Even if you support the goals, you would be hard pressed to argue that his decision and enactment process was ham-fisted and half-cocked, leading to many of the legal challenges being able to hold water. Knee-jerk responses, supporting statements that belied the goal ("this is not a travel ban" - "today we are putting a travel ban into place"), and so on.
Effective decisions are reasoned and well planned, not shot from the hip, which you could argue many of his decisions are, even removing the -substance- of the decision or the topic from the equation.
The ones where the Supreme Court essentially agreed with him, at least partially? I'd say he got what he wanted, even if with a delay. The goal was curtailing immigration from "bad" countries, and I think that has been achieved by him. And he also consolidated his base by showing that the other side will oppose what Trump's side considers fighting terrorism by any means, including legal tactics that look very questionable to a common person, like arguments "if other person did it, it is legal, but if Trump does it, it's illegal".
> leading to many of the legal challenges being able to hold water
There would be legal challenges in any case, and given how many judges are from the opposing party, at least some of them would succeed at least temporarily. It's unavoidable in any case - what's the point then taking it slow? It would just give the opposition more time to stall.
Could he do it in a softer and more gradual manner? Of course he could, but which one of his goals would that promote? His goals are curtailing immigration from "bad" countries and showing his base that he's ready to act on that and to deliver results. I don't see how soft approach would serve those goals.
He did it even better than you're saying, there's a missing piece that's almost never mentioned: The list of countries in the travel ban were identified in 2015 and early 2016 during the Obama administration, and already had restrictions due to being the most likely sources of terrorism.
Inconvenient truths like that are something I'd be concerned about being kept off of something like WikiTribune by squatters.
If you're going to go back and rest your argument on what the Obama administration did, then you still have to explain why Trump needed to do what he tried to do.
Calling back to the Obama adminstration's actions makes it harder, not easier to justify Trump's EO. You have to explain why the Obama administration's actions were insufficient--which Trump staff did not even try to do. They just asserted that he had the authority to do it, regardless of any proof it was necessary.
A balanced view of Trump's pre-election promises and his ability to deliver on them is decidedly mixed, especially on the bigger promises like health and the wall:
> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37982000
This is not really a good list - e.g. Trump never really promised "Ban on Muslims" - it said once something that could be interpreted this way, and walked it back very quickly. And, as you know, Supreme Court did agree with him on travel restrictions (which aren't "ban on Muslims").
Also, saying all illegal immigrants "have to go" is not the same as saying he will deport all of them, let alone in the first year. It's like politician saying "murder is wrong" and then BBC would quote statistics of murder still happening as evidence of broken campaign promise. One should distinguish ideal picture as a statement and realistic possible picture as a policy.
He also never promised to "ditch NATO", not even close. He made some sounds that how the alliance is arranged is obsolete, but walked most of it back, and what remained was about how much money each member pays.
He did not make any specific promise on prosecuting Clinton. Even BBC notes the most he said is "fresh investigation", not prosecution. Investigation and prosecution are very different things. Of course, many Trump supporters would like to see Clinton prosecuted, but that doesn't mean Trump promised anything specific there.
Overall, BBC interpretation sounds very distorted, treating genuine campaign promises (like Obamacare reform) and random campaign rhetoric or random interview phrasethat was subsequently either substantially modified or completely abandoned by the election time as same kind of promise and rating them alike. This is a shoddy job.
Of course, he could be playing 10-dimensional chess and cleverly be seeking more to wreak long-term chaos and disorder than to advance the superficially apparent agenda his actions seem to be aimed at. In which case you'd be right.
What is said many times doesn't correspond to the real agenda. Take healthcare. Possibly a good number of politicians who crow about the evils of Obamacare really don't want it to fail. Otherwise it's going to cost their local districts money even though it's (conceptually) wildly unpopular with the constituency. So gosh darn it, they are trying really hard to overturn that evil communist plot but the pesky Democrats just keep blocking them at every turn!
With Trump who knows. He is a wildcard. It's hard to say what the real agenda is but it's probably not what he is verbalizing. Or if it is he isn't a real politician yet :)
> Trump doesn't make "shitty" decisions
I don't even know if that counts as a goal or achievement. There was a seat to fill so it was filled. I guess depends how you look at it.
Maybe pulling out of TPP? That was a major issue with Bernie supporters and was one the first things he did. Even then I remember being on /r/politics afterward and seeing comments about how "Maybe TPP is good and we should support it now that Trump took action against it".
Externally maybe making progress with ISIS? There was a pretty significant reduction of its territory. I was always baffled how during the last 8 years the rise of ISIS was portrayed as a complete surprise the US government, CIA just "couldn't believe" how fast it spread. Wonder how hard they worked to stop it, if even an amateur TV personality could make relatively quick progress of it in a short time.
Many supporters would say economy. It's hard to deny that the stock market has been doing pretty well. And, yes, the argument is that presidents don't really have that much influence on long term trends, which I agree with. However, in the PR domain, I imagine had the stock market gone down by the same amount, there would be no end to articles claiming "look what Trump" did.
Consumer confidence is allegedly at a 17 year high. At least Bloomberg says so https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-31/u-s-consu.... Kind of like the stock market thing, who's the president probably doesn't matter, but had it gone the opposite way there would be a lot of talk how the president caused it go down.
As they say, give the devil what belongs to the devil. Trump should be criticized and scrutinized. But it has to be an intelligent and effective criticism. It is rather disappointed to see things like how many scoops of ice-cream he ate, or how long he shook Macron's hand, or that he is stupid and has orange hair. A lot of the media has been reduced to those kind of stories.
They follow the same plan as the Obama administration: Build up Iraqi political authority and military effectiveness until they are ready to both drive out ISIS themselves, and to maintain military and political control of the areas on the long term. Under Obama, they built up the Iraqi army from the one that fled ISIS en mass to one that could fight long, difficult battles and hold ground permanently, and they built up the Iraqi central government's political authority. Under Obama were the first few victories and tests of the rebuilt Iraqi army, and they continued moving forward under the Trump administration.
It's based on a lesson the U.S. (re)learned in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: Driving out the enemy militarily is only the first step, and not at all sufficient. Then someone must establish political authority, including military control over the area and its people, or the enemy will simply return to claim it themselves - which is what happened with ISIS. The most famous dictum in military affairs is that 'war is politics by other means'. (Also, it makes more sense for the Iraqis to die for the nation of Iraq than the Americans.)
It's very hard for a foreign occupier to establish that political authority and maintain military control - imagine the prospect of the Iraqi army, no matter what their resources, trying to establish political authority in your town - and it requires lives and massive expenditures over decades, more than the U.S. is willing to invest (thankfully). Note that even the great historical empires used locals to run their foreign territories - overseen, of course, by an imperial governor and garrison.
> They follow the same plan as the Obama administration:
It depends how its executed. I would imagine the general outline would be the same, unless we switch to boots on the ground, or not using drones and so on, but sometimes it is the tweaks and adjustments that make a difference. At least looking at the territory it controlled, there was a much faster contraction there under Trump. Maybe Obama's plan finally had come to fruition and territory contraction coincided exactly with Trump's taking over the presidency, but that's a bit of a stretch I think.
Moreover, as much as we can say Obama had the same plan, it's good to remember that ISIS also grew on his watch. I don't believe that something like ISIS took us completely by surprise as government officials claimed. US had its fingers in the pie in the region since the Cold War, we might not have directly supported it, but we knew about it and maybe even allowed it grow, in order to destabilize Syria.
Regarding the U.S.: If we talk about what 'could be' or 'maybe' or what we 'imagine', as the parent comment does, we can make any claim. Based on what the military and experts have consistently said and on the facts on the ground: It's the same plan, working as designed; ISIS' loss of territory did not coincide with Trump taking office, it began in 2016.
> ISIS also grew on his [Obama's] watch
That has no implications for Trump's effectiveness.
> we knew about it [ISIS] and maybe even allowed it grow, in order to destabilize Syria.
Starting form the fundamentals of international relations (as I understand them), as the global, status quo superpower the U.S. wants stability globally, which protects the U.S.-led international order; ISIS is a threat to global stability. The U.S. has particularly supported stability in that region, to secure the global oil supply (essential to global stability and the U.S. economy) and also to protect the region's status quo U.S.-supported power structure, based in recent decades on the Saudis, Israel and Egypt. The U.S., by its actions, clearly prefers Assad to ISIS: The Americans even have allied in places with enemies including the Iranians (including in Iraq), Russians, Assad, and even other small fundamentalist groups against ISIS.
That doesn't mean ISIS took the U.S. by surprise, however. ISIS began in Syria, outside of the U.S.'s sphere at the time, and then spread to Iraq. The U.S.'s options in Iraq at the time were limited. The Iraqi government refused to allow U.S. forces in the country (that was the deal agreed to by Bush and executed by Obama, withdrawing U.S. forces). Also, the Iraqi army may have been expected to put up a fight instead of simply fleeing when faced with what were (IIRC) inferior forces.
Of course it does. If Obama was supporting and involved in propping up Syrian "rebels" in the area, with groups of people and equipment switching sides, he was not effectively 100% committed to wiping it out. So the strategy was the same, but pumping resources fighting Assad in the region on another hand was undermining that strategy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/middleeast/cia-arms...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-rebe...
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/politics/syria-arming-rebels/i...
> The U.S., by its actions, clearly prefers Assad to ISIS:
Right but it only took until Trump was elected to stop feeding "rebels" fighting Assad. Well at least that's what the press releases say. So U.S. actions were a schizophrenic and certainly don't say anything "clearly".
> That doesn't mean ISIS took the U.S. by surprise,
Obama says it did http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/07/politics/isis-surprise-obama/i... . He blames CIA backhandedly:
"The ability of ISIL to initiate major land offensives that took Mosul, for example, that was not on my intelligence radar screen," [Obama told Zakaria]
I've never seen anyone with expertise say that arms sent to the rebels significantly helped ISIS, or that supporting the rebels undermined the fight against ISIS. I did see plenty that indicated that the support of the rebels was ineffective and/or insufficient.
>> That doesn't mean ISIS took the U.S. by surprise,
> Obama says it did
You said in the GGP, "I don't believe that something like ISIS took us completely by surprise", and I was allowing that you might be right.
And this doesn't even get into his goals whose impossibility is obvious to people with real information--like getting Mexico to pay for the wall, or boosting the U.S. economy by starting trade wars, or getting China to put a leash on North Korea's nuclear program, or growing jobs in the coal power industry, etc.