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babylonsister

(171,051 posts) Sat Apr 1, 2017, 08:27 PM Apr 2017

President Trump Has Tried Nothing and Hes All Out of Ideas

March 31, 2017 11:40 a.m.
President Trump Has Tried Nothing and He’s All Out of Ideas
By Eric Levitz

Donald Trump is sick of losing. More than 70 days into his tenure, the president has yet to autograph a major piece of legislation. He lost his pseudo–Muslim ban to the courts, Obamacare repeal to the House GOP, and his national security adviser to a scandal that casts a shadow over his entire administration. Now, his party is struggling just to keep the government open through the end of next month, and his approval rating is dipping lower than Obama’s ever did.

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The idea that the Trump administration is akin to an agile software start-up is among this White House’s most laughable delusions (which is saying quite a bit). You can shuffle the pawns all you want, but the king is all but immovable, as the very same Axios piece makes clear:

President Trump brought his chaos-and-loyalty theory of management into the White House, relying on competing factions, balanced by trusted family members, with himself perched atop as the gut-instinct decider. He now realizes this approach has flopped, and feels baffled and paralyzed by how to fix it, numerous friends and advisers tell us.

Trump recognizes that his patented management strategy of defaming his enemies, pitting his underlings against one another in a perpetual game of Last Sycophant Standing, and leveraging his celebrity to con the gullible just isn’t a recipe for success on Capitol Hill.

But the president is also a 70-year-old billionaire who has been far too rich — for far too long — to know how to adjust his habits to other people’s needs.

Does Trump even like being President? Take a look at the evidence.

Trump has done (virtually) everything in his power to prevent his presidency from disrupting his lifestyle. After promising that his family members would have no role in his administration, he has brought his daughter and son-in-law into the West Wing. After arguing that presidents should spend all their time in the White House, working continuously, Trump has retreated to his Florida resort nearly every weekend, at great taxpayer expense. After a campaign centered on his opponent’s irresponsible flouting of IT security, it took two months for his staffers to pry his unsecured Android phone from his cold, tiny hands.

Trump’s aversion to adaptation in the personal realm carries over into the political one. The president’s resolute refusal to educate himself on policy matters left him reliant on the good judgment of Paul Ryan, a man whose political vision Trump won the White House by decrying. Instead of trying to consolidate his gains among working-class swing voters — and divide the congressional Democrats against themselves — by opening his presidency with a push on infrastructure, he let himself be dragged into a losing battle against an entitlement program he spent his campaign vowing to protect.

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/president-trump-has-tried-nothing-and-hes-all-out-of-ideas.html