What a hundred

While some may dream of rerunning that election, it is far more productive to watch how the American polity’s system of checks and balances kick in to properly restrain presidential power, even at a time when both houses of Congress are also under Republican control.

Trump is by no means the first US President to face a rude awakening to the limits of presidential authority, much of which he has sought to display in grand flourishes of his pen signing presidential orders but which in reality are far more difficult to materialise.

While one cannot undo the fact that the conservative bloc in America elected their toughtalking candidate, the reality now is that many of his policies are being sensibly moderated by other actors. His plans to tighten immigration by executive order have been curbed by the US law courts.

Further, he recently had to postpone his plans to build a Mexico border wall as its US$20 billion cost could have caused a financial “shutdown” of the US Government, although he vowed that it is still on the cards.

He has apparently reversed his decision to remove the US from NATO. Rather than the US engage in a trade war with China, the latter has been co-opted as a key ally to rein in North Korea.

Another strange reversal occurred when, despite hints of closeness between him and Russian leader Vladmir Putin including possible electoral influence, Trump defied Russia by having the US military bomb the Syria military after they had used poisonous gas on civilians.

Certainly, the dropping of the Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), known as “the mother of all bombs,” on the so-called Islamic State in Afghanistan was meant to send a message on the world stage on US military resolve, Domestically, in the US certain “causes” simply have enough of a life of their own that they cannot now be curbed by anything any president says.

For example, while Trump was to restart coal extraction and has signalled approval for the controversial Stage 4 of the XL Keystone Pipeline to take Canadian oil to the Gulf of Mexico, various types of renewable energy seem to be set on a trajectory towards a bright future unlikely to be thrown off course, whether or not Trump is personally convinced of the veracity of man-made climate change.

All in all, by now it will have sunk in to President Trump of just how difficult is the job of being the proverbial leader of the free world, a phrase itself worthy of scrutiny, and just how ill-prepared he was to take office and in fact how unaware he would have been of the scope of the responsibilities of the occupant of that office.

Trump was never elected for his intellect or for his experience in governance but for being perceived as a stand-up guy and a go-getter such as in the persona that he projected into living rooms globally in his weekly reality TV show, The Apprentice.

Given all that has happened in his first 100 days, which he first accepted as a worthy measure and then reversed on that as being ridiculous, Trump must consider himself lucky that he is not easily “fired” – a term made famous as he exercised power on that television show. Meantime most will be saying of his milestone tomorrow: What a hundred!