Trump = Paper Tiger Watch

Unfortunately, it doesn't make him any less dangerous.

I can’t help it. When it comes to the presidency, nine out of ten times I’m going to adopt the framework that Richard Neustadt gave us 65 years ago. Presidential power, Neustadt argued, was extremely limited when based on only the specific authorizations found in the Constitution and statutes – but could be formidable when a skilled president developed a strong professional reputation and when presidents were thought to be popular.

Does it still apply, under these circumstances? I don’t know. Trump is trying to govern by command, and not by the bargaining and deal-making that Neustadt called “persuasion.” For Neustadt, attempting to govern by command rarely works in the first place, while also causing damage to the president in all sorts of other ways. Reputations are harmed, allies feel betrayed, and opponents are angered. That held up pretty well during Trump’s first term, as he was frequently rolled by everyone from Congress to his own cabinet and more. But will it hold up this time?

One big clarification: Neustadt was talking about the influence of the president, specifically. Not the administration, or the party, or the billionaire brought in to do who knows what. Indeed, in his first term, a lot of those who defeated Trump were his own party in Congress or people he chose for White House or executive branch positions. So if I’m talking narrowly here about Trump being weak it may mean Elon Musk or Project 2025 authoritarian rule with the president as little more than a figurehead, rather than a return to normal Constitutional government guided by some theoretical responsible Republicans. Or it may just mean that the nation stumbles forward without effective leadership, which has another possibly severe set of costs.

Which gets us to Trump’s sorry reputation, which certainly has not been enhanced since January 20. I’m thinking primarily about foreign policy. It’s not just that he’s picked fights with (at least) Panama, Denmark, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, Egypt, Jordan, and South Africa so far, not to mention all the nations who are losing out in the massacre of USAID, the withdrawal from WHO and climate agreements, additional tariff threats against the EU and others, and all those who oppose Trump’s Gaza scheming. Any of that (and I’d say all of it) may be bad for the US, but not necessarily for Trump’s reputation.

However, that he was widely seen as backing down from his tariff threats against Mexico and Canada are another matter, showing him to be a paper tiger no one has to take very seriously. Followed by the administration backpedaling on Gaza. Indeed, as I read the coverage, those retreats have influenced the interpretation of the Colombia showdown, which originally seemed (in the US media at least!) as something of a win for Trump. Now, it seems more of a pattern in which Trump’s initial bullying can be deflected pretty easily as long as you let him claim some sort of historic victory. And it’s easy to do that because he’s poorly informed, poorly prepared, and just not very good at negotiating if his original bluster doesn’t win compliance.

The more everyone believes that about Trump, the less they’ll respect his initial threats. And that’s basically the only play he knows.

Trump has been more successful at intimidating Republican Senators into confirming his cabinet after initially defeating him on Matt Gaetz. That said...same-party Senators almost always support cabinet nominees (although they’ve never been tested with anyone like Trump’s worst choices). And it’s also not clear whether it’s Trump exerting this influence here, as opposed to that of Republican-aligned media.

One fairly good test case is coming. Trump’s election-season tax giveaways, such as making tips tax-free, certainly appear to be something he cares about but congressional Republicans don’t. So we’ll see whether he’s able to keep these provisions in whatever tax bill eventually passes.

The point is that under the way the presidency has worked up to now, Trump’s shoddy presidenting would have real consequences for him, and not good ones. What we don’t know is whether Trump has found a way to make that irrelevant.

I’m just talking reputation here, but this is also why I’ve been paying close attention to Trump’s polling numbers. Again, in normal times being unpopular would hurt his ability to keep allies on board; again, we don’t really know whether that’s the case any more (and see what Julia said here).

I realize it may sound totally goofy to speculate about this president’s weakness while also joining with those raising alarms about his overthrow of the republic. But I don’t think the two are incompatible at all. Whether he realizes it or (more likely) not, Trump doesn’t want to play by the rules at least in part because he’s apt to be a big loser under the Constitution, in which presidents need complex skills to get anything done. That he way also be a loser if he flips the board over may not have occurred to him.

The problem for the nation is that if he can successfully flip the board over, the republic will lose whether or not Trump is the one who picks up the pieces.