Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Don't Ignore the Dangers of a Weak President

At the root of Iraq policy and Iran-Contra was a lack of strong leadership in the White House.

February 23, 2017 at 2:08 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Presidents need to keep their branch in check.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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As the first month has passed of Donald Trump's presidency with little sign of success, and some question about whether he's even up to trying to turn his campaign platform into a real legislative agenda, it's occurring to more and more people that what we're looking at is someone on the road to being a very weak president. My View colleague Ramesh Ponnuru has a nice item making that argument, focused on Trump's reputation.

Since Trump tends to lash out when losing, he remains a danger to democracy even if he is weakened, Ezra Klein argues. He could do plenty of lashing out in ways that tend to de-legitimize important democratic institutions such as the courts, Congress, the media, and political parties.