(CNN) Jeb Bush was right.

At the time, Trump embraced the "chaos" moniker. He was chaos in the sense that he was the only candidate willing to shake up the status quo -- to freak out the squares. Chaos worked for him, as both a symbolic image of the campaign he was running and a day in, day out approach to the race. None of the candidates he ran against -- including Bush and Hillary Clinton -- could ever settle in to any sort of campaign rhythm because Trump was purposely unsettling it all the time.

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But the first year of his presidency has revealed the considerable limits of a strategy that relies solely on stirring chaos. It's created uncertainty here at home, as no one -- not even Trump -- seems to know what he will say or do on a daily basis. And it's stoked instability abroad as other countries -- allies and enemies -- find themselves sifting through Trump's often-contradictory public statements and tweets for some semblance of a cohesive mindset.

The peril in this approach has been crystallized over the last 72 hours as Trump has, among other things, questioned the methods and credibility of his own Justice Department, played a game of nuclear one-upmanship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un (via Twitter no less!), announced his plan to deliver "awards" for the worst of the worst in the media and broken -- in fiery fashion -- with former top adviser Steve Bannon.

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