Though Steve Miller claims that Trump is "a president who has done more in three weeks than most presidents have done in an entire administration," the reality is that almost everything in his executive orders is either an inflammatory restatement of an existing policy; an unenforceable and meaningless intervention into domains where the administrative branch holds no sway; or (as in the case of the Muslim Ban), is an unconstitutional omnishambles destined to be swiftly undone by the courts.
Trump's deportation raids, for example, have been high profile and designed to sow terror, but Obama deported people at three times the rate Trump is pursuing. His executive order on the Dakota Access Pipeline has no bearing on the matter, which is before the courts and in the Army's hands. The order the build a border wall? Mostly a restatement of Obama's border fence order, which Congress wouldn't fund. The rollback of Dodd-Frank? An order "directing the secretary of the Treasury to review existing regulations and report back on which ones might be refined to achieve better outcomes."
What Trump has done is created a bunch of presidential news-hits, but not much presidenting.
But Miller was dead wrong about this. There is a wide gap, a chasm even, between what the administration has said and what it has done. There have been 45 executive orders or presidential memoranda signed, which may seem like a lot but lags President Barack Obama's pace. More crucially, with the notable exception of the travel ban, almost none of these orders have mandated much action or clear change of current regulations. So far, Trump has behaved exactly like he has throughout his previous career: He has generated intense attention and sold himself as a man of action while doing little other than promote an image of himself as someone who gets things done.
President Trump Has Done Almost Nothing
[Zachary Karabell/Politico]
(via Naked Capitalism)
