The one-year-old Trump presidency

ALMOST one year into Donald Trump’s presidency, you have to pinch yourself to make sense of it all. In “Fire and Fury”, Michael Wolff’s gossipy tale of the White House, which did not welcome Mr Trump’s anniversary so much as punch it in the face, the leader of the free world is portrayed as a monstrously selfish toddler-emperor seen by his own staff as unfit for office (see ). America is caught up in a debate about the president’s sanity. Seemingly unable to contain himself, Mr Trump fans the flames by taking to Twitter to crow about his “very stable genius” and, in a threat to North Korea, to boast about the impressive size of his nuclear button.Trump-watching is compulsive—who hasn’t waited guiltily for the next tweet with horrified anticipation? Given how much rests on the man’s shoulders, and how ill-suited he is to the presidency, the focus on Mr Trump’s character is both reasonable and necessary. But, as a record of his presidency so far, it is also incomplete and a dangerous distraction.