Trump is delivering for his voters, and Washington doesn't seem to care

I’m not saying Trump is a popular president, nor would I deny he’s had his share of embarrassments. What I am saying is that a Trump voter would have very little reason to be disappointed in this presidency so far. The negative poll numbers are in part a response to Washington’s unrelenting hostility to Trump. And his greatest misstep, the failure of his health care bill, was largely a consequence of him deciding for once to play by Washington’s rules. On those matters under his direct control, the president has delivered.

Above all, Trump pledged to be a jobs president, to restore growth and opportunity and ultimately to improve the standard of living of working people. While the relationship between any presidency and the infinite economic interactions of 6 billion people is tenuous at best, no one can argue that President Trump has slowed America’s economic recovery. On the contrary, his election coincided with a burst of economic activity and investor and consumer confidence: the Trump Trade that continues to this day. Last weekend’s Wall Street Journal carried on its front page a remarkable graph showing the liftoff, even accounting for the recent small drop, of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since last November. The market seems to have been elated at the prospect of a business-friendly president who would not cede authority to unelected and capricious regulatory bodies. Consumers and small businesses and manufacturers feel the same.

The jobs picture is also pleasing. In February the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent. The latest ADP survey showed a higher-than-expected 263,000 jobs added in March, continuing the record begun under President Obama. Not all of the data are positive. Median household income, which increased last year, has yet to reach its pre-crisis high, and the civilian labor force participation rate remains stubbornly low, including among prime-age males. What we can say is that Trump’s ascent has inspired confidence and perhaps even some of those animal spirits thought to be the source of economic activity. Good start.