Is this the beginning of a new Donald Trump?

The president, who has governed like a rightwing Republican and terrified vulnerable people everywhere, struck a deal with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday to lift the debt limit and finance the government until the middle of December.

The debt ceiling increase was combined with a stopgap funding measure to provide aid for the areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey, and temporarily avoids a government shutdown. For once, a needless and brainless fight was avoided in Washington.

Trump actually circumvented Republican leaders to get it done. Neither speaker Paul Ryan nor majority leader Mitch McConnell were willing to accept the terms, so Trump went behind their backs. These are strange times, indeed.

Trump is impulsive and mercurial, typically devoid of ability to think in the long-term. He watches TV and gets ideas. Building the most conservative administration in recent memory, he has existed so far under its influence, empowering the kind of people who want to punish the poor and people of color.

Nothing more should be expected out of Trump on this front. He is who he is. He wisely cut a deal with Democratic leaders because even he understood that holding up disaster relief was cruel and idiotic. He may have also been hungry for a positive headline from the mainstream media he allegedly reviles, but is actually obsessed with.

Chuck Schumer, the minority leader of the Senate, is a natural collaborator, his ideology resting somewhere in the milquetoast center. He would love to do more deals with Trump. Trump likes the idea of deals. They are both from New York, after all.

So maybe, just maybe, a new era is upon us. But Trump can change his mind tomorrow. He usually does. Congressional Republicans are furious. They are still waiting to build Milton Friedman’s Eden, here on Earth, and this reality show president who calls himself a Republican has been too incompetent, at least so far, to make it happen. They will yell at him and maybe he’ll listen. The last person in his ear usually has the advantage.

What people should remember, always, is how obstructionist congressional Republicans were under Barack Obama and how they alone brought government to a standstill. Democratic lawmakers, for all their flaws, worked with Republicans when they were in power to at least keep the government functioning.

Bipartisanship for its own sake is stupid – no one should be celebrated for helping to deregulate the economy or crushing the working class – but there are basic things (like raising the debt limit) that both parties can agree upon and usually did until the tea party rose to power.

Trump shouldn’t be praised for cutting this deal. It’s an obvious deal, and we can’t set the bar so low just because this president was so unprepared to run the most powerful nation on Earth. Instead, understand that it is congressional Republicans who deserve your scorn. They are the people who see government as an unmitigated evil, who endorse austerity at all costs.

Paul Ryan is not your friend, and never will be. Mitch McConnell has no serious legislative accomplishments. They are smarter men than Trump and ultimately, barring Trump starting a war, more dangerous. If they had a partner like Mike Pence in the White House, America would be transformed forever.

Remember, it can always get worse.