Effective execution of the president's agenda requires a federal government ready, willing, and able to carry it out. This is particularly pronounced in the realm of foreign policy where complicated issues require multiple actors coordinating resources and deconflicting authorities. As Stephen Sestanovich has noted, "to work, they depend on the resources, technical expertise, coordinated implementation, and support of the national-security bureaucracy".[^52]
While premature to conclude that the president has won or lost the debate on America's role in the world — including its purpose, coherence, and prospects — Trump, according to Sestanovich, "is certainly losing control of it" because of his inability, or unwillingness, to adequately staff the government.[^53] While the pace of nominations has picked up, both the number of nominations and Senate confirmations of presidential appointments lags significantly behind his predecessors.[^54] It took nearly a year to nominate and confirm the Pentagon and State's top officials for Asia. Many critical subordinate positions remain vacant and as recently as February 2018 the White House had no ambassadors in Canberra or Seoul. In the conduct of foreign policy, the administration's lack of experience combined with its marginalisation of the State Department and other organs of national security mean that it has less ability to effectively carry out any strategy.
Restraint and Donald Trump are not words that are often paired. And with good reason. As a long-time Trump friend explained, "Donald Trump has spent his entire life a free agent; he has always done things his way".[^55] As head of a family-run business, Trump did not have to deal with shareholders or a board of directors that could hold him accountable for his decisions. Always playing offence and never apologising served Trump well as a real estate mogul and reality TV celebrity, allowing him to ignore criticism, put his opponents on their heels, and influence, if not control, the narrative.[^56] It was Trump's temperament and character that spawned the birth of the 'Never-Trump Republicans' who, like Peter Wehner, concluded that "he is unlikely to be contained by norms and customs, or even by laws and the Constitution. For Mr. Trump, nothing is sacred. The truth is malleable, instrumental, subjective".[^57] While inconsistency can be a virtue, as it allows policy to adapt to changing conditions and new facts, unmoored to principle and untethered to fact, it provides a poor basis for leadership.
Trump's unpredictable foreign policy
Even though the broad contours of Trump's opinions on a number of issues — from the value of free trade and alliances to his sympathies towards authoritarian strongmen — have remained fairly consistent, the White House's communication of his policy has been deliberately erratic.[58]
The challenge is deeper, however, than communication. From repeatedly questioning security commitments, to flip-flopping policy positions, to undermining the efforts of his administration, the president suffers from a "credibility gap". This is compounded by Trump's penchant for speaking falsely on a regular basis.[59] As a result, both at home and abroad (and even with long-standing allies) large majorities find Trump untrustworthy.[60]
While some see more continuity than change in Trump's foreign policy, the majority of outside observers have found it challenging to understand the intent of White House policy on most key issues from NAFTA and NATO, to Asia and the Middle East. To some degree, there will always be uncertainty after a presidential election about how much policy will actually change. This uncertainty is heightened when there is a transition from one party to another. It is heightened further when the president who takes office continues to make statements which are outside the bounds of normal foreign policy discourse and procedurally opaque. Trump, to be sure, wants to be less predictable than his predecessors and international opponents, declaring "we must, as a nation, be more unpredictable".[61]
There are countervailing forces at work against Trump's penchant for unpredictability. Secretary Mattis, Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson collectively are referred to as "the adults in the room", and have attempted to give structure, organisation, and coherence to the administration's foreign policy. [^62] But the president's unpredictability continues to undermine such efforts, as his pronouncements on issues ranging from trade, to North Korea, have repeatedly and explicitly undercut his cabinet secretaries. The result has made it nearly impossible to understand what is a tweet and what, ultimately, is policy.
As Trump knows, from a negotiating perspective, and certainly when dealing with competitors, unpredictability carries some advantages and, judiciously applied, can provide leverage. But elevating unpredictability to a strategy has downsides. It has confused allies, promoted instability in critical trade relationships, elevated the risks of miscommunication in a crisis, and left the world questioning the credibility of American commitments.[63] The actions required to demonstrate resolve and to signal deterrence have likely increased, as have the chances of unintentional escalation.
Some of this will be offset by more trusted cabinet members and the might of the American military, but no matter how many times US alliances are reaffirmed by senior officials, presidential unpredictability raises fears that America will not live up to its security guarantees. As a major US ally in Asia commented, "Washington, DC is now the epicenter of instability in the world".[^64] Perhaps the most damaging result is that the president no longer is seen as having the final word on foreign policy and national security and is often bypassed. "I'll tell you, honestly, for a foreigner, in the past we were used to going to the White House to get our work done," Shivshankar Menon, India's former foreign secretary and national security adviser to the prime minister recently stated.[^65] "Now we go to the corporations, to Congress, to the Pentagon, wherever."
History tells us that the unpredictable nature of circumstances and individual leaders means the shape and power of the presidency is always evolving. Regardless of the president, some elements of the presidency are likely to endure as permanent features, and some old debates are likely to resurface.
What will stay the same
Different moments change the shape of the presidency. The challenges of the first year differ from those of the second, and those of a first term from a second term. Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton's tenures all furnish examples of presidents turning to foreign policy when frustrated at home, and when they are in legacy-building mode. Certain moments during a president's tenure — generally at the outset, after re-election or after profound shocks such as 9/11 — are more conducive than others to producing or re-evaluating strategy.
While Trump's election clearly indicated profound dissatisfaction with the American political process, it has not transformed the requirements of effective governance from process to fiat. Guiding legislation through Congress, negotiating with foreign leaders, and building coalitions at home and abroad are tasks that require time and skill. Because policy is as much about process and personnel as it is about pronouncement, future presidents will continue to find governing different than campaigning.
Likewise, it is a safe bet to conclude that the next, or even the next several, administrations will define themselves in opposition to Trump's presidency. George W. Bush came into office with an ABC (Anything But Clinton) mentality, while Barack Obama most concisely defined his relatively restrained foreign policy strategy, "Don't Do Stupid Shit", to juxtapose it against the perceived sins of George W. Bush's. That is obviously more true if a Democrat is the next occupant of the White House, but will probably hold even if a Republican succeeds Trump.
Finally, some have suggested that in response to Trump, and perhaps during this administration, the locus of power could shift back to the legislative branch. History, however, suggests that the president will continue to occupy the "bully pulpit" that sits at the centre of American political discourse. Congress can resist the president, as it did during the Nixon and Ford administrations in the 1970s, and it often becomes the centre of action during political impasses, as it was during Clinton's impeachment in 1998 or during the budget showdowns of the Obama era. But it cannot take over foreign policy. As a result, the global focus will remain on the words of the president, the White House and the national security apparatus more than it does Congress.
What might change
Throughout American history there have been periodic calls to reform the presidency. Those proposed reforms have taken on different shapes depending on both the circumstances and the occupant of the office, and have alternatively called for scaling up its reach, stripping back its powers, and making it more manageable. In the aftermath of Trump, several of these debates and recommendations are likely to resurface.
First, it is almost inevitable that Americans will debate how the presidential election is conducted and whether the process should change. This discussion will revolve around three questions: Is there a better nomination process within the major parties; is it time to shift away from the Electoral College and towards a popular vote; and is there a better way to safeguard American elections from foreign interference?
The prolonged campaign season combined with the pace of individual state primaries tends to push candidates to cater to their party's most dedicated base. The charges against the current system are that the nomination process produces candidates less attractive to the broad centre of American politics, bloodied by partisan ideological fights and therefore vulnerable in a general election, and more focused on smaller states, such as Iowa or New Hampshire, whose primaries occur earliest in the calendar. Unless these states voluntarily abandon their early primary dates, or the political parties mandate a streamlined and tightened nominating process, such changes are unlikely.
A second complaint that will reappear is whether to abolish the Electoral College. Given that Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes to Hillary Clinton, but still was elected president due to the mathematics of the Electoral College, this charge has particular resonance even if most of the voices advocating for its abolition are Democrats. Trump is not the first president to assume office having lost the popular vote; in fact, he's the fifth. The prospects of eliminating the Electoral College and replacing it with a popular vote, however, are slim. Not only would it require the passage of a constitutional amendment; but it would also privilege urban population centres over low-density rural areas, which would be politically unpalatable to a large number of American politicians.
Trump is not the first president to assume office having lost the popular vote; in fact, he's the fifth. The prospects of eliminating the Electoral College and replacing it with a popular vote, however, are slim.
One set of reforms which will be called for will be to streamline the focus and ease the burdens of the office. In his recent survey of the presidency, Jeremi Suri concluded that "by the start of the twenty-first century, the inhuman demands of the office made it impossible to succeed as president". [^66] Proliferating responsibilities, accumulating demands, accelerating news cycles, and busier work schedules have left presidents at a disadvantage. The hectic pace has translated into a daily grind that has often left presidents reacting to events with the immediate crowding out the important, bereft of time for strategic thinking, and ultimately less well equipped to handle the extraordinary demands of the job.
Apart from the toll the office exacts, its frenetic pace translates into a constantly distracted chief executive. Most notorious here is Jimmy Carter, whose perfectionism and zealous attention to detail led him to read hundreds of pages of detailed briefings each week, check the accuracy of the budget's arithmetic, and even personally assess all requests to use the White House tennis courts.[^67] Although this is an extreme example which Carter eventually moved away from, it led his chief speechwriter, James Fallows, to conclude that "if [the president] is distracted from the big choices by the torrent of petty details, the big choices will not get made".[^68]
To help future presidents strike a balance, particularly in the aftermath of a presidency that is viewed as impulsive and in need of institutional "guardrails", debates about the bureaucratic structure within the executive branch and constraints on presidential action will resurface. The bureaucracy's focus will be on institutional reform, but the questions will be multiple, ranging from streamlining decisionmaking, to eliminating petty burdens on the president, to shifting certain responsibilities away from the executive.
In national security matters, the discussion will centre on how to ensure the presidency is more focused on decision-making, how to decentralise execution to executive agencies, and how to ensure that strategic decisions are thoroughly vetted.[^69] This is especially true on command-and-control of the armed forces, where Trump's presidency has revived talk among academics, legal experts, military officers and senators about what checks are in place to constrain a reckless or illegal order.[^70] Debate has already commenced on restructuring the National Security Council, but after Trump's presidency there will be renewed examination of whether other branches of government, executive branch agencies and the military should have more ability to constrain a president.
After Trump's presidency there will be renewed examination of whether other branches of government, executive branch agencies, and the military should have more ability to constrain a president
Crucially, as Trump has disrupted many norms within the national security community there will be further scrutiny on the constitutional norms surrounding the president's role as commander-in-chief. President George W. Bush's speechwriter David Frum has recently pointed out that the military and intelligence services have developed methods to cope with Trump "that circumvent the president's role as commander-in-chief".[^71] From divulging highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, to telling Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte the location of two US nuclear submarines, Trump has caused the national security community to recalibrate what information it shares and how promptly it responds to the president. Even for those who applaud efforts to 'cage' Trump, and certainly for those who do not, these actions have the potential to slowly erode the president's role in the chain of command, degrade civilian-military relations, and challenge the principle of civilian control over the armed forces.
At some point, the Trump presidency will end — whether that comes in 2025, 2021, or sooner — and the nation will move on. While it is far too early to conclude what the sum total of Trump's effect on the presidency will amount to, several observations can be made. At present, the balance of power between the branches of government continues to hold, but could tip if the 2018 midterm elections — where a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives will face re-election — either bring more hardcore Trump supporters to Washington, or tip Congress to the Democrats. Trump, however, will probably not preside over a major or permanent reorganisation of the US government in a way similar to Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan. Like all previous presidents, but perhaps more so than most, Trump will continually meet bureaucratic friction — some endemic to bureaucracies, and some unique to his presidency.
But while the separation of powers has the potential to constrain Trump domestically, it is much less able to restrain him internationally. While all American presidents are both empowered and constrained by the office, what is different in the Trump administration is the seeming instability emanating from the White House. This turbulence has, and will, continue to subject the integrity of America's political system and position in the world to a stress test.
For instance, see Eliot Cohen's pieces, "A Clarifying Moment in American History," and "American are Rising to the This Historic Moment," one year apart from each other, in The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/a-clarifying-moment-in-american-history/514868/; https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/trump-clarifying/550562/?utm_source=twb
For more on the history of impeachment, see Simon Jackman's Impeachment 101: The History, Process, and Prospect of a Trump Impeachment, July 18, 2017. https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/impeachment-101-the-history-process-and-prospect-of-a-trump-impeachment
Jeremi Suri, The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office (New York: Basic Books, 2017), p. 20.
Hamilton, Federalist Paper 23. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed23.asp.
John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 108; for a spirited and controversial take on this point, see Harvey Mansfield, "The Law and the President in a National Emergency: Who You Gonna Call?' Weekly Standard, January 16, 2006. http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-law-and-the-president/article/7751
Roosevelt issued more than 1,000 executive orders, nearly as many as all of his predecessors combined and almost ten times as many as his predecessor. For more, see Kenneth R. Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). For data on the use of Executive Orders, and for a repository of their texts, see he American Presidency Project: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/executive_orders.php
Michael J. Green, By More than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 78-113.
Robert Kagan recently made the argument for congressionally-led government, arguing that "for the decades after the Civil War but also to a lesser extent during the 1920s... Congress ran the show on many critical matters and the president dared take no action without the approval of powerful committee chairmen." "Impeaching Trump is a long shot. There's another way to protect the country," Washington Post, September 4, 2017: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/impeaching-trump-is-a-long-shot-theres-another-way-to-protect-the-country/2017/09/04/78dd58bc-8d96-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html?utm_term=.cf035a7f2f83; See also, the Washington Post's editorial for the amplification of congressional power, "What to do with an Unfit President," Washington Post, October 9, 2017: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-to-do-with-an-unfit-president/2017/10/09/074cc0e2-ad09-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?undefined=&utm_term=.28ee1d7a7654&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
For a particularly insightful account of how different presidents' ideas continue to shape the conduct of American foreign policy see Walter Russell Mead's Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World (New York: Knopf, 2003). And, for those interested in a deeper dive on the presidents, see the Washington Post podcast, "Presidential," which explores the character and legacy of each of the American presidents. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/presidential-podcast/.
At the start of the Trump administration, there were roughly 4,100 positions in the government open to presidential appointment process: https://www.govinfo.gov/features/2016-plum-book. For a list of judicial appointments by president, see: http://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/authorized-judgeships/judgeship-appointments-president. On the president's ability to persuade see Richard E. Neustadt's classic Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: The Free Press, 1990).
Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=104107
Rahm Emanuel, November 18, 2018, WSJ Interview. http://www.wsj.com/video/rahm-emanuel-on-the-opportunities-of-crisis/3F6B9880-D1FD-492B-9A3D-70DBE8EB9E97.html
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Steven Sestanovich, Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama (New York: Knopf, 2014).
Julia Azari, "A President's First 100 Days Really Do Matter," FiveThirtyEight, 17 January 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-presidents-first-100-days-really-do-matter/;
The University of Virginia's Miller Center's First Year Project features a terrific set of essays by leading scholars on the challenges that different incoming administrations have faced in their first years. http://firstyear2017.org/. As an additional resource, see also Southern Methodist University's Center for Presidential History. https://www.smu.edu/CPH.
John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, "Seat in Congress/Lost by the President's Party in the Mid-Term Elections - F. Roosevelt - Obama," The American Presidency Project, 19 December 2014, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/mid-term_elections.php
Neustadt described this as the "Washington community" which consisted of "Members of Congress and of his Administration, governors of states, military commanders in the field, leading politicians in both parties, representatives of private organizations, newsmen of assorted types and sizes, foreign diplomats (and principles abroad)… no matter what their physical location" these were all "Washingtonians." Neustadt, p. 50.
Neustadt, p. 76 ff.
Paul M. Angle, ed., The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 128.
The Executive Order was then revised by the Trump administration, which the Supreme Court upheld in part, and struck down in part as still violating the equal protection clause.
H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 493.
John F. Kennedy, "Television and Radio Interview: After Two Years - A Conversation With the President." December 17, 1962. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9060.
Lindsey Graham, March 16, 2017. https://twitter.com/lindseygrahamsc/status/842465304215207941?lang=en
See Ashley Townshend, Dougal Robinson, and Brendan Thomas-Noone's "Trump, Congress and the 2018 defence budget: A primer for Australia." https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/trump-congress-and-the-2018-defence-budget-a-primer-for-australia
This method has become the norm over the past seven decades, and Truman's decision set the precedent for subsequent presidential justifications for authorisation of force without congressional authorisation. The standard work remains Louis Fischer's Presidential War Powers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995). For a helpful overview, see Jennifer Elsea and Richard Grimmett, The Congressional Research Service, "Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications." https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL31133.pdf
For examples of histories that do a particularly good job at sketching presidents surrounded by strong and talented groups of advisors, see Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas's The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972), James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), and Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).
During the Obama administration, his first three of his secretaries of defence complained that the White House intruded too far into operational details. Robert Gates claimed that "the controlling nature of the Obama White House and the NSS staff took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level." Leon Panetta charged that "officials who knew the most about certain subjects were excluded from important public debates." And, Chuck Hagel groused that "We seemed to veer away from the big issues." Robert Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), p. 587; Leon Panetta, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace (New York, Penguin Press, 2014), p. 232; Chuck Hagel, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/18/hagel-the-white-house-tried-to-destroy-me. For a history of the NSC, see David Rothkopf, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2005).
R. W. Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.- GVN Performance in Vietnam. Santa Monica: RAND, 1972. For a modern take on this challenge, see Frances Z. Brown, "Bureaucracy Does Its Thing, Again," The American Interest, Vol. 8, No. 2. October 9, 2012. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/10/09/bureaucracy-does-its-thing-again. The classic study of bureaucracy is James Q. Wilson's Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New York: Basic Books, 1989). Also relevant is Leslie H. Gelb with Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1979).
https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-if-president-trump-orders-secretary-defense-mattis-do-something-deeply-unwise
Both of these examples are cited by David Ignatius in his column "Our Best Hope against Nuclear War," Washington Post, October 3, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/our-best-hope-against-nuclear-war/2017/10/03/7df61d86-a883-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.a6cc14e44274
Michelle Obama, DNC Convention Speech, September 4, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160578836/transcript-michelle-obamas-convention-speech
Fred I. Greenstein, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Barack Obama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Beyond this, see James MacGregor Burns' Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Two particularly useful works that examine character are William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) and Peggy Noonan's When Character was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan (New York: Penguin Books, 2001).
Maggie Haberman, Glen Thrush, and Peter Baker, "Inside Trump's Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation," New York Times, December 9, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/us/politics/donald-trump-president.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
For contrasting views on the relevance of Andrew Jackson to Trump's presidency see, H. W. Brands, "Trump as the New Andrew Jackson: Not on Old Hickory's Life," Politico Magazine, January 29, 2017 and Walter Russell Mead's interview with Susan Glasser, "The Man who put Andrew Jackson's Portrait in the Oval Office," Politico Magazine, January 22, 2018. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/andrew-jackson-donald-trump-populist-president-history-214705 and https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/22/andrew-jackson-donald-trump-216493. Also see Mead's "The Jacksonian Revolt: American Populism and the Liberal Order," Foreign Affairs, March/April 2017. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-01-20/jacksonian-revolt.
Donald J. Trump, "The Inaugural Address," January 20, 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address
Jenna Johnson, "A Brief History of Donald Trump's Mixed Messages on Freedom of Speech," The Washington Post, 29 September 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-brief-history-of-donald-trumps-mixed-messages-on-freedom-of-speech/2017/09/28/dd44160c-a3b6-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html?utm_term=.b95795e5cdfa
Chicago Council on Global Affairs, "What Americans think about America First," October 2, 2017, p. 10. https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/what-americans-think-about-america-first
2016 Chicago Council Survey, "America in the Age of Uncertainty: American Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy," October 6, 2016, p. 29. https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/ccgasurvey2016_america_age_uncertainty.pdf.
Chicago Council on Global Affairs, "What Americans think about America First," p. 10.
Ibid, p. 11.
Henry Enten, "Six Months In, Trump Is Historically Unpopular," FiveThirtyEight, 17 July 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/six-months-in-trump-is-historically-unpopular/. FiveThirtyEight serves as an aggregator of poll data; for a daily tracker of Trump's ratings, as well as a comparison to his predecessor's, see: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
On Democrats internal squabbles, see Alan Greenblat's "Are Democrats Headed for a McGovern Redux?" http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/09/democrats-mcgovern-1972-trump-nixon-2020-215687; on Bannon's ongoing insurgency within the GOP, see Robert Kagan's, "Faster, Steve Bannon. Kill! Kill!" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/faster-steve-bannon-kill-kill/2017/10/11/77bdf5c2-aea7-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.4bc231d9cb88
See Nicholas Carr, "Why Trump Tweets (And Why We Listen)" Politico Magazine, January 26, 2018. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/26/donald-trump-twitter-addiction-216530. For a fuller treatment that proceeded Trump's presidential campaign, see Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010). For Trump's Twitter statistics, see, https://twittercounter.com/realDonaldTrump.
Donald J. Trump, July 17, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-us-wealth-has-been-drained/2017/07/17/b1eb89f4-6b2b-11e7-abbc-a53480672286_video.html?utm_term=.c353c1befb1c
GovTrack Insider, "Falling From First to Last: President Trump has signed the fewest bills into law by this point in any recent president's first year," GovTrack Insider, 22 December 2017, https://govtrackinsider.com/falling-from-first-to-last-president-trump-has-signed-the-fewest-bills-into-law-by-this-point-in-8945aac6ad54
In particular, see Andrew Sullivan, "America Has Never Been so Ripe for Tyranny," New York Magazine, May 1, 2016. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html; David Frum, "How to Build an Autocracy," The Atlantic, March 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/; Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017).
Evan Halper, "Gov. Jerry Brown calls for 'countermovement' against Trump's 'colossal mistake' on climate change," Los Angeles Time, 28 March 2017, http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-gov-jerry-brown-calls-for-1490734956-htmlstory.html.
Michael Gerson, "America is Riding a Carousel of Hate," The Washington Post, 15 June 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-is-riding-a-carousel-of-hate/2017/06/15/c85caabc-520b-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html?utm_term=.a84261ffed24
Federalist Paper 68; 10. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp; http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp.
Mike Allen, "Exclusive: Trump lawyer claims the "President cannot obstruct justice," Axios, 4 December 2017, https://www.axios.com/exclusive-trump-lawyer-claims-the-president-cannot-obstruct-justice-1513388369-032ba40d-55c3-42d6-bdf9-d6399ed7a2ce.html
Abby Phillip and Jenna Johnson, "Trump undercuts his aides by contradicting their statements," The Washington Post, 6 June 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-undercuts-his-aides-by-contradicting-their-statements/2017/06/06/1ae3155a-4ad2-11e7-9669-250d0b15f83b_story.html
Sestanovich, "The Brilliant Incoherence of Trump's Foreign Policy." The Atlantic, May 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/the-brilliant-incoherence-of-trumps-foreign-policy/521430/
The Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, "Tracking how many key positions Trump has filled so far," The Washington Post, 12 February 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/?utm_term=.7cbc5ab8f625
Josh Dawsey, "White House aides lean on delays and distractions to manage Trump," Politico, 10 September 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/09/trump-aides-guard-rails-243608
Trump has attributed the origin of these techniques to the influence of Roy Cohn. See, Jonathan Mahler and Matt Flegenheimmer, "What Donald Trump Learned from Joseph McCarthy's Right-Hand Man," New York Times, June 21, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/politics/donald-trump-roy-cohn.html; Marie Brenner's "How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn's Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America," Vanity Fair, August 2017. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-cohn-relationship
Peter Wehner, "Why I Cannot Fall in Line Behind Trump," New York Times, January 21, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/opinion/sunday/why-i-cannot-fall-in-line-behind-trump.html.
Thomas Wright, "Trump's 19th Century Foreign Policy," Politico Magazine, January 20, 2016. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-foreign-policy-213546
For a running catalogue of Trump's falsehoods, see David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson, "Trump's Lies," The New York Times, 14 December 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html
On these points and others, see Keren Yarhi-Milo's insightful, "After Credibility: American Foreign Policy in the Trump Era," Foreign Affairs, January/February 2018. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-12-12/after-credibility. For polling data abroad, see http://news.gallup.com/poll/225761/world-approval-leadership-drops-new-low.aspx; https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/08/politics/cnn-poll-trump-one-year-later/index.html
Donald J. Trump, "Transcript: Donald Trump's Foreign Policy Speech," The New York Times, 27 April 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html?_r=0.
See James Mann's "The Adults in the Room," The New York Review of Books, October 26, 2017. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/26/trump-adult-supervision/.
See Joshua A. Geltzer and Jon Finer, "The Only Constant is Trump," The Atlantic, May 26, 2017: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/the-only-constant-is-trump/528048/.
Susan B. Glasser, "Trump National Security Team Blindsided by NATO Speech," Politico, June 5, 2017. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/05/trump-nato-speech-national-security-team-215227.
Evan Osnos, "Making China Great Again," The New Yorker, January 8, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/making-china-great-again.
Suri, The Impossible Presidency, p. 289.
For Carter's reading habits, see the Miller Center's Oral History with Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/zbigniew-brzezinski-oral-history-assistant-president.
James Fallows, "The Passionless Presidency: The Troubles with Jimmy Carter's Administration," The Atlantic, May 1979. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1979/05/the-passionless-presidency/308516.
On NSC reform, see Michèle Flournoy, "Nine Lessons for Navigating National Security," March 25, 2016. https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/nine-lessons-for-navigating-national-security.
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/authority-to-order-the-use-of-nuclear-weapons-111417; https://www.vox.com/world/2017/11/17/16656856/trump-congress-nuclear-weapons-war. See also, Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (New York: Penguin Press, 2013).
David Frum, "The Problem with 'Containing' Donald Trump," The Atlantic, October 9, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/corker-trump/542409.
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