Donald Trump’s new chief of staff has vowed to impose military discipline and straighten things out, as one might expect of a retired marine general facing a gigantic mess. John Kelly’s appointment has been greeted as “an almost perfect lab test of whether a Trump White House can be functional”: he is highly respected, is not part of a faction, and has been promised that all staff, even family members, will report to him (good luck with that, General Kelly). He may, indeed, quash the crudest outbursts of an internecine war fought on multiple fronts, as he sought to in dismissing director of communications Anthony Scaramucci. Yet it seems highly unlikely that he will be able to end the incompetence and infighting of this administration. It is far from clear that the president really wants him to. There are several reasons for the farcical tussle for control in the West Wing, but the primary one is the man in the Oval Office. “Changing the boss’s behaviour? That would warrant a fifth star,” joked David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Obama.

With each day it becomes more obvious that Donald Trump is both incapable of and unwilling to change. After all, his boorish, bigoted, ignorant and dishonest campaign won him the presidency when most thought it impossible. He ran as the disrupter-in-chief, reaching out directly to the public and vowing to use their support to destroy entrenched but failing structures. This might explain his blithe, reality-defying declaration of “a great day at the White House!” as he sacked the communications director he had hired 10 days before. But the limits of embracing chaos are evident in the failure of attempts to roll back Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms. Campaigning and governing are very different kinds of business. Mr Trump sees no need to change course. However much some supporters hoped to use him as president, his interest was never really in running America; only in being its boss.

Meanwhile the grenades he lobs via Twitter or interview cloud the issue that still lies at the heart of his presidency: Russian meddling in the US election, and the possible collusion of his own campaign. All other iniquities pale beside this. His fear of the resulting investigation – and especially the examination of his financial affairs – is confirmed by his attacks on Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the probe; and on his own appointee Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation. One of the reporters following him most closely notes his love of, and skill at, manipulating the press. He has maintained much of the support that won him the election. Was it coincidence that Mr Scaramucci launched his foul-mouthed, incendiary attack on Reince Priebus as businessman Bill Browder testified before the Senate judiciary committee about Russia’s tactics and how it might have dealt with the Trump team? Quite possibly. “Vladimir Putin is in the business of trying to create chaos everywhere,” Mr Browder said.

But Mr Putin is supremely strategic. Mr Trump’s own aides boast of controlling his screen time lest he lash out in response to a talk show; his intelligence briefings include his name as often as possible to keep him reading. His own friends say he is swayed by the last person he spoke to. All these things are as much a part of his erratic course as his calculation and improvised responses. To call him a master of chaos misconceives his relationship to the situation, as though a toddler mid-tantrum is still in control. Tiny children cannot curb their instincts; but they are not malicious – and only weak or exhausted parents let them run the household. Mr Trump is in charge of the most powerful country in the world, and his whims are clear in abrupt policy U-turns. While some draw comfort from the idea that foreign adversaries may be happy to let the US weaken itself, instead of triggering a crisis, the risks of mistakes and miscalculations – by both the US and, say, North Korea – are real.

Conservatives have deluded themselves that the president can be reined in, or at least harnessed to their cause. But as Republican senator Jeff Flake has pointed out this week: “To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties.” If the Faustian bargain was to endure the “very bumpy ride” to achieve long-held policy goals, it was not worth it, he concludes. Mr Flake might have backed Mr Trump 95% of the time, but the message, if not the messenger, should be heeded.