Trump’s first 100 days: Here’s why the President has proved far better than expected

So how has Donald Trump managed in his first hundreds days in office?

Well, the first thing to say about His Orangeness is that he's still there. He’s still tweeting. He is still defying his critics. He hasn’t yet, in his own terms, made America great again (not that it wasn’t great already). But the worst prognostications of his critics have been confounded. If he carries on at this rate he’ll get a second term. Unthinkable? I know, but we said that last time, didn’t we?

For a start he hasn’t managed to get himself impeached. There’s lots of stuff brewing all around him about Russian involvement in the presidential election, there’s more to come out about “collusion” and “links”. Even if the more exotic conspiracy theories fail to stand up there’ll be plenty of ammunition for the many Trump-haters/swamp dwellers to fire at President Trump. I suspect that they’ll wound but not conquer. The voters, in truth, are much more worried about the economy and national security than they are about some dirty tricks in the 2016 election. I mean what are they going to do? Re-run the election? Install Hilary? Put Vice President Pence in charge – a Trump but without the charisma? America has been through to many national traumas to wish to inflict another on itself. If Donald has survived this long, he’s probably in it for the duration.

And he has made a promising start on national security. The bombing of Assad’s air base after the chemical attack on a village full of civilians, including children, moved the world. Most tellingly, it moved Trump’s daughter Ivanka so much that she got dad to do something about it. For most American families that might mean a donation to the Red Cross or a stiff letter to a senator. In Trumps; case it meant a precise and proportionate bombing of an airfield, it demonstrated a degree of restraint and judgement that few thought Trump possessed. It also showed an unexpected willingness to change tack and take advice. It also left his liberal critics utterly bewildered. It must have been a very satisfying day’s work.

Things are also looking up on the Korean peninsula. That sounds facetious; it isn’t. One thing we all know is that the “sunshine” and “strategic patience” policies of two presidents Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama miserably failed to put the Kim dynasty back in its box. No American leader can watch Kim Jong-un develop the missile technology that can deliver a nuclear warhead to San Francisco and just do nothing – because that policy failed. It may be that under Trump's orders some smart intelligence work resulted in the last North Korean show of strength exploding on launch. The “big stick” of the USS Carl Vinson and its armada may well deter Kim form a more aggressive attack on Japan or South Korea in the coming days and weeks; and make him more willing to cut a deal of some kind with the United States. If that means Trump going to Pyongyang then so be it. The world will never have seen such an unlikely meeting. It would make Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 look routine, but it could be The Deal of the Century that the great deal maker himself would love to secure. Soon we may have to coin a new piece of political jargon to describe an audacious initiative that can only be taken form a position of ideological and military strength – a “Trump goes to North Korea” moment.

President Trump has also been standing up to Russia, another reason why the fuss about the 2016 election will come to be seen as an irrelevant sideshow – if Russia is so powerful why does Trump keep ignoring it? He was not prepared, as many fared, to let the Russians have a free hand in Syria – and nor in Europe. He simply cancelled his previous statement that Nato was “obsolete”, in return for the reasonable insistence that the Europeans pay their fees. By contrast his botched executive orders about banning people from majority Muslim nations did nothing for his reputation or that of the United States, and nor did his tragically misdirected tweets about the terror threat to Sweden and his attempted interference in the French elections. The best that can be said of those is that they may be quickly forgotten.

Less helpfully, for the British, Trump has also abandoned any fantasies about trying to break up the EU and favour Britain with a trade deal (always an exaggerated hope). Whether Ambassador Farage would have made a difference we will never know. But we are not apparently in the front of the queue for that vital new economic relationship with the biggest economy on earth, now that our partnership with the second-biggest one is drawing to a close.

Nor have Trump’s appointments proved the universal flops that many supposed and first appeared. True, some have had to depart after mere days in the job – National Security Adviser Mike Flynn being the most tragi-comic. Trump’s political strategist Steve Bannon has been eased off the National Security Council too, which is reverting to a more traditional make-up: Bannon may yet be kept in check by the old order. Others, such as the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, simply do not seem up to the job. Others, such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Jim Mattis, Defence Secretary, are proving to be assets, as is Vice President Pence. President Trump has shown an unhealthy willingness to promote his son-in-law Jared Kushner, but so far without any damage.

Overall, the US constitution has proved its worth, by demonstrating the power of Congress (over Obamacare) and the courts (over the Muslim travel ban) to restrain an imperial presidency. The media too has refused to be bullied by Trump and his volatile spokesman Sean Spicer. Spicer’s appalling lapses over Hitler, chemical weapons and the Holocaust may just have taught him some humility. One can but hope. For good or ill Trump also saw the conservative Neil Gorsuch confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. That at least shows that he can get things done.

More than anything Trump has, unaccountably, injected renewed self-confidence into the American economy. The stock market and the dollar have been more bullish on the hopes of faster growth. His protectionism – he has indeed scrapped the Trans Pacific Trade Deal – may actually help some US corporate profits and create more US jobs, even though in the longer run it means lower living standards and damage to the consumer. For now, it is working, and Trump is delivering on an admittedly flawed economic plan. Soon his tax and budget reforms will be unveiled.

The big banks are looking forward to some relaxation on their risk taking – undoing regulations which may have gone too far in the wake of the financial crisis, a case of bolting that door long after the bankers had bolted. America does need finance to invest.

It’s quite right that Trump shows scant regard for the environmental harm his economic policies will inflict – a price that cannot be worth paying. Nonetheless, he is doing what they voted him to do. More ambiguously his bid to repeal Obamacare failed, but for all the wrong reasons. It is still there and the longer it remains the tougher it will be to repeal. The resilience of Obama’s abiding achievement is perhaps the greatest surprise of these 100 days.

So, Trump’s still standing. His critics should be gracious enough to admit that, in some areas, he has performed better than expectations, if only because these expectations were so dismal that many thought they might not be alive when the time came to deliver a verdict on Trump’s 100 Days. In that sense the Trump-haters have done him an enormous service. Even they may be getting used to that most outlandish and outrageous, if not oxymoronic phrase, “President Donald Trump”. The last president to come to power with such low expectations and be held in as great disdain by the Establishment as Trump was Ronald Reagan, who is now regarded as one other greatest of presidents, and won a landslide second term at the age of 73. I’ll push the comparison no further than that.