Donald Trump's Executive Orders Are Not a Governing Strategy

He ordered government agencies to minimize enforcement of Obamacare without any effort to replace it or articulate a reason it needn't be replaced.

He ordered construction on a border wall that he still hasn't funded, and that he claims Mexico will fund through a tariff that will actually pass the bill on to American consumers.

He ordered a Payless-sale-style "cut-two-to-get-one" regulation policy without articulating which agencies are covered by the policy and creating significant uncertainty when perhaps actually getting in the weeds and analyzing which regulations are and are not necessary might be more useful.

Most offensively, he ordered a ban-that's-not-supposed-to-be-called-a-ban-except-by-White-House-officials-and-staff that is definitely not directed against Muslims, except for the fact that it's directed at Muslim-majority nations and creates exceptions for religious minorities (especially Christians) and Donald Trump crafted it as part of a plan to create a Muslim ban. And in developing this order, he failed to work with the people who would actually have to implement it, causing uncertainty and forcing the Department of Homeland Security to craft exceptions on the fly instead of having firm procedures in place from the get-go. It's also led to numerous successful legal challenges and a borderline constitutional crisis as officials declined to follow the judges' rulings and continued enforcing the order. The acting Attorney General, not having been consulted, determined the order to be unconstitutional, refused to enforce it, and was fired.

In other words, he's done a lot, but it it's all been either meaningless or catastrophically sloppy. There's an old adage that, compared to Democrats who over-promise on the power of government programs, Republicans insist that government does nothing good and then get elected to prove it. In his first twelve days (Jesus Christ, it's only been twelve?), Donald Trump is epitomizing this. But think what you will of Donald Trump's mind; these orders are doing exactly what he and his handlers intended, because they are not part of a government strategy. They're a campaign strategy.

While one Goldman Sachs executive takes a mammoth payout to join his administration and another (shyer) Goldman alum is discovered to have lied about exactly how he foreclosed on poor people in Ohio, Trump's base is riled up about whether or not liberals protested Obama doing something completely different six years ago, excited that the Mexicans won't be taking the jobs they weren't taking anyway, and, I don't know, hopefully buying a Brita. He's continuing to push lower-income, lower-education voters to ignore their self-interest and focus on issues that have substantially less impact on their day-to-day lives. (As an experiment, compare a map of counties that voted for Trump to counties that contain a high-value target for terrorism. Then compare again with a map of counties with above-average poverty rates.)

And why wouldn't he? Trump took the "unpresidented" step of filing for reelection on his first day in office, with over $7 million already raised thanks to donors who continued to contribute after election day. The reason President Trump so nearly resembles Candidate Trump is that he's still Candidate Trump. Through November, to turn away from his own bad publicity, he would try to focus energy on Hillary Clinton. Absent an opponent and knowing that his policies so far are extremely unpopular, he's turned to the media, Mexico, Delta airlines and/or airport protesters, and refugees to take the sting off.

Donald Trump is not trying to govern. At least he's not trying to do it effectively. He's throwing red meat to his working-class base with a small helping of extremely white meat to the Republican establishment to hold onto his electoral coalition. Cracks are showing, with the first two Republican Senators coming out against one of his Cabinet choices (the choice that we've covered as the most challenged both in terms of ethics and competence). Another twenty or so Republicans have come out against his immigration order. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet on Trump's strategy having four years' worth of legs, but it wouldn't be the first time I bet against him and lost.

Update (7:29 p.m.): An earlier version of this article linked to a now-debunked claim that a woman turned away by the travel ban had died. The sentence referencing this claim has been removed, and I apologize for the error.

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