One month into his presidency, it becomes more and more clear what Donald Trump most worries about, as concerns himself. Not being a dictator, or an authoritarian, or a racist, misogynist, bully. Trump denies being all those things, but being attacked of them does not seem to bother him much.
What must bother him most is to realize that he is what he despises most. A loser.
A month in, he has achieved very little. Think about where his predecessors were after a month in their Presidency. Obama had gotten his economic stimulus package passed, in addition to legislation on children's health insurance and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. George W. Bush had begun to pushed through a $ 1.3 trillion tax cut program and launched his “faith-based” initiative and his “New Freedom” initiative to help disabled; his No Child Left Behind Act was on its way. Bill Clinton had unveiled his economic plan to a joint session of congress and had passed his Family Leave Act.
Contrast that with Donald Trump, the man who likes to complain that politicians are “all talk, no action,” and who promised to pursue no less than eighteen things on his first day in office. Indeed, he started office with a flurry of actions. And he has continued to tweet a good number of pictures of himself at his desk, signing one executive order or other, surrounded by a group of onlookers who are mostly white and mostly male. Indeed, he has started reversing some of Obama’s policies. And he has set some things in motion.
But much of this has been exactly what he claimed to despise: “all talk”. After months of telling us he had a plan on how to defeat ISIS, it turned out what this plan consisted of: he would ask his staff to draft one. Instead of starting to build a wall, he has ordered his homeland security secretary to plan one, while nobody knows yet where the money will come from. His apparent readiness to be more aggressive with China turned out to be posturing: he has since assured China that the United States will continue to accept the One China Policy. Mostly, Trump is still in campaign mode; he continues to tell us that things are bad, but that they will get better.
On big policies, his achievements are even fewer. His biggest action so far, the executive order on immigration, was so badly drafted and rolled out that the courts have restrained its implementation. Trump’s biggest policy promise, to repeal, or replace, or reform, the Affordable Care Act, seems to be stalling for the moment. The one area where he seems to have some success is in cracking down on the most vulnerable members of society—undocumented aliens—, but he seems unwilling to bear responsibility.
Like a typical loser with less to show than he promised, Trump blames his own failures on everybody else. He blames losing the popular vote on voter fraud, the empty spaces on inauguration pictures on the photographers who took them, and any negative polls on the pollsters . He blames the courts for doing their job, which is to check on the other branches of government. He blames “low-life leakers” for providing information about his staff’s potentially illegal dealings with Russia. He blames his predecessor for having left him with “a mess,” in defiance of all available data. He blames Democrats for stalling on his appointees, although some of the opposition comes from his own party. None of this has made him more effective: none of these groups looks intimidated.
And he continually blames his favorite opponent, the so-called “mainstream media”. Following his advisor’s lead, he has gone so far as to call the media “the opposition party”. If this is dictators’ speech, as people have pointed out, then it is speech from a weak dictator—one who realizes that his actions alone are insufficient to garner support, and so he must continuously claim that he is being misrepresented. His bizarre press conference yesterday served no other purpose than to show his supporters how willing he is to fight the media. It may have achieved that, for now. But shouting at reporters is not really an impressive feat.
Trump may yet achieve bigger things. Being a loser does not make him less dangerous. Many of the worst authoritarian leaders in the world started out as losers, and many of their most horrific policies may well have been attempts to overcome a nagging self-doubt. It is not clear that Trump will get there—it would require a willingness for him to recognize his own mistakes and change course, and it is not clear that he is capable of that. But of course, many things can happen.
For now, however, he seems to be focused more on soothing his injured ego. Tomorrow, Trump will go back to his own version of a safe space—a stadium in front of a group of supporters. That is where he feels safe and at ease—free from opposition, free from critical questions, free from demands that he justify his decisions, or present a coherent policy, or even coherent sentences. People love him there. People may believe him there that he has been very successful so far, and that he will make America great. And so, for a brief time, he hopes to no longer feel like a loser.
But it will only last so long. Trump is a loser, and deep in his heart he knows it. It is the reason why he keeps lying about how he should have won the popular vote (he did not), how his inauguration crowds were the biggest (they were not), how his administration is running like “a fine-tuned machine” (it is not). And at some point, even his supporters will no longer believe otherwise. It just remains to be seen how much he can destroy in the meantime.