When, not if, because that is the nature of the presidency: Bad things happen — often early on, sometimes anticipated, sometimes out of nowhere. Consider the historical roster: Somali pirates holding an American captain hostage (Barack Obama’s administration), the Chinese forcing down a Navy aircraft and detaining its crew (George W. Bush), a siege and raid gone bad at a cult complex in Waco, Texas (Bill Clinton).
For a new president, April is the cruellest month; add John F. Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco to that litany of springtime woes. An unseasoned new president and a wobbly team still learning how to work the system and work together are going to be more susceptible to blunders than later on.
But a crisis under President Donald Trump — a real crisis, not the seemingly endless series of self-inflicted wounds that has scarred the new administration — poses a far scarier situation than with the usual fledgling presidency. Trump’s unforced errors have implications and ripple effects for when the real problems inevitably arrive.