There is a silver lining, as it were. Our joke of a president is marginalizing himself. He knows not what he does, which is best. If he grasped, if he were capable of grasping, what was happening in front of him he might change tack. But he won’t, and there’s nothing any former four-star general can do to correct course. This week’s news about the Mooch is satisfying to all Americans with a modicum of decency, but it’s garnish, and it will not alter the trajectory of the now unfolding opéra bouffe. One cannot resolve one’s neuroses, acquire humility, learn about the world, history, politics, geopolitics, business (real business, not showmanship) and become a leader—not Winston Churchill; maybe Jimmy Carter—in time for the 2018 midterms. The much-maligned G.O.P. professional class in D.C., that massive and sclerotic Pinto bulging with lobbyists and bundlers and P.R. tacticians and their many monkey-puppets, i.e., members of Congress, know this, which is why nothing is getting done, which is preferable.

But Congress is asserting itself, as the newly approved sanctions suggest. The adults in the proverbial room, the people who understand that simply flouting convention is not refreshing but destabilizing, are (inevitably, at long last) filling the vacuum. This not only shields America (somewhat) from the vagaries of its president. It also re-establishes some balance between the executive and legislative branches and demystifies an office that George W. Bush and Barack Obama in different ways sought to infuse with a power, an almost numinous force, that is as dangerous as it is unwarranted.

Not just that. The world is adjusting to a newly configured Washington, one in which the White House does not matter nearly as much as it once did. This is not necessarily bad. It may be very good. Republicans, who, we’re told, pine for a smaller, less centralized government, ought to welcome it. In this America, there are no Great Leaders, politics don’t matter that much, Washington is a backwater, real-estate values in northern Virginia are flat, and the daily energies and excitements of the nation do not revolve around Pennsylvania Avenue. In this country, the headlines are mostly generated by titans of business and entrepreneurs and unelected celebrities, and the politicians are what they claim to be—servants of the people.

Once, in Moscow, at a restaurant that specializes in Central Asian cuisine, I had dinner with a former Russian diplomat. He spoke good English, and he’d spent a great deal of time in New York and Washington, and he’d been to Miami, naturally, and seen the Grand Tetons, and his sense of humor comported with mine. He was unafraid of off-color jokes, as Russians are. He made crass generalizations about women, Georgians, Arabs, and Southerners. He dressed elegantly, in a way that Europeans and some Russians can pull off, with a flourish that makes a certain subset of Americans smirk.

We were about a five-minute walk from the U.S. Embassy, on the Garden Ring, next to a metro station, and it was February or March and cold. Like most Russians, he was convinced the American president had no idea what he was doing, especially when it came to Russia. Unlike most Russians, he had reasons—theories that were not that detached from reality. His theory was that Americans wanted a tsar but thought they wanted a president, and they were willing to grant their president innumerable powers as long as they believed those powers would be used to defend “freedom,” “justice,” “democracy.” He had a good point. One encountered flickers of this inanity after September 11, and during the 2008 campaign, and, today, on social media, perusing the posts and tweets of angry Trumpkins who wish The Leader could simply impose his will without consulting the Congress or being hemmed in by the courts.

Until recently, there was good reason to be pessimistic about almost everything, and, as always, it’s safer to stay that way. But one detects, beyond the bluster and fireworks, a billowing, faraway light, inching closer. We do not know who will succumb or prevail, but there is a fight now, finally, a tug of war that involves real power, money, the seismic movements of states and markets. Mostly, it is happening behind closed doors, obliquely, off the record, but it is happening, and it is something to rally behind. For now, that is the only thing.

Video: Vladimir Putin’s Impact on the 2016 Election