Art of the ‘No Deal’

So governing isn’t as easy as it looked from Trump Tower.

And “The Art of the Deal” isn’t exactly a blueprint for success on Capitol Hill.

At the Republican National Convention Donald Trump spoke about the need to repeal and replace Obamacare, insisting, “I alone can fix it.” Turns out that isn’t the way things work in a government with three separate and co-equal branches. And reforming health care can’t be done with an executive order — not that that route turned out so well for the president’s immigration ban.

So yesterday Trump went before the cameras to explain in an astonishing interpretation of events that the bill agreed to by the White House and brought to the floor by House Speaker Paul Ryan failed because “we had no votes from the Democrats.” As if that were ever going to happen.

“The losers [because in Trump World there always have to be “losers”] are [House minority leader] Nancy Pelosi and [Senate minority leader] Chuck Schumer,” he said, adding that when Obamacare “explodes, they’ll own it.”

Well, perhaps, but right now they’re dancing in the streets.

At least Ryan acknowledged the fault lines in the GOP, and that the transition from “an opposition party to a governing party” came with some “growing pains.”

“I think the president has given it his all,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer insisted earlier in the day.

What, those evening bowling matches with House members? And a luncheon or two. Then, as he outlined in his book, walking away from the table, thinking somehow the die-hard ideologues of the House Freedom Caucus would be impressed. What he should have learned was that presidential petulance gets you nothing.

“We learned a lot ... about the vote-getting process,” Trump insisted yesterday.

With the stakes even higher for tax reform, we’ll soon find out if that’s true.