Trump presidency is perilously adrift
Outsider dealmaker faltering
WASHINGTON, March 25, (AP): Just two months in, Donald Trump’s presidency is perilously adrift.
His first major foray into legislating imploded Friday when House Republicans abandoned a White House-backed health care bill, resisting days of cajoling and arm-twisting from Trump himself. Aides who had confidently touted Trump as the deal’s “closer” were left bemoaning the limits of the presidency.
“At the end of the day, you can’t force somebody to do something,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.
On its own, the health care bill’s collapse was a stunning rejection of a new president by his own party. And for Trump, the defeat comes with an especially strong sting. The president who campaigned by promising “so much winning,” has so far been beset by a steady parade of the opposite. With each setback and sidetrack, comes more concern about whether Trump, the outsider turned president, is capable of governing.
“You can’t just come in and steamroll everybody,” said Bruce Miroff, a professor of American politics and the presidency at the State University of New York at Albany. “Most people have a modest understanding of how complicated the presidency is. They think leadership is giving orders and being bold. But the federal government is much more complicated, above all because the Constitution set it up that way.”
The ambitious agenda Trump vowed to quickly muscle through has now been blocked by both Congress and the courts. Whole weeks of his presidency have been consumed by crises that are often self-inflicted, including his explosive and unverified claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped his New York skyscraper. Earlier this week, the FBI director confirmed that Trump’s campaign is being investigated for possible coordination with Russia during the election, an investigation that could hang over the White House for years.
Trump’s advisers say some of the churn is to be expected from a president with an unconventional style and little regard for Washington convention. They counter the notion of a White House in crisis by pointing to Trump’s well-received nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. They appeal for patience, noting that the administration is indeed in its early days.
Missteps
But early missteps can be difficult to overcome, particularly for a president like Trump, who took office with historically low favorability ratings and has continued to lose support since his inauguration. According to Friday’s Gallup daily tracking poll, 54 percent of Americans disapprove of his performance on the job.
James Thurber, who founded the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, blamed Trump for an apparent “misunderstanding or ignorance of how the separation of powers works” that is hurting him at a time “where he should have much more success.”
Trump is hardly the first president to stumble through his early days in arguably one of the hardest jobs in the world. Bill Clinton’s presidency got off to a chaotic start and was quickly shrouded by an ethics controversy involving the firing of employees at the White House travel office. Jimmy Carter, another Washington outsider, clashed with his own party. Richard Nixon struggled to unite a deeply divided nation.
“There have been moments like this in history in terms of where the country is, in terms of the president kind of having a chaotic couple of months,” said David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University. Still, he said Trump’s challenges are exacerbated by his “complete inexperience in the political arena, his personality and style.”
Trump campaigned as an outsider — celebrating his lack of political experience by selling himself as a dealmaker willing to buck Republican orthodoxy and his own party’s leadership. He alone would reshape Washington.
He’s tried governing the same way. His actions are a blitz. He rarely consults old Washington hands. And he hangs the threat of retribution over anyone who challenges him. And now he and his party have been dealt a stinging defeat on a signature campaign promise, a defeat that further weakens a president whose approval rating has hovered under 40 percent and humiliates Republicans who have pledged for seven long years to undo President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Trump’s haphazard approach on Friday to the health care bill — first demanding a House vote despite an uncertain result, then suddenly suggesting he’d support a future bipartisan solution — underscored Trump’s political identity: He is an independent, seemingly uninterested in leading a political party or unifying the federal government. The failed vote — despite Republican control of the White House and both houses of Congress — highlighted severe cracks within the GOP that Trump’s presidency won’t easily mend.
Reform
Trump now wants to turn to tax reform, an ambitious, complicated plan at the center of his agenda, and he does so wounded by the health care collapse as well as the uncertain legal status of his travel ban and an ongoing federal investigation into possible contacts and coordination between his campaign aides and Russian officials.
The loss exposed a limit to Trump’s go-it-alone style, one forged over decades in the business world and seemingly proven effective by his improbable win. The novice campaigner used the sheer force of his celebrity and personality to draw loyal supporters and frequently bend the Republican Party to his whims.
He defied the party leadership repeatedly, skipped a debate, refused to sign a loyalty pledge and turned the scathing power of his Twitter account on fellow Republicans even after he clinched the nomination and the party pined for unity.
“This is who he is. He’s a dealmaker. He knows how to do deals and there’s no deal here,” said Ed Cox, chairman of New York state’s Republican party, who has known Trump for decades, sometimes as friend, sometimes as foe. “He always wants to move on to the next thing, even going it alone.”
But experts say that maverick style has hurt his ability to govern effectively.