Washington is a world distorted by a magnifying glass, where minor slips morph into catastrophic falls, and a winning news cycle swells into a victory for all the ages. When overstimulation causes the jaded to speak in ever more extravagant terms, we should be careful about making mountains of molehills.
That said, the Trump administration has hit some obstacles in its early weeks. It deferred many of the president's signature policy items (on immigration and trade, for instance) in order to focus on health-care and tax reform. Some on Capitol Hill might like this outcome, as it minimizes the more disruptive domestic-policy tendencies of the Trump White House. But there is some evidence that a prolonged legislative deadlock on Capitol Hill could harm the approval rating of both the president and the Republican Congress, and low approval ratings could in turn endanger Republicans in the 2018 midterms.
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