As the Republican Party’s latest attempt at immigration reform was melting down in Congress last week, I pressed a senior Republican congressman about the president’s role in the implosion. It is easy to forget, after all, that Donald Trump ran for office as a management guru. He insisted he would bring order and effectiveness to an unwieldy, dysfunctional government, and immigration remains his signature issue. Yet legislation reflecting Trump’s so-called “four pillars”—D.C. jargon for policy priorities—is headed nowhere.

Round and round we went, as I applied every stratagem I could to get this House Republican to admit, on the record, what I already knew to be true from private conversations with party insiders: Republicans believe Trump is bungling an opportunity to capitalize on his unrivaled street cred with the conservative grassroots to create the political space for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to overhaul a significant portion of the nation’s outdated—horrible, a joke, the president might say—immigration laws.

The congressman—a savvy, understated communicator—refused to bite. The new third rail in Republican politics is criticizing Trump, and he knew better than to pick a fight with the boss. The most he was willing to offer was an indirect comparison between Trump and Ronald Reagan, who until The Apprentice came along was the Republican president most revered as a great negotiator. Reagan led with “clarity, force, and direction,” the G.O.P. congressman told me, though in a way that left this juxtaposition hanging in the air, like the wind-up to a joke that trails off without a punch line. Finally, after conceding defeat and turning off my recorder, the congressman relaxed and let fly his candid assessment of Trump, for a dispatch I reported for the Washington Examiner. “He could be Nixon-to-China on immigration, but he does not lead.” The classic analogy, often used in politics, referred to President Richard Nixon turning China into a U.S. ally in the early 1970s, a risky political maneuver enabled by the Republican’s credibility as a virulent anti-communist.

It’s one of the more curious aspects of this administration that Donald Trump—perhaps the most hard-line anti-immigration voice in a generation—hasn’t actually been more active in pushing for a rewrite of U.S. immigration regulations. He’s demanded a raft of groundbreaking changes that would restrict both legal and illegal immigration if they ever overcame bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill. But in 18 months, the president hasn’t bothered to lead a major effort in Congress to get it done. He’s good at creating political crises—using his executive authority to rescind DACA and to order family separation at the border—but has no instinct for solving them. He’s persistent about the construction of a wall, always looking for new and creative ways to pay for it, but hasn’t managed to secure sufficient funding from his own party.

Of course, the president’s interests aren’t entirely aligned with Republican leadership. Trump understands intuitively that his base is more energized by the thrum of battle than by a cease-fire. Congress, however, is expected to deliver results. And indeed, the decision to consider immigration just months before critical midterm elections wasn’t Trump’s idea. It was the brainchild of Republican moderates in the House who represent battleground districts won by Hillary Clinton and feel the heat at home. They threatened to collude with Democrats to force a vote on legislation to legalize 2 million Dreamers—undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who until recently were eligible for a reprieve from deportation via the now-defunct Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. To head off a major embarrassment, House Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team promised the rebel moderates a vote on immigration via the regular legislative process. But to head off a second revolt from conservatives opposed to any form of amnesty and another potential embarrassment—passing immigration legislation with a majority of Democratic votes, put over the top by a minority of Republicans—they loaded up the bill with key Trump asks, including authorizing $25 billion for the wall, eliminating the visa lottery program, and ending chain migration.