A vacant presidency
Trump could is weakest president in modern times
Even before his stubbornly inadequate response to this month’s racist violence in Charlottesville, Donald Trump was proving himself to be the weakest American president of modern times and, arguably, ever. "Weak” is a taunt Mr. Trump loves to toss at critics in his compulsive tweeting.
But it is a witheringly accurate description of his first seven months as an ineffective chief executive of the United States government.
So far, he has achieved almost nothing, largely because he seems not to understand or care about a lot of things.
These things include the nature and limits of the president’s power, how to deal with Congress, the role of courts and the press, details of legislation and how to assemble a competent, credible team of White House officials and communicators.
As a result, the Trump White House has been in a constant state of war with the courts, the Congress, the press, its own party and itself.
Judges have quashed executive orders. Legislators have refused to be bullied into passing a half-baked health insurance repeal. Generals aren’t listening to Trump tweets banning gays and lesbians from the military. Senior Republicans are rebelling against Trump abuse. The White House is a bedlam of infighting, leaks, contradictory statements and sudden firings.
A few retired generals are trying to impose some discipline and reason on this juvenile chaos, but it’s a Vietnam-like task when the president keeps creating fresh quagmires.
The Charlottesville violence has further exposed the weakness of the chaos presidency. An aggressive mob of Klansmen, neo-Nazis and white supremacists descended on the Virginia town last weekend, leading to fights with anti-racist demonstrators and lighting the fuse that resulted in one neo-Nazi being charged for smashing a car into a peaceful crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others.
In first condemning the violence Mr. Trump blamed “many sides”, refused to explicitly criticize the Klan, Nazis and racists for 48 hours and then went back to apportioning blame to both sides. That won praise from KKK and fascist leaders, but has rightly shocked Americans of all political stripes and has led corporate leaders to quit his presidential advisory councils en masse.
A president who allows his words and silences to embolden racists and neo-Nazis is not just weak. He has morally abdicated the presidency.
Donald Trump may continue to physically occupy the White House. But he is not a president and he appears incapable of changing that.
And Americans are paying a heavy, ugly price for that empty and diminished Oval Office.