TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Six months into his presidency, Donald Trump’s detractors portray him as a do-nothing president with no big wins on issues such as health care, taxes and infrastructure.
That may be true if the benchmark is legislation, but that’s an incomplete benchmark. To gauge a president’s impact you have go beyond the laws he signs to the vast authority he wields through departments and agencies that apply the law. On that score, Mr. Trump is on track to do a lot. On finance, the internet, immigration and drugs, to name just a few issues, Trump appointees have begun nudging the economy and the country in a more conservative, pro-business direction. Whether that’s good or bad is to a great extent in the eye of the beholder. What isn’t debatable is that the imperial presidency, after expanding under Barack Obama, remains just as formidable under Mr. Trump.
In recent weeks headlines have been dominated by the Senate’s stop-start efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Away from this drama, Mr. Trump’s Labor Department moved to undo Mr. Obama’s expansion of eligibility for overtime pay, financial regulators dropped efforts to tighten restrictions on banker pay, and the Interior Department signaled it would rescind proposed rules on oil and gas fracking on federal land. On Wednesday [7-26-17] Mr. Trump announced transgender individuals could not serve in the military, reversing an Obama-era decision.”
-Greg Ip, “The Myth of Trump’s Do-Nothing Presidency,” The Wall Street Journal online, July 26, 2017 10:28am