, Columnist
Trump Falls on Ceremony. He Should Stop Trying.
Other nations separate the kingly and managerial functions. The U.S. doesn't, so it has to put up with the consequences.
Not his thing.
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Whatever Americans think of how President Donald Trump is handling the policy-making part of his job, for a showman, he's unquestionably making a hash of the ceremonial aspects of the job. But maybe, in the media age, expectations have become unfair too; in much of the rest of the world, unlike in the U.S., those running the government share responsibility for symbolism.
Trump is consistently late to react to tragedies and painfully clumsy when finally speaking about them. Trump's reaction to the Charlottesville clashes, which resulted in a death, required days of clarifications and self-justification. His speech following the Las Vegas shooting was so peremptory and cliched that it sounded hypocritical to some.