Meanwhile all year there has been more and more overt Trumpishness in the administration’s policy moves — the trade warring, the end of the Iran deal, the performative cruelty and performative militarization at the border, the made-for-reality-TV dealmaking with North Korea, the president’s strange fanboy encounter with Vladimir Putin.

And both trends, the personnel and the political, have reached a crescendo this Christmas season, with the sudden pullout from Syria, the equally sudden departure of James Mattis, the president’s war with the Federal Reserve amid a tumbling stock market, and now a government shutdown over the Trumpiest sticking point of all, the fabled border wall. When NeverTrumpers envisioned the Trump presidency, it was basically the last couple weeks of headlines extended over four long years — Defense secretary quits while accusing Trump of being soft on Russia … Stock market tumbles as Trump denies plan to fire Fed Chair … Trump welcomes government shutdown over immigration … Trump pulls out of Syria after conversation with Turkish dictator …

So here we are, with Trump finally unbound, just as everyone who once opposed him had feared. Except that Trump unbound is also Trump hemmed in — no longer steered by the departing General Mattis or guided by the unlamented Speaker Ryan, but opposed directly by a Democratic House armed with subpoena power and prepared for political war. And Trump unbound is also Trump alone, his electoral mystique gone with the midterms and Senate Republicans more inclined to distance themselves the further off the policy reservation he goes and not even Chris Christie willing to take the job of managing his White House.

So the president is at once more dangerous and less so, more unconstrained and yet easier to balk, more liberated and more isolated — a strange state of affairs even by the strange standards of this administration. And to save myself the embarrassment of future mea culpas, I won’t make predictions but just offer scenarios for how this combination might shape the next exciting year of Trump.

The first possibility, and to my mind the least likely, is a return to (relative) normalcy. In this scenario Trump reacts to indicators he understands, the jittery stock market above all, by containing his impulses a little more, finding (somewhere) a new set of establishment hands to guide him, making the necessary deals with House Democrats, and hunkering down to survive what the Mueller investigation has to throw at him. D.C. politics becomes, by this presidency’s standards, strangely boring; there is a grind of subpoenas and scandals but Republicans stick with Trump; there is zero policy progress and a basic Democratic advantage but no dramatic change.