In the Trump administration, though, it is not always clear which of the president’s comments are meant to be orders and which of them are just self-expression. When the president says he wants a health policy that covers more people than Obamacare, does it mean his aides have to come up with a policy that accomplishes this goal?

Nobody has taken it that way, and Trump has not done anything about it. The Pentagon is slow-walking Trump’s policy excluding transgender people from the military. If he is planning to do something about it, the news has not come out of his leak-happy White House. (He hasn’t even tweeted a complaint, pathetic as that would be.)

Based on his conduct so far, Trump views the president’s most important role as being commenter-in-chief. Administering the White House and through it the executive branch so as to make his comments reality has not been nearly as high a priority. He hires people who don’t share his views, complains when they don’t act on his views, and . . . that’s all.