President Trump’s first foray into legislative politics is now ensconced in the history books as a disastrous failure. Unless he rises to the occasion and learns from his mistakes, and there’s little reason to believe he will, this likely will be a harbinger of more big failures to come.
What went wrong? For starters, he fundamentally misunderstands what his job is, and lacks the skills to perform it. Of course, that being so, much fault lies with incompetent voters who elected a rank political novice to the White House: The presidency is not an entry-level job. This was, in some ways, like hiring a truck driver to perform surgery.
What doesn’t Trump understand? Well, just about every aspect of being president.
“Presidential power is the power to persuade,” the late Harvard professor Richard Neustadt wrote in what is still considered the classic study. To do so, Neustadt wrote, presidents must be careful and anticipatory, listening and adapting while appearing collegial, not dictatorial. And they must carefully nurture and guard their public image of wisdom, probity, patience and smarts. Whether he wants to or not, Trump must learn how acquire those qualities if he is to succeed. … Trump has roared into D.C. like the leader of a motorcycle gang, and that is fine – if you think that everyone else in town is afraid of you and that your supporters are all riding Harleys. But that is the way for a new president to fail, and to set up a dynamic that will cost him for the rest of his term.
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