January 13, 2017 02:15 PM UTC

Trump's Speedy Agenda Crashes Into Earth

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post explains, President-elect Donald Trump’s aggressive plans for sweeping policy changes are running into problems with reality:

Just this week, Trump vowed to get started right away building a wall at the border with Mexico (“I don’t want to wait”) and repealing and replacing President Obama’s health-care law (“probably the same day, could be the same hour”).

But ahead of his swearing-in next Friday, the extraordinarily high expectations that Trump has set are running into the logjam known as American democracy. While every new president confronts Washington’s sluggish culture, Trump’s more grandiose and hard-line ideas could face unprecedented challenges — logistical and even constitutional.

Trump imagines a presidency of vision and velocity, but his big-ticket items cannot be done by presidential edict, no matter how loud Trump’s demands might be or assured he is of the popularity of his proposals. They will require consensus on Capitol Hill, emerging from a deliberative process that takes time and the navigation of a labyrinth of constituencies and special interests.

Trump’s team has devised a full legislative calendar with congressional leaders that begins with health care, but already Trump’s ambitions have been slowed somewhat. The Republican majorities in both chambers are moving swiftly to dismantle parts of current law but are still discussing how exactly to replace it. A House vote scheduled Friday on a budget measure, which includes steps to begin repeal of the health law, was preceded by hours of skittishness among both conservative and moderate members about whether Republicans were moving too soon.

Trump will enter the White House next week with historically-low approval ratings, and failing to meet his own lofty expectations won’t do anything to make him more popular.