Trump in ’19: Is he untamed or contained?

In this dark time of year, I like to write a column cataloging my errors of analysis and prognostication from the previous 365 days. This year, I thought I’d consider what has changed in the Trump presidency since February, when I wrote a column describing our demagogic chief executive as “tamed.”

Back then the Trump tamers were his fellow Republicans who had steered his actual administration (not the Twitter version) into a semi-normal GOP presidency. Back then you could make a list of the wilder Trump campaign promises and note how few of them had been implemented. You could look at Donald Trump’s economic agenda and his foreign policy and see something inf luenced by Paul Ryan and James Mattis.

Since then the world that I described has been deconstructed. The normalizing figures have departed or been unceremoniously dumped and their provisional replacements have more of the island-of-misfit-toys feel.

Meanwhile there has been more overt Trumpishness in the administration’s policy moves — the trade warring, the end of the Iran deal, the performative cruelty and militarization at the border, the made-for-reality-tv dealmaking with North Korea, his fanboy encounter with Vladimir Putin.

And both trends, the personnel and the political, have reached a crescendo with the sudden pullout from Syria, the equally sudden departure of Mattis, the president’s war with the Federal Reserve, and now a government shutdown over the fabled border wall. When Nevertrumpers envisioned the Trump presidency, it was basically the last couple weeks of headlines extended over four long years.

Here we are, with Trump unbound, just as everyone who opposed him had feared. Except that Trump unbound is also Trump hemmed in, but opposed by a Democratic House armed with subpoena power and prepared for political war. Trump unbound is also Trump alone, his electoral mystique gone with the midterms and Senate Republicans more inclined to distance themselves.

The president is more dangerous and less so, more unconstrained and easier to balk, more liberated and more isolated. To save myself from future mea culpas, I won’t make predictions but offer scenarios for how this might shape the next year of Trump.

The first possibility, and the least likely, is a return to (relative) normalcy. In this scenario Trump reacts to indicators he understands, by containing his impulses more, finding a new set of establishment hands to guide him, making the necessary deals with House Democrats, and hunkering down to survive the Mueller investigation. There is a grind of subpoenas and scandals but Republicans stick with Trump; there is zero policy progress and a Democratic advantage but no dramatic change.

The second possibility is one Elizabeth

Drew, the chronicler of Watergate, sketched in a column Thursday — a march to impeachment and perhaps resignation, in which the president’s behavior and GOP self-interest end up in a reinforcing dynamic, and after a devastating Mueller report, key Senate Republicans finally deem the president “too great a burden to the party or too great a danger to the country.”

I find this scenario less likely than does Drew. However it coexists with a third possibility that might be termed the Trump Vindicated scenario, in which Trump unbound turns out to be no more unpopular than the tamed-bythe-establishment version, his policies prove less destabilizing than feared, and we get a 2019 in which Trump flails around but his approval ratings actually go … up?

This possibility is somewhat underrated, because some of Trump’s Trumpiest ideas are either more sensible or more popular than the establishment alternative. Even in the chaotic controversies of the last few weeks there is little evidence that swing voters will be furious with Trump for ending poorly understood military missions or picking fights with central bankers.

But for Trump to be vindicated this way, by which I mean for him to retain a low-40s approval rating and avoid impeachment even as his administration is reduced to his family, Stephen Miller and Mick Mulvaney roaming the White House, he would need his erratic governing style to avoid meeting a crisis large enough to make White House incompetence matter on a catastrophic scale.

And of course the man and the crisis might meet. So the final possibility worth considering is that we should fear most from an unbound Trump isn’t bad policy or sleaze or norm violations. It’s that with Mattis, Mcmaster and Cohn gone, Kelly going and only Mulvaney, Jared and Steve “All is well!” Mnuchin at battle stations, the equivalent of 9/11 or the financial crisis will come along and things will get very dark before there’s even time to read the full text of the

25th Amendment.

On that note, Happy New Year, America. And stay frosty out there, Mike Pence.