Pick a Big Number and Do Terribly.

Lofty goals like deporting every unlawful immigrant. Or they want to cut the federal budget by five thousand William dollars. Or they’ll raise sales taxes on imports and everything will be perfect. This administration only has a few keystone ideas and none of them are developed. But they are still hammering on them every day.

There’s a difference between having the power of the office and knowing how to use it. Donald John Trump is like the hobbyist who buys a fancy piece of kit, only using one or two features, because he doesn’t know any better. He tossed the manual out. The parts of government he doesn’t bother to use are far more powerful than those he does use, but he doesn’t understand the basic functions either.

In some cases, this administration seeks to demolish the unused parts, whether out of spite and malice, or because they think it will save money. But in most cases, the tools aren’t bureaus or regulations, aren’t things that can be demolished or disbanded. Take the pulpit, for example. The president has the ability to move people through words, but this president only speaks in guttural spasms, unable to sing out like our best leaders have. He can only use approximately four per cent of the audible spectrum through his grunts and growls. He cannot drown out the background of song that lifts the human heart, and he cannot compete with it.

But their goals, lofty yet ill-defined, remain. They don’t understand what they are trying to accomplish, which makes any task all the harder to achieve, but makes policy and politics, economy and bureaucracy alike, impossible. You cannot do what you do not know to do. And the Trumpian mantra (stolen from Ronald Reagan; “make America great again”) was never defined, which made it powerful in voters’ minds. But it was never defined, so it could never be refined, could never be constructed. There was no foundation made to hold it up, no bones set tall. It remains a ghost as it ever was.

In its place we have feeble attempts to deport the nation’s way to some new place, as though throwing people off a ship was what made the wind grace its sails. We have new taxes, called tariffs as though it could hide their stupidity. The price of goods has and will rise to no end but the proclamation by a corrupt presidency: “Look what I did! I did a thing and it was something alright!” That’s the same tack taken with the gutting of so many agencies and interests of the United States. We are less safe, less informed, for their efforts. But the deficit will not shrink substantially. Still they will take their victory lap.

Think about it. If you want to cut waste, reduce unlawful immigration, reduce trade deficits, you don’t announce some target to meet. You wouldn’t know how much you could cut, how many need to be deported, or how in a global economy a tweak here or there would result in other trade relationships rebalancing. Instead, you would simply roll up your sleeves and get to work. That’s not how they operate. The Donald John Trump administration is a performance, not a real effort to do these things well. They aren’t studying the problems, they’re simply pushing buttons and hoping the numbers go up. And it’s for exactly that reason their efforts will have no lasting meaning or effect.

Think about it. If you wish to reduce regulations, you should move carefully and use the legal processes so that your efforts will not be blocked by courts, so that you can see a lasting change. This presidency is the zeroeth little pig that built its house out of dryer lint, too stupid to even be mentioned in the tale. It didn’t die to the wolf, it died from exposure. If it took no more than a snap of the fingers to remove rules, returning the rules would take the same. If you’re too stupid to take the easy win and fix an accidental deportation, you’re too stupid to make any lasting change to the United States.

The real America waits patiently for the despot, too self-distracted to put feet in stirrups or keep a hold of the reins, to fall off its back and into the river, so that the country can trot on to the far shore and get on with the business of prosperity.