I. Buzzing Flies

The West Wing of the White House is a cramped collection of tiny offices, some of them windowless, linked by narrow hallways. New inhabitants are sometimes surprised at just how small the physical quarters are. The current configuration results from a Depression-era renovation designed to increase the workspace of the president’s staff without expanding the physical footprint of the building. Parts of the West Wing can feel grungy and old, and look as if they have been repainted far too often. Many of the offices contain mousetraps to fight the inevitable infestation. Because the windows don’t open, for security reasons, large flies buzz near the ceilings. The relentless pressures and close quarters mean that someone in the West Wing always seems to be sick.

You’ll hear White House veterans say that working in the West Wing is like being on a submarine, sealed off from the rest of the world. “You are right on top of each other and you see each other all the time,” recalled one West Wing veteran. “The day-to-day volume of stuff that comes your way in the White House is overwhelming, especially to a new group.” What sustains you, this person went on, are the stated principles of the president and the dedication of the people working with him to pursue that vision. Ken Duberstein, a White House chief of staff to Ronald Reagan, told me, “There’s only one agenda in any White House, and it’s the president’s.”

VIDEO: The Trump Presidency Is Already in Trouble

But now, in full view of the country and the world, we are watching what happens when a president is elected on the basis of an incoherent and crowd-sourced agenda, one that pandered to white nationalists and stoked economic anxiety. When that same president is someone who has never managed a large bureaucracy and brings almost no close associates who have. And when some of the aides he haphazardly acquired a few months before taking office care more about their own ambitions than his own—whatever they are.

Now combine all that with the inevitable transition from a helter-skelter campaign metabolism to the grinding process of governance. What is happening inside the White House, according to a senior official who is close to the president, is a “reversion to the mean”—a correction of sorts. “When narrative gets bigger than the reality”—for an individual, for a campaign, for an administration—“there is nowhere to go but down.” Two years ago, when Donald J. Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower with his wife, Melania, on announcement day, the entire campaign consisted of three people: Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager; Hope Hicks, the press secretary; and Trump himself, the candidate. The campaign evolved multiple times after that. “We are in a position now where things are in evolution again,” this senior official told me. “We keep adjusting for what is now.”

II. “I Didn’t Ask for This”

When Donald Trump moved into the Oval Office, he redecorated decisively, replacing his predecessor’s maroon drapes with heavy gold ones. He also brought with him a collection of advisers who, according to another senior administration official, not only have “breathtaking personal agendas” and are willing to “malign the people around him” but are also prepared to say, “We are going to do it our way and push through what we want whether it is right for him or not.” The two former presidents Trump is most often compared to are Reagan (for the unserious image that Reagan had as a B-list movie actor) and Richard Nixon (for his authoritarian tendencies, his paranoia, and his antipathy toward the press). But those presidents, this senior administration official explained, had “a real ideology and a real set of issues, and that doesn’t exist here.”