Trump, one month in

It’s sometimes been difficult to tell what’s actually happening, and to put things in perspective, partly because Washington’s news media have gotten so many stories wrong, and partly because politicians of both parties have overreacted to every move by the other side.

So it’s crucial to take a step back and review President Trump’s job performance by looking at what he has actually done, not merely what the media said he was doing, or what Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warned he was going to do some day.

Ironically, the two entwined themes of Trump’s first turbulent month have been predictability and hyperactivity. Trump has done what he promised to do, and behaved, for better and worse, as he has always behaved.

For conservatives, the most important moment of Trump’s first month was his nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. This is a real, substantive and excellent step that, in many a presidency, would by itself mark the first month as a success. Trump’s promise to pick a justice “in the mold of Scalia,” and his list of 21 candidates was crucial to his winning the election. This was the convincing factor for countless conservatives.

And Trump delivered. Gorsuch isn’t just a “conservative judge,” (a vague term). He is brilliant and careful in his reasoning, and crystal clear in his writing. His rulings have shown him faithful to the Constitution and attentive to the letter of the law. On religious liberty, Gorsuch has been a pioneer in broadening individual liberties and narrowing state power.

He will be confirmed. There’s reason to hope he’ll not only be a conservative vote on the court, but a force to draw the jurisprudentially-meandering Justice Anthony Kennedy to the right side in some instances.

Opponents of abortion were among the most thrilled by the Gorsuch pick. They were also heartened by Trump’s sending Vice President Mike Pence to speak at the March for Life.

Trump’s other appointments have generally been strong, especially the sober, experienced and universally respected Jim Mattis as secretary of defense, along with Mick Mulvaney, a fiscal conservative, to the Office of Management and Budget, and the crusading Scott Pruitt to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump has lost two important picks so far, Labor nominee Andrew Puzder and national security adviser Mike Flynn. This is standard. Obama lost three nominees before confirmation.

The fiasco over Flynn, who resigned last week, has been the most contentious issue in this young presidency. And it’s not over. Senior intelligence officials continue to battle Trump in a way that is disquieting either because it shows that they have gone rogue and are seeking to undermine the elected president or because they are legitimately alarmed by his concerning coziness with Russia’s government. Trump’s warmth toward President Vladimir Putin has been a point of legitimate concern for more than a year. But since his inauguration, Trump has taken steps, beyond unloading Flynn, to clear up the stench.

Nikki Haley, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, used her first day on the job to chastise Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson opened his first meeting with his Russian counterpart on the same note, prodding Moscow to honor its commitments in that regard. And just before the inauguration, Trump finally acknowledged and criticized — better late than never — Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Trump also has not, yet, undone the sanctions his predecessor imposed for that meddling.

Still, Trump has continued to demonstrate a tin ear on the subject of Russia. When asked about Putin, a “killer,” Trump said, “We’ve got a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” This was one of many instances when Trump seemed to not understand the gravity of his role, and seems to not have adapted to the constraints and requirements of the job.

That problem, of Trump’s temperament, rhetorical blundering and unnuanced judgment is a plague upon his presidency. It can and often has made him look crass. His Twitter habit is a source of national embarrassment. Watching him talk about any number of policy issues, or take questions from the (admittedly hostile) media, is akin to watching a rough and clumsy adolescent casually handling a Ming vase; one constantly fears that he will let it fall and smash.

He hasn’t shown the self-control to fight only the right fights. His first battle in office was over the size of his inauguration crowd. He deployed White House press secretary Sean Spicer to scold the press on its coverage of this issue.

Trump has also gone out of his way to berate individual journalists and mock Arnold Schwarzenegger’s television ratings. He gratuitously took to Twitter to attack Nordstrom from dropping his daughter Ivanka Trump’s line of luxury goods. This sort of stuff not only distracts from the real business of governing, it abuses and trivializes the power of the office.

Many a critic has said it is bootless to hope that Trump will “turn the corner,” and start behaving in a more conventionally presidential way. They may be right. Still, we would press Trump to realize that the presidency puts him so much above everyone else that most of their slights are utterly inconsequential and that by responding to them rather than ignoring them he reduces his own stature and that of the august office to which he has been elected.

Trump has also refused to give up his businesses, as we and others urged him to do. This has already created clear conflicts of interest of a type that, as the months and years pass, could do real damage to the success of his administration. It is true that Trump campaigned making it clear that he would not sell out of his business interests, and he was elected nevertheless. So, arguably, the public has given him a pass on this. But he cannot assume indefinite public goodwill, especially as the nexus of his businesses and his political power will inevitably create pitfalls in the future.

One of Trump’s sloppiest moments may have been his immigration executive order. Unlike many of his fine early orders regarding regulations and ethics, his moratorium on immigrants from terrorist-tied countries didn’t go through the standard interagency process, and so it ran into problems. Detention of lawful permanent residents isn’t simply a snafu, it’s symptomatic of a sloppiness that needs to be cured.

The West Coast judges who blocked the order overreached, but they probably couldn’t have touched the rule if it had been clearly written to exempt people who already have visas. The flaws of the order were obvious from the start, and it was imprudent for Trump to dig in his heels and fight in court for two weeks.

It is pleasing, however, that Trump announced Thursday his intention to draft a new order, tailored in reaction to the courts’ rulings. This suggests that the president can learn from his mistakes and intends to do so.