When I decided to hang up my mantle as ABC North America correspondent and head home to Australia, there were still nine Republicans battling it out for the right to represent their party in the 2016 election.

Four weeks ago, I came back. The only difference: Donald Trump is now in the Oval Office.

Nothing looks any different — not that you'd expect it to. DC is still DC, and I'll always have a soft spot for it in my heart.

I arrived just in time for July 4, and an Independence Day barbecue at bureau chief Zoe Daniel's house in the suburbs.

It felt good to return to that steamy Washington heat — especially having escaped a Melbourne winter only days before.

A jog through the presidents of past

The first US president, George Washington, stepped down after two terms.

DC's monuments continue to inspire. On my first day back, I went back to see them.

First stop: The monument to George Washington, who stepped down after two terms in office — despite the pleas of the new nation — to avoid becoming the kind of monarch he'd just fought a war to get rid of.

When he did, he enabled the first transition of power in the Western world that was not the result of inheritance or war.

Then, the path goes past the cherry trees to Thomas Jefferson's rotunda — the man who wrote the remarkable document that is the Declaration of Independence.

Inside, quotations from the man are engraved onto the walls, including one that is sadly often overlooked in a country that holds tight to the words of the founding fathers like Jefferson.

Founding father and former president Thomas Jefferson is still revered in the US capital. ( ABC News )

Jefferson had this to say about how future generations should adapt the laws those Founding fathers set down:

"Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

"We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilised society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Then, the path winds through the beautifully designed FDR memorial, and the monument to Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Until you reach my favourite place in Washington, the Lincoln Memorial.

Donald Trump says he can be as presidential as any president, except Abraham Lincoln. ( Alexander Gardner: Wikimedia Commons )

On its walls there are just two inscriptions: The Gettysburg Address, and Lincoln's second inaugural speech, given after his unexpected re-election as president.

As the long and bloody civil war was coming to an end, he faced the daunting task of not only reconstructing the devastated south, but bringing its people back into the fold of the union he fought to preserve.

Lincoln said: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.

"To bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

Gazing on a presidency of chaos up close

Donald Trump is unlike many of his predecessors in the US presidency. ( Reuters: Carlos Barria )

It's probably a bit unfair to hold modern presidents, in a modern news cycle, to that kind of standard.

But going back to those memorials was something I needed to do. I knew that this time my job would be different.

That I'd be seeing up close, in real time, the chaos of the Trump presidency.

Watching him push to the limits the institutions and laws that have, on the whole, served this country well for 230 years.

Institutions and laws that allowed the miracle of that first peaceful transfer of power — from George Washington to John Adams — to continue on all the way to Mr Trump.

So DC is the same as it was when I left in late 2015. But the job of North America correspondent is not.

The controlled predictability of the Obama presidency "is now gone". ( Reuters: John Gress )

I loved my three years here, and they were never dull.

But the steady, controlled predictability of Barack Obama's presidency does seem like a bygone era.

First of all, you can now never really let down your guard. When I was living here, my phone was always on me, and never switched off — ready for the call to jump on a breaking story: a riot in Ferguson, a mass shooting in Charleston, or a dam burst in Brazil.

But they didn't happen that often.

Now, when you leave the office, you know there's a solid chance you'll be filing again later that night if the President's been hitting the tweets.

Donald Trump asked a crowd in Ohio if they thought his face would end up on Mount Rushmore. ( Reuters: Kevin Lamarque )

The sheer amount of news generated by Mr Trump is mind blowing.

On one day this week, there were three simultaneous major stories running — something I can't ever remember happening under Mr Obama.

In the morning, Mr Trump's son in law arrived at Congress to be interviewed about his contacts with Russians during the campaign.

Later that day, the President's major campaign promise was on life support in the Senate.

Republicans needed the Vice-President's casting vote just to keep it alive for another few days — but the prognosis was dire.

Swirling around all this was the President's bizarre attack on his own attorney-general, trying to force him out of the job.

That prompted fears Mr Trump was gearing up to fire the Special Counsel investigating the Trump campaign and its ties with Russia — potentially sparking a crisis to rival Watergate.

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At around seven at night, when all that had calmed down, the final task of the day was to watch Mr Trump appear at a rally in Ohio — just to see if he dropped any nuggets about the Russia investigation, or his feud with the attorney-general.

There wasn't. Instead, he delivered a classic Trump moment and asked the crowd if they thought his face would end up on Mount Rushmore.

Congress design 'depends on honour'

With any other President, that kind of hubris would have been the most interesting thing to file on that day.

But under Mr Trump, it was a marginal footnote to a long day of chaos and drama. Or, as it's known here, a Tuesday.

The next day, the news cycle kicked into an even higher gear, with Anthony Scaramucci's colourful and expletive laden descriptions of his West Wing colleagues.

That night, the President's health care bill was defeated by his own party — and the next day, his chief of staff quit the White House.

Someone recently said that the founding fathers designed a system that predicted a president like Mr Trump — but pointed out that their design depends on an honourable Congress, willing to perform its role as a check on a rogue chief executive.

And this Congress is taking its sweet time on that one.

Demonstrators wearing paper mache heads representing Mr Trump and the planet Earth. ( AP: Pablo Martinez Mosivais )

My Republican friends here in DC say their president is a narcissist, and even "crazy".

But they say the public service is ploughing on under its own power, getting the job of running the country done while the White House spins its wheels ever deeper in the mud.

A run around the monuments to past presidents restores my faith that this system is strong enough to come through, that there will be another peaceful transition of power, and a rebalancing of the institutions.

But as my colleague Chris Uhlmann has noted, America's prestige has taken a hit — as Mr Trump would say, bigly.