Trumping Trumpism.

• Author: Lueders, Bill
• Position: COMMENT - Essay

It can and probably should be said that during the first eight months of Donald Trumps presidency, much has gone well.

Trump has proven himself spectacularly inept at governing--which, from the point of view of those who don't want to see him succeed in his destructive agenda, is good news.

His plan to build a wall that Mexico will pay for is as shattered as Humpty Dumpty. His promise to replace Obamacare with "something terrific" has failed, following his epiphany that health care is complicated, which he insists "nobody knew." His desire to shower huge tax breaks on the wealthy faces an uncertain future as "tax reform."

Trump has presided over a White House teeming with turmoil and strife, stoked by his own lack of discipline. He has compiled a Cabinet of corporate raiders, climate-change deniers, and professional sycophants, flanked by his grifter family and a succession of combustible PR flacks. He has embarrassed himself repeatedly on the global stage, where he is widely seen as a buffoon, as he is in his own country.

His associates have been caught in lie after lie regarding their contacts with Russian operatives trying to tilt the 2016 election in his favor, creating billowing clouds of smoke amid his scoffing insistence on the absence of fire. His party has achieved virtually nothing in the way of legislative successes, despite having control of the Oval Office and both houses of Congress. (Chided The Daily Show, "You're the only team on the field but you're still losing") He's lashed out at his allies in the Republican Party, rewarding their obsequiousness with contempt.

Trump's presidency has been characterized by habitual dishonesty, bad judgment, proud ignorance, and preening self-interest, producing an astonishing level of incompetence. He can't even give a talk to a group of Boy Scouts without being inappropriate. It took two days of outraged reaction before he managed to find something bad to say about neo-Nazis, after one of them murdered a counterdemonstrator. He did so grudgingly, without conviction, before reconnecting with his true feelings and praising the "very fine people" who stormed Charlottesville carrying torches, brandishing weapons, and chanting "Jews will not replace us!" As commentator Eugene Robinson succinctly expressed, the President "has no moral center whatsoever."

Trump has made himself so toxic that even the heads of corporations that stand to profit from his administration's deregulatory and tax-cut...