Looking back on my post about this from last year, I was struck by how much of it remains spot on, but with another year's worth of examples to point out. For example, back then I wrote that, "...one year in what I see is a weak president, exhausted by the job, and becoming reactive to events, even if he does this by screaming on Twitter." Seems about right to me.
Likewise, a year ago I linked to an op-ed by political scientist Matt Glassman about Trump's weakness in office where he argued:
Trump has had a disastrous first year. His professional reputation is awful. Major figures from his own party routinely criticize his impulsive rhetoric and chaotic management, belittle his intelligence, mock his political ideas, and bemoan his lack of policy knowledge. The White House issues talking points, and high-ranking Republicans simply ignore them. Multiple Republican-led congressional committees are investigating his administration on topics ranging from ethics violations to foreign electoral collusion.
Similarly, the president’s public prestige, measured by approval ratings, is among the worst in the polling age. He entered office with record-low approval, 45 percent, and it has steadily declined into the 30s. No other president has had an approval lower than 49 percent in December of his first year; the average is 63 percent. Such numbers sap Trump’s power to leverage popularity into persuasion. They also depress party loyalists concerned about 2018 and embolden potential primary challengers for 2020.
After a year of the spreading Mueller probe, Trump's surrender over the shutdown, the Tennessee Valley Authority telling him to shove it, and a host of other example this trend has only accelerated. Indeed Matt has continued to write follow up Twitter threads about this over the last year.
So what if anything has changed? The obvious answer is the 2018 elections that led to the Democrats taking back the House and a host of successes in the Great Lakes States (well other than Ohio) that gave Trump his razor thin margin of victory in the Electoral College. This puts most of Trump's legislative agenda on hold. He can of course still do things like nominate judges to be confirmed by the Senate, one of the few successes of his administration so far, but the dreams of repealing the ACA or whatever are very much gone.
Which of course is why, as I write this, he his acting like a profoundly weak president and trying to get his "wall" build by declaring a phony emergency. In other words, a weak and flailing president has decided on a dangerous and poorly thought out course of action to get what he wants. As I put it a year ago when outlining Matt's rather grim conclusions:
Glassman pointed out these dangers in the end of his piece this way, "A president unable to effectively govern the bureaucracy or lead American foreign policy poses a distinctly nonpartisan problem for the nation." In other words Trump might try to do even stupider stuff than he's tried so far to compensate for his weakness.
At the same time the Democrats taking the House has opened a vast avenue of investigation and oversight of the Trump Administration that the Republicans under Paul Ryan had refused to pursue. Now however the flood gates are open. To cite just one example from today, Representative Jerrold Nadler has just now vowed to open an investigation into Trump's declared emergency. Meanwhile more Trump World figures are ending up caught in the Mueller Probe's net, all sorts of other avenues of potential presidential wrong doing are being found, and profound questions about Russia remain.
As John Dean might put it, there is a cancer on the presidency, except in this case there might be more than one.
But things aren't all bad for Trump, probably one of the bigger trends that I've observed over the last year is that while Trump seems increasingly destined for a failed one term presidency, the conservative movement and the institutional Republican Party seem increasingly to be aligning with Trump World. Thus you see conservative media personality and once #NeverTrump movement founder Erick Erickson proudly endorsing Trump for reelection. Indeed, the South Carolina Republican Party is openly discussing just not having a primary to do their part for the Dear Leader's renomination in 2020.
In other words, while I used to think Trump might get dumped by the GOP if things went really south it appears his grip on the party is only tightening, which is a major change over the last year in my book. Another way of putting this is the conservative movement that remains dominate in the Grand Old Party seems increasingly defined by little more than white identity politics, never ending culture war to "own the libs", and a Trump personality cult.
This is bad for the nation, but I suppose it is good for Trump.
In other words two years in and he's still the same president he appeared to be all along. What does this mean for the 2020 election? Well, I'll save that for another post.
