It has become painfully obvious that President Donald Trump does the ranting, and the generals (one still a three-star, the other two retired) do the governing. That’s a problem for democracy and also for domestic policy.
Trump tweets and bellows at campaign events. He threatens lawmakers of his own party and raises the possibility of a government shutdown. He incites racial animosity and turns his crowds against the media, declaring the latter to be disloyal Americans. (“I really think they don’t like our country. I really believe that,” he said in Phoenix.) He pardons former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio as a reward for supporting Trump’s noxious birther campaign and without consulting the Justice Department, thereby siding with a racial profiler and disgraced law enforcement officer who had been found guilty of criminal contempt.