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Editorial: A rough 100 days for President Trump

 
Published April 28, 2017

President Donald Trump's first 100 days in the White House have not eased pre-election concerns he is woefully unprepared and temperamentally unfit for office. Except for adding a new justice to the Supreme Court, he has virtually no significant accomplishments and several high-profile defeats in Congress and in the courts. He has been successful at unsettling the nation and the world with his unpredictable outbursts, impetuous use of military force and lack of coherent policy positions at home and abroad.

The 100-day evaluation is traditional for new presidents, and Trump used it as a measuring stick until he recognized the report card would not be flattering. His most reassuring performance was his first speech to Congress, when he sounded downright measured and presidential. His most responsible moment was his nomination of appellate Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, a respected conservative with solid credentials. Aside from those examples, there is little to reassure the majority of voters who did not vote for Trump in November.

Some of the president's most spectacular failures are blessings. The president's first attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act collapsed as House Republicans fought with each other. His two executive orders aimed at temporarily barring visitors from predominantly Muslim countries have been blocked by the courts. Last week, a federal judge also blocked Trump's effort to withhold federal money from so-called sanctuary cities that reasonably refuse to hold undocumented immigrants in local jails without proper paperwork from federal authorities. That has further inflamed Trump's animosity toward the courts, but the judicial branch has been a critical check on the president.

The scorecard is no better on foreign policy. The Trump administration fired missiles at a Syrian airfield after the Assad regime unleashed a lethal nerve gas attack on its own citizens, and the United States dropped the largest nonnuclear bomb in Afghanistan. As practical as those decisions may have been, they do not reflect a clear foreign policy. Meanwhile, Trump has sent mixed messages about his approaches to Russia and China, and he has dangerously escalated tensions with North Korea.

If there is a silver lining, Trump has learned some lessons and demonstrated he can easily shift positions. He acknowledged that health care policy is more complicated than he expected. He conceded that China does not manipulate its currency and that NATO is not obsolete, as he insisted during his campaign. He no longer wants to pull out of the nuclear agreement with Iran or the North American Free Trade Agreement. He still wants Mexico to pay for a border wall, yet it is obvious even to Trump that U.S. taxpayers would have to put up the front money to build it.

But the notion that Trump would change his personal approach when he took office proved to be a false hope. He still tweets at random without regard to the consequences. He has not created enough distance between himself and the family businesses, but he has treated the White House as another subsidiary by bringing in his daughter and son-in-law. With no core values, Trump remains a dealmaker more interested in winning than in the details of public policy. And he could use a win.

Trump has a lower national approval rating than any of his modern predecessors had at this point in a young administration. Voters who wanted change and backed Trump have certainly gotten it in tone, if not yet in much substance. Whether that changes is as unpredictable as the president himself.