The marathon of the Presidency is looking more like a sprint

By Charlie Savage, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman 

WASHINGTON: If other new occupants of the White House wanted to be judged by their first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump seems intent to be judged by his first 100 hours. No president in modern times, if ever, has started with such a flurry of initiatives on so many fronts in such short order. 

The action-oriented approach reflected a businessman’s idea of how government should work: Issue orders and get it done. But while the rapid-fire succession of directives on health care, trade, abortion, the environment, immigration, national security, housing and other areas cheered Americans who want Trump to shake up Washington, it also revealed a sometimes unruly process that may or may not achieve the goals he has outlined. 

On the campaign trail, Trump boasted he had no government.experience and, in his first week in the White House, it sometimes showed. Orders were signed without input from the agencies they would affect. Policy ideas were floated and then retracted within hours. Meetings and public events were scheduled and then canceled. Advisers to the president made decisions without telling one another. The president called for an investigation looking at voters registered in more than one state, unaware that it would include his chief strategist, press secretary,treasury secretary, daughter and son-in-law. 

And Congress often appeared to be an afterthought. 

Whatever the stumbles, Trump expressed satisfaction with the debut of his presidency, and the White House released a list of accomplishments under the headline, “President Trump’s First Week of Action.” The bottom-line message to the American public was that politics as usual was over and that the new president was energetically remaking the country for the better. 

“Big, big progress,” he said in an interview this week. “We have tremendous support, but I’m not doing it for the support.” 

Thomas Barrack Jr., a longtime friend of Trump who led his inaugural committee, said the president’s accomplishments have been “meteoric.” “He has done exactly what he has said he would do,” Barrack said. “He has delivered results at a faster pace than any president in history.” 

He added that Trump has little help as his team still gets assembled.  ..