No one man-or woman-can possibly represent the varied, competing interests of 327 million citizens. We are a president-obsessed nation, so much so that we undermine the very idea of our constitutional democracy. Today we notice when the president doesn’t show up. Polk’s wife, Sarah, was so concerned that the 11th president might enter a room unnoticed, she asked the Marine Band to play “Hail to the Chief” to get people to turn their head when he arrived. The Framers, fresh from a successful rebellion against a tyrannical king, envisioned an executive who was limited in power and even stature. They have accrued to the presidency over time, most in the recent past. Many of the responsibilities that vex Trump are ones that were not part of the job’s original design. We might consider that what looks like incompetence or impertinence on the part of the officeholder could also be evidence that the office itself is broken. If Trump were a less divisive figure, we might view these lapses differently. His breaks with tradition are so jarring, and the murmuration of tweets so thick, that debate about his behavior tends to be conducted on the plane of propriety and the president’s seeming disregard for it. The intensity of public feelings about President Trump makes it hard to measure him against the presidency. He doesn’t let niceties get in the way of taking care of business.

Why should Trump throw all his energy and political capital into producing quick results in Puerto Rico when the island’s poor planning and weak infrastructure have made success impossible? Why should he bow before Democrats who will never work with him anyway? Trump’s backers see him as a new kind of president, unburdened by political correctness and unconstrained by the old rules of Beltway deal making. Members of maga nation scoff at the president’s detractors, and bask in the glow of the burning norms. Trump even suggested that Barack Obama’s manner of descending the stairs of Air Force One was unpresidential. Or they demonstrate his hypocrisy: The man who now ignores the traditional responsibilities of the job was once perhaps the nation’s foremost presidential scold, regularly criticizing his predecessors when they responded to a disaster inadequately or played too much golf or couldn’t make a deal.

To his critics, Trump’s detours from the expectations of his office prove he is unfit to inhabit it.

Not even Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia-up for reelection in a state Trump won easily-was seriously approached as a negotiating partner. Trump promised that his decades in the real-estate business would make him an especially able negotiator, but on health care, taxes, and immigration, he hasn’t much bothered to trade horses with Democratic lawmakers. Even when the opposition has calcified, they are supposed to drink and dine with the other side and find a bipartisan solution. After white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, shouting “Jews will not replace us,” President Trump’s instinct was to emphasize that there were good people among the neo-Nazis. We have come to expect that when the national fabric rends, the president will administer needle and thread, or at least reach for the sewing box of unity. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

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