It could be worse
The first 100 days of Trump’s presidency were not successful, but there are bright spots
The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency have not been exactly what you could call successful, by the standards that one would normally use to judge such things. No significant legislation has passed Congress, and indeed it has become painfully clear that this White House has no real sense of what legislation it would even like to pass. There has been no political honeymoon: For this stage of an administration, Mr. Trump is the most unpopular president of modern times. Important areas of the executive branch are barely staffed or functioning, the White House is in a state of lowgrade civil war, and the bungling, pratfalls, conflicts of interest, weak attempts at propaganda and brazen lying are all, well, not normal, as the self-styled “resistance” likes to say.
But it could be worse. Really, it could. Let me count the ways.
First, the economy is still OK, still creating jobs and growing. Before Mr. Trump’s election there were good reasons — in market data, not just media conventional wisdom — to expect that his ascent to the presidency would drag the stock market downward, and tug the job market down with it. The fact that this hasn’t happened, that instead the Obama-era expansion has continued, means that the Trump administration has thus far cleared one (admittedly low) bar, and achieved a level of semi-competence that persuades investors to invest and consumers to keep spending and businesses to hire. That’s a good thing, it was not guaranteed, and we should hope it lasts.
Second, the administration has failed to push through Paul Ryan’s Obamacare replacement. Sure, this isn’t good news for Mr. Trump on the usual presidential metrics, where big legislation counts as promises kept, points on the board, the building blocks of a legacy and so forth. But it is good news for the country, because the proposed Obamacare replacement was so flawed that its passage would have achieved little or nothing for the common good.
And it’s quite possible to imagine that pattern repeating itself going forward: Good right-of-center legislation under Mr. Trump may be a pipe dream, but better no legislation at all than bad legislation, and with a Republican Party that’s both internally divided and incompetent at policymaking, Mr. Trump’s inability to close the deal could save the country from a great many lousy bills.
Third, Mr. Trump’s personnel choices have improved. For a time it looked as if his administration would have some reasonably competent people in its cabinet but that the White House itself, the zone of crucial decision-making, would be reserved for cranks and cronies. But since the swift departure of Michael Flynn from the National Security Council, Mr. Trump’s immediate circle of advisers has, well, normalized to a certain extent.
As economic advisers go, Gary Cohn and Kevin Hassett are not likely to forge the sort of populist-conservative synthesis that would make the Trump experiment a roaring success. But if a financial crisis strikes tomorrow, better to have them with Mr. Trump’s ear than some of the fools and opportunists who were attached to his campaign.
Similarly, six months ago it was possible to imagine Mr. Trump turning to Mr. Flynn, Steve Bannon and Secretary of Defense Newt Gingrich for counsel when a foreign policy crisis hit. There are perils to the military-dominated apparatus he has gravitated toward since then — but still, we should be grateful that James Mattis and H.R. McMaster will be giving that advice instead.
Fourth, Mr. Trump does have two real achievements to his credit, two campaign promises kept. One is the successful nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The other — a more provisional win, but still a striking one — is the rapid falloff of illegal crossings on the southern border, seemingly driven more by the mere threat of tougher enforcement and increased deportations than by any dramatic policy shift.
This drop-off is a good thing, period, because it means that fewer people are undertaking a dangerous journey that falls afoul of U.S. law, and because it suggests that America might actually be able to establish more control over migration than many of our supposed wise men have long claimed. But it’s a particularly good thing given Mr. Trump’s tendency to demagogue the issue: If illegal immigration weren’t declining, he would face increasing pressure to turn evermore draconian, which would set off a dangerous cycle of protest and backlash in an already polarized environment.
Which leads me to the fifth piece of good news: As fraught and strange as our political moment may be, thus far the anti-Trump side has not yet fallen into the kind of madness that swept through our politics in the 1960s and 1970s.
Yes, there is a lot of Trump-induced panic on the left and in the media, and yes, the environment around some college campuses is hysterical and illiberal, with the spasms of violence at Berkeley and Middlebury particularly ugly case studies. But given the fears that Mr. Trump’s election stoked, the threads of violence that ran through the campaign season and the attacks on his legitimacy that followed, it was possible to imagine something much more insurrectionary and destructive arising to oppose him.
So far that hasn’t happened; so far the biggest protests have been restrained, and pro-Trump counterprotest mostly absent; so far we still have the grace of relative civil peace. That, too, is something to be thankful for.
Of course any thanksgiving is highly provisional. One hundred days is nothing, and the Trump White House has not yet faced the kind of challenge, domestic or foreign, in which a thoughtless response from the president could lead to spiraling disaster.
If we end up in a fullscale war in the Korean Peninsula on Day 117 of this administration, the fact that the stock market rose and the cities didn’t burn during Mr. Trump’s first weeks in office will not look like that much of an achievement.
But if these first months set the pattern for the Trump presidency — some success curbing illegal immigration, a decent-enough economy and stock market, a Carter-esque inability to pass major legislation and an opposition that’s unhinged on Twitter but not in days-of-rage territory — well, given the possible scenarios in play, I’ll take it, and be grateful that my worst fears didn’t come to pass.
Only about 1,360 days to go.