A Presidency Headed in the Wrong Direction

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on March 24, 2017 Nobody knows where this nas­cent Don­ald Trump pres­id­ency is go­ing. New ad­min­is­tra­tions start off with an in­fin­ite num­ber of po­ten­tial tra­ject­or­ies, but this one is even more un­pre­dict­able than oth­ers. Trump could still turn out to be a suc­cess­ful pres­id­ent. As an Amer­ic­an, I cer­tainly hope he will. But today at least, it looks more like a “death by a thou­sand cuts.” Every pres­id­ent hits speed bumps; mis­takes are made and un­for­tu­nate breaks oc­cur, ab­bre­vi­at­ing hon­ey­moons, cre­at­ing head­winds, and send­ing ap­prov­al rat­ings in­to tails­pins. But a pres­id­ent who came in­to of­fice hav­ing lost the pop­u­lar vote by 2.1 per­cent­age points—with just over 2.8 mil­lion votes few­er than his rival—and with an ini­tial Gal­lup Poll job rat­ing of 45 per­cent ap­prov­al, 45 per­cent dis­ap­prov­al be­fore his first week in of­fice is com­pleted, and with things only worsen­ing since then, is a dif­fer­ent story. For the week of March 13-19, the nightly Gal­lup track­ing poll of adults na­tion­wide pegged the pres­id­ent’s ap­prov­al at 40 per­cent, with 55 per­cent dis­ap­prov­ing. And The