Donald Trump's jawboning style and "bullying by tweet" gets results. Just look back at the past six months:
• North Korea back to the negotiating table. Yet when Trump was in full flight — "Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old" when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" — and attacking the "rocket man", there was nervousness aplenty that his goading had brought the world to the brink of war.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping has made useful concessions to the United States on trade. The war between these two elephants of global trade is not over (both sides have yet to withdraw their threatened tariff hikes) but there is finally movement by China on some fundamental issues of importance to American high tech companies.
• Isis has been defeated on Trump's watch. But the war against the caliphate is not entirely over and may be inflamed if the US pulls out of Syria.
• The Trump tax cuts are expected to give a kicker to US economic growth and jobs are up.
These observations are not an invitation to another round of Trump derangement syndrome.
That's the one where sensible people burst into vicious social media attacks against anyone who authors a dispassionate report on, say, the Administration's taxation changes, which is not prefaced by a swingeing attack on Trump's personality or the real reason he is doing battle with Robert Mueller.
But it is notable just how much the "Political Disruptor-in-Chief" has succeeded in resetting the dial in Washington in the less than 16 months since he was sworn in as President.
