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You hear it all the time: President Trump hasn’t been tested, hasn’t faced a real crisis. The events of the last few weeks, however, have made me want to turn that formulation around. Trump doesn’t face crises so much as manufacture them. In a way he is the crisis, and his presidency is in danger of being defined not by any legislative or diplomatic achievement but by his handling of the multiplying and daunting obstacles he creates for himself . . . . . . There has always been a self-destructive element to Donald Trump, a tendency to undermine the foundation of his life just as it appears to be settling. Perhaps this is the restlessness of a great man, the constant drive of the lionhearted for something better, greater, richer, higher; he’d probably say so. Whatever the cause, it was foolish to imagine that this aspect of his personality would vanish upon his taking the oath of office. He has had trouble translating the style of leadership that brought him financial and campaign success to governing from the White House. His support is deep but not wide, and is attached to him personally, not to the party he leads and its business-friendly program. His desire not to employ anyone who criticized him during the campaign has hampered his ability to recruit. His assumption thatthe tools that brought him to power will suffice to enact his agenda seems unfounded: It takes more than tweets and interviews and the occasional set-piece rally to mobilize public support for a reform of Obamacare or a tax cut or an infrastructure bill or an immigration overhaul. The circus did not end on January 20; the ringmaster did not pause. He rushes from one end of the arena to the other at a whim, picking fights, commenting on the scene, introducing the lion-tamer and stuntmen, hamming it up with the clowns. “Donald Trump is an ad hoc president,” wrote Michael Warren. “The decisions he makes are by and of the moment, with his aides and staffers and supporters racing to fit them into a message and a policy" . . .. . . What works for Trump may not work for the Republican party, however. And if Trump’s presidency is to have positive and durable consequences on the border, on the courts, on the markets, on the law, he will need Congress. It’s a relationship strained by the feeling of crisis. The Democrats have calculated that their path to the majority depends on outright opposition to anything associated with Trump, and the GOP majority is relatively thin. Senators have power. They are not moved as easily as the House, which as Trump has learned is not exactly intimidated by him either. Does Trump understand that the strength of his presidency rests on the strength of the Republican Congress, that this strength depends on legislative achievement, that the Democrats will move to impeach him the minute they have the House?Weird as it sounds, the best-case scenario may be the one in which we live, where a president defined by crisis, consumed by scandal, presides over a humming economy and a relatively stable international scene, where angry tweets and sarcastic letters of termination and eyebrow-raising asides are the price of a center-right presidency that enforces immigration law, puts constitutionalists on the bench, reduces taxes and regulations, spends a little more on the military, incentivizes capital investment, and tightens labor markets to induce wage hikes. The best-case scenario is that the crisis is limited to Trump, who is defined by it, needs it.And the worst-case scenario?I leave that to your imagination.
