The president is this presidency's worst enemy

In short, the problem is Trump’s personality. His presidency doesn’t suffer from a failure of ideas, but a failure of character.

For the last two years, when asked how I thought the Trump administration would go, I’ve replied, “Character is destiny.” This wasn’t necessarily a prediction of a divorce or sexual scandal, but rather an acknowledgment of the fact that, under normal circumstances, people don’t change. And septuagenarian billionaires who’ve won so many spins of the roulette wheel of life are even less likely to change.

It’s true that Trump has racked up some wins — a few relatively easy executive orders and the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch, who’ll wind up taking the late Antonin Scalia’s seat one way or another.

Good news is not defining his term, though. Trump’s off-the-cuff claim that President Obama “wiretapped” him ate up a third of his first 100 days and hurt his standing with allies and voters alike. If you believe that this was some brilliant 4-D chess gambit hatched at Mar-a-Lago, you must believe that plummeting to 35 percent approval was part of the plan, too.

The president is this presidency’s worst enemy, and there’s no sign of improvement ahead.