100 days of noise from Donald Trump

It was fitting that President Trump closed out his first 100 days in another bumbling attack on Obamacare, trying and failing to jam a bill through the House this week that had no chance of passing the Senate, just to create the illusion of action.

The sorry saga of health care under this president bears all the Trumpian hallmarks that Americans are learning to expect: the dishonest campaign promise (“health care for everyone”); the clownish attempts to write a bill; the miniaturization of Paul Ryan (remember that guy?); the rivalrous White House confederation of Bannonite anarchists and glittering cosmopolites; the dearth of nonwhites and nonmales at the table; the absence of any strategy and of any vision beyond “winning.”

All that’s needed to complete the Trump pattern is the insultingly obvious effort by the president’s kin to cash in. A health care summit meeting at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, maybe.

If only this administration could simply play as comedy, as pratfalls and double takes. Unfortunately, the saga of health care also reveals the capacity of Mr Trump to do harm, through incompetence and indifference, if not effective action. Rather than build on the foundation of the Affordable Care Act, and take credit for a strengthened system, Mr Trump is causing the prospect of nationally affordable care to recede through malign neglect.

Governing, so far, has turned out to be more than Mr Trump can manage. He didn’t know very much coming into the job of president, including how little he knew, and the extent of his own ignorance has come as a continual surprise to him. “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated,” he famously marvelled the first time he was preparing to fail at passing legislation. He expressed the same wonder of discovery at the complexity of North Korea.

In private life, Mr Trump was accustomed to negotiations based on the simple reality that everyone involved shared the same objective: profit. He has struggled to bargain with legislators, who want to satisfy many constituencies and have conflicting notions of the national interest. In that sense, legislative deals require far more art than commercial ones, and for that reason, Mr Trump has found himself in over his head. This week, after congressional Democrats called his bluff, threatening a government shutdown rather than acceding to his bluster, he slunk away from a demand that Congress start paying for his wasteful border wall — you know, the one Mexico has refused to pay for.

“I thought it would be easier,” Mr Trump admitted about his job to Reuters this week.

Does he show any signs of learning on the job? In fact, yes. He has backed off dangerous pledges like tearing up the Iran nuclear deal and accusing China of manipulating its currency. He replaced his first national security adviser — the cartoonish Michael Flynn, who turned out to have been on not only the Russian payroll but also the Turkish one — with the formidable Lt Gen H R McMaster.

But since his risible assertion of “American carnage” in the streets during his Inaugural Address, Mr Trump has continually fomented fear and bullied vulnerable groups, particularly unauthorised immigrants. He has shown no interest in reaching beyond the minority of Americans who elected him, one reason his approval ratings are the lowest on record for a president at this point in his term.

And what of his central campaign pledge, to make America great again, presumably by creating vast numbers of jobs for those who helped elect him? This may prove the emptiest of his promises. The giant infrastructure program, which would indeed yield jobs, is nowhere to be seen. In its place are proposed tax cuts to benefit mainly the wealthy and photo-op executive orders to deregulate energy businesses that, even if sustained by the courts — a long shot — will merely enrich the likes of the Koch brothers.

Yet if his ratings are dismal, the other measure Mr Trump has always lived by — his revenue — is booming, as he uses the presidency to promote his properties. His determination to leverage his office to expand his commercial empire is the only objective to which Americans, after 100 days, can be confident this president will stay true.

©2017 The New York Times News Service