A friend who was close to the late British Prime Minister and conservative juggernaut, Margaret Thatcher, once told me of a major distain the Iron Lady held for modern politics, and indeed, modern politicians. In one of their regular meetings where they read the paper together and discussed the affairs of the day, she turned to look at him and said “You see, the worst thing about politicians today is that they are far more concerned with saying something rather than doing something.”

While Thatcher was known for far greater speeches than this, her observation shared in this short story has always stuck with me — being someone who opens their mouth but doesn’t follow through with action is a characteristic I have since made an effort to avoid. However, aren’t people more concerned with politicians they dislike from doing too much rather than too little? The political application was initially unclear to me, but while glazing over an article covering President Trump’s mistake on Friday, I immediately saw Thatcher’s point.

Trump has consistently prided himself as being a man of action, as someone who would rather throw talking by the wayside altogether and just get to it. On the campaign trail, he regularly claimed his agenda would be pursued “immediately” or even “on day one!” Many were understandably excited that the Federal Government, too often gridlocked and slow to accomplish the smallest of tasks, would be spurred into action. Latent problems that have been plaguing the US for decades would not only be addressed, but “immediately” so.

Indeed, many believe that Trump is a man of his word. Since he took office, there doesn’t seem to have been a day gone by where he hasn’t declared a new executive order, or has demanded action from the other branches of government. So far Trump has battled with both Congress and the Courts to push his agenda through, and while he has not been entirely successful, surely it can’t be the President’s fault that the other branches of government aren’t playing ball?

But that’s the entire point Thatcher made, the point that I had not been demonstrated so clearly until now. Modern politicians always appear to be doing things. Starting initiatives, making speeches, demanding progress — it’s all part of it — but when do they actually sit down and do it? While Trump is far from alone in this regard, his first few months in office have been emblematic of the problem. As soon as he first sat in the Oval Office, he may have been writing executive orders one after the other, but we should not mistake this for actually doing something. While executive orders can be powerful, they are far from the most difficult or most thorough action the President can take and are easily reversed. Trump can “demand” Congress do this and that by fiat, but that doesn’t actually mean that they will. Trump can “demand” all illegal immigrants pack up their things and hop on the nearest bus to Elsewheresville but that doesn’t make it so.

To pick an example, Trump’s order to repeal two existing regulations for every new one put in place is not doing anything. It allows Trump to claim he’s done his part and leave the heavy work to someone else. Yet, if Congress did manage to pass such radical reform in Congress that enforced this demand, the President would undoubtedly try to take the credit. That is because, ironically, Trump is the epitome of the modern politician, not their antithesis as he so often claims. Doing something in politics is hard, especially with a separation of powers. Repealing Obamacare, destroying ISIS, or whatever other campaign promises Trump has tied himself to will be incredibly difficult to follow through with.

Modern politicians would rather tell us of all the good they are doing, all of the initiatives they’ve started and all the orders they have written rather than actually sit down and do it properly— after all, it’s far more easy to win reelection that way.

While those on the left, and many on the right, may be relieved to realize that Trump is yet to actually do something with the power of the Presidency, his supporters should be disappointed. So far it seems that Trump is creating the facade of a “do-something President”, but regardless of how many executive orders he insists on signing, or this week forgot to, this is frankly not the case.

I have a funny feeling that had Thatcher been alive today, she would have leaned over to my friend after reading about Trump’s most recently blunder and said to him, “you see, that’s exactly my point.”