(CNN) More than six months after taking office, President Donald Trump, his top aides and at least one Cabinet secretary exist in a rolling tumult. The White House welcomed a second chief of staff over the weekend and is waiting on a third communications director. The first press secretary resigned, but remains on the job in a reduced (or is it expanded?) role, while his successor launched her tenure by answering questions off a child's letter to the President.

The idea that Trump would, or will, ever preside over a functioning strategic messaging operation is a corollary of the long sought after "presidential pivot." For establishment politicians, consultants and pundits, this desire to see Trump conform, even cosmetically, to past norms is their white whale -- as longed-for as it is painfully elusive.

Trump, of course, has no desire to be tangled up in those nets. From the time he became a tabloid star in New York City, well before most of America was introduced to his current persona, Trump acted as his own "communications director." And sometimes his own press secretary. In that particular fishbowl, within those norms, it worked. Trump was selling himself, the gossip columnists their papers, and public could enjoy or ignore the results at their leisure. Success for Trump was the front page. That secured, it was on to the next.

But success -- defined here and now as advocating for and eventually enacting his political agenda -- in his new job requires a different set of muscles. It also demands the trust, loyalty and competence of subordinates. Not because they are good people (or that lacking any or all of the above suggests they are not), but for the simple purpose of maximizing the President's power -- an awesome tool, for better or worse, when exerted in conditionally optimal settings.

The story of the GOP's failure to repeal (and/or replace) Obamacare this spring and summer will spawn, if not books, then chapters in larger volumes about a very weird time in American political life.

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