Donald Trump want’s to do things. Donald Trump has aspirations. I’m told he wants to make America great again. He has Republican majorities to work with in the Senate, the House of Representatives and in state governments across the country, as well as vacancies on the Supreme Court to fill so that his agenda won’t be mangled beyond recognition once it is eventually passed. All those things make it much, much easier to get things done.

But unfortunately for The Donald the United States Congress is really not set up to actually do things. It was designed to make it far, far easier to stop things from being done than to make them happen. Not only do you need a super-majority in the Senate to defeat potential filibusters, you need to maintain electoral support in the mid-term contests to keep control. And while Republicans usually do better in mid-term elections, President’s also usually lose support in their first mid-term contest. After my recent experience I am increasingly uneasy about relying on historical precedent to predict the future, and Trump should be too.

So what does Trump actually need Congress for? He can withdraw from trade deals and negotiations with executive authority, rescind Obama’s executive orders such as those protecting children of illegal migrants as well as enact his own. Then of course there is the prodigious administrative authority now in his hands which would enable him to set policy for the vast umbrella of federal agencies he is now in charge of.  So he can do a lot, really.

But he cannot appropriate funds, nor pass new laws, nor confirm appointments to the administration without the support of Congress. And the Democrats in the Senate are likely to be emboldened by both the antipathy of their supporters towards Trump, the increasing liberalism of the states they represent and the simple reality that they have little left to lose.

More than this, Trump will discover that the coalition the Republicans now represent is no less complex and varied than the one Obama inherited in 2008. Social conservatives, teaparty die-hards, corporate Republicans, right-wing populists and what is euphemistically called the ‘alt-right’ all want different things. Getting them all on the same side will be exceptionally difficult. It still remains to be seen exactly how this byzantine web of loyalties will interact, and that will depend largely on how Trump pursues his policies and what those policies actually are. Both are open questions.

If the Democrats close ranks and block Trump’s signature proposals in the Senate, for instance the $1 Trillion infrastructure plan, it will become very difficult to get it through even assuming Republican support is equally uniform. This is not a bug, this is a feature. It was designed his way precisely to make it hard to fundamentally change the policies and political institutions of the country, to force change to come slowly.

As Obama found out to his considerable cost, promises of change are much easier to make than to deliver upon. It took practically Obama’s entire first term to achieve a compromised and incomplete healthcare reform. And while it may be easier to undo things than to do them in the American system, achieving his broad and sweeping stated aims will be no easier for Trump than it was for his predecessor.