President Trump gives the impression of having done everything in his first month in the White House — except think about Congress.
A couple of months ago, there were congressional Republicans reluctantly on the Trump train who would’ve welcomed such neglect. They believed Trump might be a figurehead president. He’d tweet, give speeches and wear red hats, while they set the agenda. He’d “sign our stuff,” as some put it, but otherwise leave them alone.
This turned out to be wholly mistaken. First, it underestimated Trump’s ability to establish air, sea and land dominance in the nation’s political conversation to the exclusion of all other GOP voices. Second, it failed to appreciate how necessary presidential leadership is to getting anything done on Capitol Hill.
At this rate, congressional Republicans won’t send the president anything significant to sign, let alone set the agenda.
Trump has totally eclipsed congressional Republicans with a flurry of executive orders, Twitter outrages, White House meetings and all-around melodrama that drive the political debate hour by hour. Watching cable news, you could be forgiven for occasionally forgetting that there is a co-equal branch of government called Congress, except insofar as its members are forced to react to whatever Trump is saying or doing.
Trump has created a sense of action bordering on headlong momentum through the sheer force of his frenetic personality.
Some of the motion is significant. He nominated to the Supreme Court Judge Neil Gorsuch, who will get confirmed and represent an enduring achievement. Trump’s commitment to begin enforcing the immigration laws again is a signature departure from the status quo.
But many of the Trump-initiated battles of the first month — over crowd sizes, illegal votes, fake news and the rest of it — have fed the perpetual outrage machine with pleasingly empty calories.
Normally, a new president spends his early days proposing legislation and shepherding it through Congress, then — assuming success — regaling in signing ceremonies. This isn’t part of the job that Trump has yet embraced, or shown much awareness of. But it’s not proving a boon to his party’s legislators.
Congress is naturally fractious and insular, and left to its own devices will often spin its wheels or make shortsighted decisions. The foray out of the box by House Republicans this year was going to be the elimination of Congress’ own independent-ethics office. The next step after that was going to be to repeal ObamaCare without a replacement.
Neither was a good idea, and each reflected greater concern for internal congressional dynamics than political reality. Trump, correctly, dissented from both moves.
That Congress listened — backing off on abolishing the ethics office and now moving toward simultaneously repealing and replacing ObamaCare — suggests the enormous sway Trump has. Yes, his approval ratings are historically low for a new president and distinctly middling for a president at any point.
Yet his hold on the GOP base is formidable, and his core supporters are nothing if not vociferous. Couple that with his prodigious media megaphone, and Trump could break isolated senators or members of Congress resisting his congressional agenda like a twig.
If, that is, he has such an agenda.
No one knows what his infrastructure plan is. Or what he wants on the ObamaCare replacement, which will badly divide Republicans (one reason that Republican leaders hoped to sidestep it). Or where he comes down on the contentious issue threatening the ultimate passage of tax reform, the border-adjustment tax that House Republicans support but faces stiff opposition in the Senate.
These aren’t details, but core questions that must be resolved if Trump is going to have a successful first year legislatively. It’s not time to panic. Trump could address all of this in his speech to the joint session of Congress next week. And the wheels are turning on Capitol Hill, especially in the House. But every day that passes means Republicans have lost a little momentum and risk losing the political window for major changes.
If Trump turns out simply not to have any interest in legislation, it likely won’t augur a period of strong congressional governance, but of drift and perhaps outright failure. Capitol Hill is dependent on Trump, not just to sign bills, but to lead.