged in court.
So, if Trump at six months is not Lincoln or Kennedy, nor is he Lyndon Johnson (the Great Society), Franklin Roosevelt (the New Deal) or Ronald Reagan (tax reform). All scored early, major legislative achievements.
Trump has none, other than a law imposing sanctions on Russia, which he had opposed. ObamaCare survives. There is no trillion-dollar infrastructure program, no approval for the wall with Mexico, no tax reform, no new trade agreements.
He boasts of a strong economy and a rising stock market. He does not mention the falling U.S. dollar.
He rhapsodizes about his presidency, but his “chaotic” White House suggests he sees the trouble. You do not fire your national security adviser, your chief of staff, your head of communications, your press secretary and the director of the FBI if you think things are fine.
The new chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, won’t make a big difference. Yes, he can sack the vulgar Anthony Scaramucci and stop the leaks. But Trump is Trump, incapable of change.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the powerless couple, cannot moderate his behaviour and are expected to return to New York. They have begged him to stop tweeting. He cannot; it’s his oxygen.
This is why his popularity is at a record low for a new president, why his White House is opera bouffe, why he cannot get Congress to pass anything substantial. His scalding feud with Jeff Sessions is an exquisite agony for both; Trump realizes now he cannot fire his attorney general, or Robert Mueller, the independent counsel, without angering conservatives and further emboldening Republicans.
How does it end? Impeachment and conviction remain unlikely unless Mueller can prove Trump colluded with the Russians, which may, finally, stir Republicans. Or, the Democrats retake Congress next year. Trump’s cabinet, filled with loyalists, will not invoke the 25th amendment.
Resign? He is too proud.
At six months, Trump is the youngest lame duck in the history of the office. Hounded by investigations, frustrated by his party, estranged from most Americans and some of his base, he is reviled but never ignored.
Trump will survive in office as a tin-horn strongman who can cause real damage in the world. At home, though, his effectiveness is over. He is a paralyzed president.