We have been giving some thought as to why there is so much "chaos" (with apologies to the President), and we have come up with three reasons.
For one, the President still does not have his administration fully staffed, with many Obama-era holdovers still in important slots. Part of the fault for this lies with the President, who has not been breaking any records with the pace of his nominations, but more of it lies with the Democrats in Senate, who have been "slow-walking" the nominations, using parliamentary rules merely for the sake of delay. They are not trying to defeat any particular nominee (in fact, the ones they have been most outraged over have been confirmed), but they are trying to stretch the process out as long as possible. For reasons that remain unclear to us, the Republican majority in the Senate has not done anything to prevent this turn of events. The Republicans did not behave in this fashion when they were in the minority or the majority; yes, they did stop a few nominees they found objectionable, but passed everyone else. We are at a loss to explain why the Republicans do not completely eliminate the "60-vote" rule for confirmations - otherwise known as the "Daschle Rule" or the "Reid Rule," which means that Republican nominees (but not Democrat ones) need 60 votes to be confirmed. Notice this is not called the "John C. Calhoun rule," or the "Henry Clay Rule" or the "Daniel Webster rule," because it was not the common practice when those giants of the Senate held office. Nor is it called the "Lyndon Johnson rule" or the "Everett Dirksen rule," because it was not the practice in their day either. No, this is a relatively recent invention, coming in 2001 when the George W. Bush administration was about to take office. End that "rule," return the Senate to "majority rule" and one will see a dramatic change in the fortunes of the Trump Administration. Of course, that is why it won't happen.
There are two more reasons why things are in "chaos," and they both are sides of the same coin. We have a candidate (Hillary Clinton) who cannot accept that she lost the presidency and continues to act the ungracious loser, and we have a President (Donald Trump) who seems incapable of accepting that he won the election, so he continues to act the ungracious winner. Once in a while a loser has a hard time coming to terms with his loss (think Jimmy Carter), but most of them have adjusted to it six months into the next administration. We think this is the first time that both the winner and the loser have kept stirring the pot this long, and their parties are responding accordingly, which keeps it stirred all the more.
This leads to "The Resistance." Every President has permanent opponents to one degree or another, but not even FDR had the level of "resistance" that confronts President Trump. The Resistance, in common with Hillary Clinton, cannot accept that she lost, nor that President Trump won, and they are taking actions the scale and scope of which no previous president had to endure. We are not suggesting that President Obama had it easy, but stop and think for even a brief moment what the reaction of the Democrats and the media and the Establishment would be if there had been a Republican “Resistance” to President Obama, rioting, protesting, declaring ‘he is not my president”? Disagreement with the Obama administration was considered to be unpatriotic. Now, disagreement with the Trump administration is considered to be patriotic.
Clay, Calhoun and Webster, Johnson and Dirksen, for all their human flaws, were cut from different legislative cloth than our present troupe of leaders. Statesmanship no longer seems to be a valued commodity, and it, like compromise, respect for one’s opponents and tolerance of other points of view, are looked on as signs of weakness. We learned years ago what makes our country great. Looking at “The Resistance” and the lack of grace flowing freely from the winners as well as the losers, now we can see how to make it weak and vulnerable. Aren’t we better off when we are united and strong rather than divided and angry?