Unfamiliarity with the job doesn’t necessarily doom the person who holds it; after all, there’s no job or experience that can actually prepare you to be the most powerful person on the planet and to run one of the world’s most complex bureaucracies. But Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey is a perfect illustration of the specific reasons why the wins Trump promised and craves seem so elusive — and why, without a personality transplant, even the presidency can’t deliver Trump the respect and affirmation he so desperately needs.

Let’s work backwards, shall we?

AD

AD

One of Trump’s most persistent problems as president is his administration’s persistence in treating the media, colleagues in Congress and the general public in a way that suggests they believe we are fools, or at least possessed of dog-like attention spans. While it’s true that the constantly-roiling news cycle means that some of Trump’s worst acts have shrunk against the enormity of the whole, certain items inevitably stick in a way that Trump doesn’t seem to understand and has little tolerance for.

Beyond what the Trump administration wants the public to believe about Comey’s firing, the president ran in to trouble with his FBI director because he wanted things Comey was unable or unwilling to deliver.

The president wanted Comey to confirm his speculations that the Obama administration had wiretapped him, an allegation Comey actively refuted. And while Trump’s letter terminating Comey alluded to three occasions on which Comey apparently informed Trump that he was not personally under investigation, there was nothing Comey could have done to clear the persistent speculation about what Russia might have done to put Trump in the White House and why.

AD

AD

Rich people in private life can surround themselves with sycophants who can tell them soothing lies without consequence. The director of the FBI is not the president’s valet, nor someone eager to broker a business deal by pretending friendship with him. The Post is not Page Six, eager for Trump-related tips to fill column inches. The Secret Service’s job is to protect the president’s body, not his peace of mind. There is no one in the United States who has an obligation to make the president feel good about himself, except perhaps the first lady, and even she has no official job description.

Finally, Trump doesn’t seem to recognize the difference between an ephemeral victory and a substantive one.

Ramming a health-care bill that hasn’t even been scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and that is unlikely to be passed by the Senate, through the House of Representatives is technically a victory for Trump in that it’s something he wanted to happen and that did happen. But if the House vote hasn’t been greeted as the equivalent of the passage, signing and implementation of the Affordable Care Act it’s because those two events are not in fact the same thing. And however good the bill’s passage in the House made Trump feel, there is a vast gulf between that momentary glow and the actual impact the law, if passed, could eventually have on Americans’ health care and Republicans’ electoral prospects. Trump’s quest for short-term wins has a tendency to set him up for long-term frustrations.

AD

AD