After renegotiating a contract with the Beatles in 1969, Capitol Records president Bob Gortikov complained about the way that Allen Klein, a famously unpleasant talent manager who was representing the band in the negotiations, had gone about it all. “We would have done the deal anyway,” Gortikov said. “But did he have to be so nasty about it?” Gortikov was surely right. It seems obvious that, with a band as valuable as the Beatles, a less odious person than Klein could have handled it with more grace and still have gotten the same results. But, until Klein came along, no one had.

Yes, an analogy looms. Over the past year, Donald Trump has, among other things, set off a trade war with China, waged war with Congress over border security, fought with Amazon about avoidance of taxes, worked to replace NAFTA, demanded that NATO members kick in more money for defense, ordered a withdrawal from Syria, and announced intentions to withdraw from Afghanistan. Each of these efforts has triggered widespread outrage. Yet, more often than not, the criticisms have been couched in “yes, but” language, like that used by Bob Gortikov against Allen Klein. In each instance, as with Allen and Klein, before Trump did it, no one else had.

Yes, admitted The Economist, a free-trade bastion, the Trump administration was right to redefine trade relations between the United States and China, but it was “very bad at managing them.” Yes, Trump’s “proposed changes to NAFTA are good policy,” agreed The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner, but “Trump’s brand of nationalism is mostly economically irrational and politically demagogic.” Yes, Trump “has, in some ways, aligned with the progressive critique” in his attacks on Amazon, noted The Atlantic’s David A. Graham, but “his previous statements suggest he has more personal, and dangerous, motives than he claims.” Yes, conceded a vast array of NATO watchers, NATO members ought to pay what they promised, but as one Senate aide put it, “there’s a more diplomatic way to go about it.” Yes, said Trump’s Republican rivals in 2016, it was time to get serious about border security, but not so obnoxiously. Yes, said The New York Times, we should get out of Syria someday, but “there is no indication that Mr. Trump has thought through the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal.” And so on.

His critics, most of the time, aren’t wrong. Trump does bollix up countless things. He inflames what he ought to calm. He offers remedies worse than the ailment. He gets rolled in negotiations. He changes his mind on matters midstream. He runs through competent aides as if they were Apprentice contestants. He is, in too many ways to count, the wrong man for the job. But the right people for the job didn’t show up or didn’t act.

Many of the problems identified by Trump had been obvious to close watchers for decades. Some presidential candidates, such as Pat Buchanan and Bernie Sanders and Ralph Nader and even Barack Obama, folded them into their campaign pitches. But few got addressed in a serious way by anyone who took office. George W. Bush didn’t see a problem, and his successor, who did see a problem, often held back on hard remedies. Despite grumbling, Barack Obama never did much to change NAFTA, pressure NATO partners to pay up, or address border-security loopholes, and he got us into new foreign conflicts and China’s trade takeover to proceed largely unchecked.