Two days after the Republican National Convention began in July, The New York Times Magazine ran a prescient story that still illuminates the softest part of President Donald Trump's velvety soft underbelly: He's not a leader.

Leadership requires a theory of mind, an ability to recognize that other people have desires, convictions, intentions and knowledge that are different from one's own. It takes organizational mastery to channel those various and sundry elements toward a concerted and constructive end. And it demands that leaders establish trust by demonstrating personal accountability.

That's not Donald Trump. He knows how to do one thing.

Before he settled on Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, Trump took a close look at John Kasich. After the Ohio governor dropped out of White House contention, Trump's son Donald Jr. approached an adviser to ask if Kasich would like to be the most powerful vice president in history. What did that mean? the adviser reportedly asked. According to the Times Magazine, Donald Jr. said that it meant he would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy. In other words: Everything. Well, Kasich's adviser asked, incredulously, what would the president be doing? The answer: "Making America great again."

Two months into Trump's presidency, we can now see this May exchange between Donald Jr. and Kasich's team as a prelude to a presidency. In his chronic fugue state, Trump does not lead a real country occupied by real people. He does what he does best: promotes and protects a brand. Only now, instead of "Donald Trump," the brand is "President Trump." The political is literally personal. Trump has divorced word from deed, representation from reality, signifier from signified. There is no there there. Only the brand.

Trump spends hours a day examining cables news' portrayal of his White House. His staff spends more time on image than policy. When they do focus on policy, the emphasis is optics, not efficacy. The new travel ban, for instance, will almost certainly face legal challenges, but most national security experts, even officials within the Department of Homeland Security, remain puzzled. The greatest threat is not from refugees or immigrants from (now) six Muslim-majority nations. Not one known terrorist has come from there. The greatest threat is from self-radicalized lone wolves already in the U.S. Yet Trump plays to the mistaken perception that slamming the doors will make us safer.

The same can be said of the executive order targeting virtually any unauthorized immigrant, even those married to U.S. citizens and children brought to the U.S. by their parents (otherwise known as Dreamers). Trump's rationale has been to expel "illegals" taking jobs away from native-born workers. But mass deportation will almost certainly suck billions out of local economies, as deported immigrants take their wealth and purchasing power with them, while the cost of anti-immigrant policy will be in the billions.

Because the Trump brand is about toughness, the administration is considering a policy by which mothers apprehended at the border are separated from their children for indefinite periods of time. The idea is that such inhumanity will deter anyone thinking about crossing illegally. But the result will surely be radicalizing immigrants already here, deteriorating already deteriorated relations with Mexico and not one dent made in illegal immigration.

The president's brand is why he is blind to an obvious opportunity. He has vowed to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure. The Democrats have pined for such fiscal stimulus since 2011 when American Jobs Acts was introduced. But Trump is unlikely to find common ground with congressional Democrats, because doing so would take effort. The president has not introduced one piece of legislation even though Republicans control both chambers of the Congress. If the obligations of governing require more than what's minimally needed to burnish the president's brand, this president finds something else to do.

Protecting the presidential brand means avoiding accountability at all costs – even if that means assaulting any and all "facts." He has no obligation to fight the desecration of Jewish cemeteries around the country. That is the work of his political enemies, he has said, trying to make him look bad. He has no obligation to listen to millions protesting his policies. They are disgruntled Democrats or paid protesters. They too are out to make him look bad.

This urge to protect his brand is so deeply seated that he refuses accountability even in matters of life and death. Days after taking office, Trump authorized a raid in Yemen during which a serviceman died. Though Navy SEAL Ryan Owens would surely be alive today if Trump had not authorized the raid, the president did not take responsibility for his death. Instead: "They lost Ryan."

This too may be prelude. Trump is poised to give Pentagon officials the authority to act without presidential authorization. In other words, the Pentagon may soon have the power to send men and women to their deaths but not be responsible to the citizenry those men and women died serving.