Trump Isn’t Invulnerable

Jonathan Bernstein: “Trump spent his entire first term as an unpopular president, despite something fairly close to peace and prosperity until his final year. He was then defeated. While in office, he got his way on some things, but he was frequently defeated in Congress, by the bureaucracy, and by the courts. For example, Trump was tied with Bill Clinton for the most rejected or withdrawn cabinet-level nominations, even though Clinton had eight years and a Republican majority for six of those while Trump had four years with his party in the Senate majority.”

“The mistake people are making is treating damage to a president as an all-or-nothing proposition, so that as long as the president survives in office. I blame Richard Nixon for the incorrect belief that goes back (as far as I can tell) to the Iran-Contra scandal, which broke in November 1986 and eventually sort of fizzled out, despite serious revelations of wrong-doing. But while Reagan (unlike Nixon) survived, it’s wrong to believe that it didn’t harm him. His approval rating dropped some 15 percentage points and only recovered very slowly. He lost his chief of staff and other administration officials, and lost several key fights over the next year, most obviously by having a Supreme Court nomination beaten on the Senate floor.”

“If there’s one thing that Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power teaches, it’s that the influence of the Oval Office is limited – and that it grows or shrinks depending on how any particular president handles the job.”