Trump yet to meet promise of 'winning'
WASHINGTON — 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.
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.
