Six month into term, Trump a lame duck

Usually, at the six-month stage of a new presidency, the talk is still about the beginning: Hopes, ambitions, progress. With U.S. President Donald Trump, after six months, the talk is about the end: Frustration, defeat, paralysis.

Good presidents have had bad beginnings. In his early months in 1861, Abraham Lincoln endured the secession of four more states, the outbreak of the Civil War, and a string of military defeats. In 1961, John F. Kennedy endured the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, a bruising summit with Nikita Khrushchev, and the rise of the Berlin Wall.

Trump says he has appointed a deeply conservative judge to the Supreme Court, reversed much of Barack Obama’s environmental and regulatory regime, banned some Muslims from entering the country, banned transgender people from serving in the military, withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and approved the Keystone XL pipeline.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.

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 you do not fire your national security adviser, chief of staff, head of communications, 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. Trump is incapable of change.

His daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner cannot moderate his behaviour. 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.

How does it end? Impeachment and conviction remain unlikely unless independent counsel Robert Mueller can prove Trump colluded with the Russians, which may, finally, stir Republicans, or the Democrats to retake Congress next year. Resign? He is too proud. At six months, Donald 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 (though not all) 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.