Trump Is Squandering His Political Power

Jonathan Bernstein: “Trump is, as political scientists like myself and Matt Glassman have been saying for some time, a very weak president. Congressional Republicans basically ignore his policy ideas. He loses battles to the executive-branch bureaucracy all the time. He’s been reduced to hiring flunkies and family members so he can get his way within the White House, and even they don’t seem to listen to him half the time. For those familiar with Richard Neustadt’s study of the presidency, this is no surprise: Trump is unpopular and has a poor professional reputation, so he’s not going to have very much influence.”

“What this means is that the political system is basically working. It’s imposing serious consequences on the president for doing a bad job. Refusing to respect the rules of the office is one of the ways that presidents can harm their reputations. And Trump’s unpopular Twitter persona and generally unpresidential behavior are partly why his approval rating is some 15 percentage points below where it would be based only on the economy and other fundamentals. Presidents normally care desperately about power, and Trump is squandering his.”

“The only problem is that he doesn’t realize it. We can’t know what he really thinks, but he seems to believe he’s wildly popular despite evidence to the contrary. As for his reputation? Again, we can’t know what’s in his head. But based on his public statements, he seems to think that what he’s doing is working – and if anything isn’t working, it has nothing to do with him.”