Story highlights Tom Barrack: People should stop judging President Trump on every word that is uttered

The arrival of Trump is causing many legacy institutions to feel challenged

Tom Barrack, executive chairman and founder of Colony Northstar, an international investment firm, was the chairman of the presidential Inaugural Committee. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) As a very young man barely rounding the corner on 30, I had the opportunity to witness and view the Reagan revolution by serving as an enthusiastic and blindly optimistic apprentice in his administration. Now at the opposite bookend of my life, I have the challenge and honor of providing tiny bits of advice and counsel to my friend, the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

Tom Barrack

Like President Reagan before him, President Trump is beginning a White House journey with a rocky and tumultuous introduction in the midst of great division, discontent and confusion among a very diverse and conflicted American and foreign constituency. I cannot help but reflect on the parallels of these two administrations as a compass for clarity and direction.

President Trump is not only changing the tapestry of policy but is maneuvering the manner in which it is woven and the threads of its composition. His campaign was unconventional and disruptive, and he is now tackling Washington in an unconventional and disruptive way. It was Reagan who famously responded to a question from a Washington veteran on doing things unconventionally, "Well, isn't that why we are here?"

The arrival of President Trump is causing many legacy institutions to feel challenged as they scramble with the change that he is stewarding. The inertia and momentum of the government does not naturally lend itself to new methods of communication, thinking and negotiation.

In fact, the stable, recurring patterns of the Washington bureaucracy are designed to be immune from a consistent changing of the deck chairs, and become agitated by the need to acclimate to new circumstances. President Trump is facing the same opposition that President Reagan did almost four decades ago from the fixtures of the Washington and the global geopolitical scene. The bureaucracy is not the enemy but an essential ingredient to our success.

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