In his first month
in office, Trump has found the vast government machine can't be reset
at a president's whim with the same ease that an executive can manage a
business. Rival power centers in the courts, the bureaucracy and
Congress can emerge as a threat at any point.
In just the past week, political pressure forced Trump to
fire his national security adviser and watch one of his
Cabinet nominees withdraw from
consideration. Meanwhile, Trump is facing persistent -- and growing --
questions about his campaign's ties to Russia as some fellow Republicans
on Capitol Hill become more vocal about their concerns. And legislative
victories are hard to come by as congressional Republicans struggle to
unify behind policy measures and Democrats form a generally solid bloc
of opposition.
The transition from
candidate to president is tough for virtually every young
administration. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, for instance, had rocky
opening weeks as their campaign idealism encountered Washington reality.
But Trump's first month in office is especially noteworthy since so
much of his trouble stems from self-inflicted wounds ranging from the
rushed rollout of his travel ban to his frequent Twitter distractions.
The
sense of turmoil surrounding the new administration could undermine a
central tenet of Trump's pitch to voters -- that he is a non-politician
uniquely positioned to make a deal and get Washington working again.
"Nobody
knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,"
Trump said last summer when he accepted the GOP nomination in Cleveland.
"I have seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens."
Checks on presidential power
He
started out in Washington by keeping faith with those beliefs,
unleashing a dizzying sequence of executive orders that revealed a
determination to wield firm executive power. But the backlash was swift
as the checks on presidential power soon activated.
Trump quickly came up against the judiciary when a
federal court halted his
controversial executive order banning immigration from seven
majority-Muslim countries. Despite GOP majorities in Congress, Trump
isn't making much progress on his legislative agenda.
Opposition is growing in
the Senate to paying for his border wall now that Mexico has refused to
fund it, CNN's Manu Raju has reported. Democrats infuriated the
President by clogging up confirmation of Cabinet nominees.
"That's
all they're doing is delaying. And you look at (Senate Democratic
leader) Chuck Schumer and the mess that he's got over there, and they
have nothing going. The only thing they can do is delay," Trump said
during an extraordinary White House press conference last week.
Congress is not alone in provoking Trump's ire.
A
leaky federal government and intelligence community with which he is
locked in a perpetual state of war are also resisting Trump's attempts
to exert control over his administration. White House Chief of Staff
Reince Priebus denied Sunday there was dysfunction in the President's
inner circle.
"The truth is that we
don't have problems in the West Wing," Priebus said on NBC's "Meet the
Press." "The amount of drama and spin that you read about mostly in the
Washington daily gossip rags is unbelievable stuff. And it just isn't
true."
Getting out of Washington
Amid
the negative headlines, Trump is getting out of Washington and aiming
to speak directly to the American people. He delivered a speech Friday
touting his jobs agenda at a Boeing factory in South Carolina and a
campaign-style rally over the weekend in Florida.
He's slated to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress later
this month that will give him one of the strongest venues available to
project presidential strength.
But
Trump's early stumbles have overshadowed some of areas where he could
otherwise claim success. Well-choreographed visits from the leaders of
Britain, Israel, Canada and Japan followed a host of executive orders
that began to dismantle Obamacare and federal regulations and open the
way for cross-continental pipelines, as well as Trump's withdrawal from
the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. His
unveiling of Neil Gorsuch as his nominee for the open Supreme Court seat was one of the most flawless moments of his presidency.
Still,
controversy can develop in unexpected directions in Washington and
exhaust a White House staff in a way that can be detrimental to a
presidency. Trump is not the first President to come into power with a
team that doesn't seem to quite measure up to Washington's demands.
"I
think every administration goes through that," Trent Lott, a former
Republican Senate Majority leader, said in an interview. "I was here
through Carter, when a bunch of Georgians who thought they were the
smartest guys in town arrived and they were going to fix everything."
"When
(Ronald) Reagan came to town, he brought a bunch of Californians,
idealistic ideologues who found out pretty quick that they needed help
from Jim Baker," Lott said.
Through
trial and error, Clinton and Reagan learned to work the inside game in
Washington to advance what were sometimes seen as outsider political
aims. But Trump's attempts to fight back against the restrictions all
presidents face could be complicated by another factor -- his
idiosyncratic character and political style -- which were an undoubted
asset when he reinvented the rules of the presidential campaign but have
not yet proven effective in governing.
His
constant feuds with enemies, sometimes on Twitter, cast doubt on his
temperament, as do his unpredictable eruptions and struggles to stop
gloating about his election win. His press conference and weekend
rallies helped keep his loyal supporters happy and boosted his own
morale. But it seems unlikely that he meaningfully advanced his
political agenda.
GOP majorities on
Capitol Hill should ensure that big ticket issues like tax cuts and
Wall Street reform get done and that Trump can bill them as the kind of
"wins" he promised would dazzle Washington. And if any politician can
get away with such polarizing tactics, it's Trump.
"The
President's campaign essentially changed the laws of physics last
year," said Bill Lacy, director of the Dole Institute of Politics at the
University of Kansas.
"All the
so-called experts have been wrong consistently," Lacy said, adding that
Trump had changed the way presidents are viewed along with the usual
codes of behavior in the White House and Washington. "Traditionally, a
President couldn't do that and get away with it. With this president,
that remains to be seen."
