Trump: Strongman or Stumblebum?

     A government of laws, not of men.
                                                    John Adams
     In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.
                                                    Adlai E. Stevenson II



      The phrase does not roll trippingly off the tongue: President Trump.  It feels rather like saying crackerbox palace.  Some images are just ungainly.
      However, The Donald is in the White House for now, and pundits are hip-deep in fodder. Assessing this administration so far amounts to assessing a soccer riot, but the word merchants are game. They do apply standards adjusted for the realities of the Trump era. His Tuesday speech to Congress is receiving good marks on grounds that he did not make a fool of himself. And the fact-checkers -- a new specialty in punditry -- are ever busy reviewing his assertions for untruth.
      Thus one of the evergreen questions about Trump.  Does he really believe the wild nonsense his administration peddles, or does he not?  Only he can truly know, of course, but all the possible answers are dismal. In any case, the blizzard of lies may blow itself out with time. The whoppers may be too preposterous to sustain. They already have have subjected aides to howling ridicule. Even a man of Trump's coarse sensibilities must realize that ridicule is dangerous to his presidency.
     Also dangerous is the issue of Russian dalliance with his campaign team. Hitherto die-hard allies in Congress are declining to ignore this one.  If it is shown that Trump's team courted an under-the-table deal with a hostile foreign government, his best available response would be that he didn't know. But ignorance would not serve him as a defense. It would go down as a confession. Hence, perhaps, his conspicuous eagerness for the issue to be dropped.
     Were it settled today, the hallmark of the Trump administration would not be autocracy but incompetence. He has signed a major immigration order he didn't understand; offered Cabinet nominees with checkered pasts; hired advisers whose performance ranged from corrupt to absurd; undercut his vice president and two Cabinet secretaries; angered or frightened allies; raised speculation of a trade war with Mexico; left hundreds of vacancies in the top operating ranks of government agencies, and engendered an atmosphere of chaos in Washington.
     Meanwhile, across the nation, his signature political tactic is failing him.  While fear-mongering has made vulnerable people afraid of his administration, he has not been able to make Americans afraid of each other. Rather, he has provoked an upsurge of solidarity in resistance across cultural, religious and demographic lines. He also has stiffened attitudes of resistance in multiple levels of government.
     Trump won nomination by exciting a fervid minority within a Republican Party whose majority failed to vote at all. He lost the general election popular vote by millions. He entered the White House without a coherent mandate.  He cannot create one with vulgar personal outbursts of hubris, falsehood and zany paranoia. Nor can he erase that record by making a single speech in which he did not appear to be unhinged.
     Congress will watch and calibrate Trump's squandering of his limited political capital. If Democrats sense that he has crippled himself, they will go for the throat. Republicans will use him opportunistically when he is willing to lean their way on pet issues. But they won't go so far as to risk their skins for a man who may be no more than a headstrong stumblebum -- and they are already feeling heat at home.
     The record so far: In just a few weeks, comprehensive opposition has been energized against the visible particulars of Trump's bad ideas,  and the would-be strongman has made a dog's breakfast of the role.  No one who respects the meaning of words would call this a hopeful start, but it could be a lesser evil.