Trump is squandering his political power

[BloombergOpinion]( [Early Returns]( [Jonathan Bernstein]( An unusual aspect of Donald Trump’s presidency is that normal incentives basically don’t work on him. In a political system that depends heavily on those incentives, this is a huge problem. Here’s the thing: Trump is, as political scientists like [myself]( and [Matt Glassman]( have been saying for some time, a very weak president. Congressional Republicans basically ignore his policy ideas. He loses battles to the executive-branch bureaucracy all the time. He’s been reduced to hiring flunkies and family members so he can get his way within the White House, and even they don’t seem to listen to him half the time. For those familiar with Richard Neustadt’s [study of the presidency](, this is no surprise: Trump is unpopular and has a poor professional reputation, so he’s not going to have very much influence. What this means is that the political system is basically working. It’s imposing serious consequences on the president for doing a bad job. Refusing to respect the rules of the office is one of the ways that presidents can harm their reputations. And Trump’s unpopular Twitter persona and generally unpresidential behavior are partly why his approval rating is some 15 percentage points below where it would be based only on the economy and other fundamentals. Presidents normally care desperately about power, and Trump is squandering his. The only problem is that he doesn’t realize it. We can’t know what he really thinks, but he seems to believe he’s wildly popular despite evidence to the contrary. As for his reputation? Again, we can’t know what’s in his head. But based on his public statements, he seems to think that what he’s doing is working – and if anything isn’t working, it has nothing to do with him. All presidents tend to believe their own spin, of course. After all, they won the presidency! As far as I know, there hasn’t been an elected president yet who attributed his tenure in the White House to luck or circumstance instead of his own brilliance, although I suspect some of them were at least dimly aware that luck and circumstance might’ve had something to do with it. And yet plenty of presidents learn on the job and make adjustments based on what works and what doesn’t. And that’s the problem. A president who doesn’t adjust when things go wrong can’t be punished by the Madisonian push and pull of the U.S. political system. The best contrast might be Ronald Reagan, who mishandled the beginning of his second term – but then, when the Iran-Contra scandal blew up, made necessary changes and wound up reviving his presidency. Reagan didn’t end up in jail or impeached for the scandal, but he surely understood his loss of influence, diminished reputation and plunging approval ratings as real consequences for his failures. In other words, the U.S. political system punishes presidents who abuse their office. That’s usually effective because most presidents care about political power and have a pretty good sense of how to get it or how to lose it. The system just isn’t set up for whatever it is that Trump is in it for. And while his presidency will suffer the consequences regardless, there’s very little evidence that it will make any impression on him. 1. Dan Drezner on [the Democrats and trade](. 2. Seth Masket on the [new importance of the Democratic National Committee](. 3. Sean Trende looks at the [nomination contest before the debate](. 4. Dave Hopkins on [the debate]( (my wrap-up is [here](). 5. Navin Bapat and Rebecca Best at the Monkey Cage on [negotiations with the Taliban](. 6. The FiveThirtyEight [debate live blog, with no fewer than six political scientists](. 7. And James Joyner on [John Bolton and the National Security Council](. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2). Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. Bloomberg L.P. ● 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Web]( ● [Facebook]( ● [Twitter]( [Feedback]( ● [Unsubscribe](