On Friday, Donald Trump will have been in the Oval Office for nine months. In some ways, it feels like it’s been longer. (Can you remember life before Trump tweets?) And it’s become harder to step back from the daily madness and consider what Trump’s record means for the U.S. and its future. But maintaining that perspective is necessary if we’re to keep track of what matters amid the feuds, spats, meltdowns, and turmoil that are the Trump Administration.

There are two sides to the story. If we consider Trump’s Presidency a stress test for American democracy, the system has responded pretty well, hemming him in, challenging him, and frustrating some of his more illiberal designs. But there are worrying signs, too. Every day Trump remains in office, he further polarizes the country and diminishes its international standing. And, as he contemplates the looming reality of being written off as a Presidential failure, there is no knowing where his demons will lead him.

With the notable exception of the Republican Party, most of the institutions of state and civil society have responded forcefully to Trump. The federal courts knocked down his first two anti-Muslim travel bans. The Justice Department appointed a special counsel after Trump fired James Comey, the director of the F.B.I. Intelligence officials have leaked damaging information about Trump’s associates and their dealings with Russian officials. The military command, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, successfully leaned on the President to support Article 5 of the NATO treaty. Even inside the Trump White House—which Senator Bob Corker has deemed an “adult day care center”—staffers “spend a significant part of their time devising ways to rein in and control the impetuous president,” as the Washington Post reported on Monday. Stories like this emerge virtually every day. The U.S. media, which Trump labelled an “enemy of the people” shortly after he took office, has never been so energized. Outside Washington, meanwhile, there is a large popular resistance movement that the President single-handedly spurred into being. In addition to riling up traditional supporters of the Democratic Party, he has drawn into activism a lot of people who previously didn’t think of themselves as very political. Even in a democracy beholden to large interest groups, determined public engagement can still have a big effect—for an example, look at the Republican Party’s failure to repeal Obamacare.

That is the plus side of the ledger. If the question, on Inauguration Day, was whether American democracy would prove to be bigger than a President Trump, the answer, so far, is largely in the affirmative. However, it is no time to relax. Unless Trump resigns or is removed from office, he will have at least thirty-nine more months in power. (And a lot longer if he gets reëlected.) The key question is how much damage he will have done by the time he is gone.

Although his legislative agenda has so far proved a bust, he’s making progress (by his lights) in other ways. Last week, the White House took several steps to sabotage the Obamacare insurance exchanges. This week, Trump’s modified and open-ended travel ban will go into effect. Neil Gorsuch, whom Trump nominated to the Supreme Court, has restored a conservative majority to the Court. And his appointees at agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board are busy—largely away from the public view—rolling back regulations that addressed climate change, market competition, the new economy, and workers’ rights. Over time, these administrative changes will have a huge impact.

On the foreign-policy front, Trump’s advisers apparently persuaded him not to scrap the Obama Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran and settle, instead, for publicly disavowing it and tossing the issue to Congress. Given Trump’s prior rhetoric, that was a mildly encouraging development, but his isolationism and belligerence are alive and well. Under his leadership, the U.S. has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate-change agreement, and UNESCO. NAFTA could be next. In the place of Pax Americana, we have what Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, calls “The Withdrawal Doctrine.”

And the national-security establishment hasn’t yet faced the ultimate test. A couple of weeks ago, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, virtually admitted that Trump was trying to persuade the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, that he is mad enough to launch a nuclear strike. In the internal logic of brinkmanship, it can perhaps make sense to sow doubt in your opponent’s head about whether you are fully rational. But what if Trump really is demented enough to order a preëmptive attack on Pyongyang? Would the three generals who serve as top Administration officials—Mattis; John Kelly, the White House chief of staff; and H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser—be able to stop him?

It’s also terrifying to consider what Trump might do in response to an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack on U.S. soil. In such a case, the country would be forced to mourn the victims while dealing with a President who in 2015 talked about forcing Muslims to carry special identity cards, raiding mosques without search warrants, and instituting mass surveillance in Muslim communities. He has also called for a return to torturing terrorism suspects.

Even if we are lucky enough to escape a deadly war or a terrorist atrocity, the cumulative impact of having Trump in the White House for another thirty-nine months, or possibly even longer, is hard to fathom. Since the first day of his Presidential campaign, he has been busy agitating against many of the norms associated with U.S. democracy. “It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write,” he told an interviewer last week. A day later, he talked about pulling emergency responders out of stricken Puerto Rico, whose inhabitants have been American citizens for a century.

To be sure, many of Trump’s utterances don’t come to much in policy terms. But that doesn’t excuse them, or mitigate the psychological onslaught he is unleashing on the American polity. The United States is a huge, heterogeneous country with deep social, racial, and economic fissures. To maintain unity, it has constructed an elaborate narrative (some of it based on myth) that everyone subscribes to the same basic values, and that everyone gets accorded equal treatment and respect.

Practically every day, Trump undermines this narrative, spewing forth a never-ending torrent of divisiveness and venom. When he isn’t targeting those he views as his political enemies—NBC News, CNN, the Times—he often lashes out at members of minority groups, such as black N.F.L. players or the mayor of San Juan. The racists and hatemongers see what he is doing, and they are encouraged. People who have witnessed other democracies fray and other divided countries come apart are looking on in dismay.

Despite his promise to “Make America Great Again,” Trump has delivered practically nothing except chaos, bombast, and division. As long as he occupies the Presidency, an office for which he is blatantly unsuited, he will continue to chip away at the country’s foundations. Right now, only his Cabinet colleagues and the Republicans on Capitol Hill have the power to bring this great ordeal to an end. There is little sign of them summoning the necessary will and courage to act.