Republican lawmakers and interest groups have backed away from Paul Ryan and Donald Trump’s proposed Obamacare replacement legislation. More accurately they have fled screaming from the room, lobbing bombs over their shoulder and salting the earth as they go. By all that is the end of it. Just like that, one of the very few verifiable promises made by Trump and repeated ad nauseam is abandoned. You don’t need to have crystal ball to know that it simply won’t do. The GOP has won elections since 2010 on the promise of destroying Obamacare and conjuring up loathing and resentment against the Democrats signature achievement. People are unlikely to forget it exists.

But it gets even worse for The Donald. This isn’t just another piece of legislation. This was his first big test. And he failed in an utterly spectacular fashion. True, President Clinton tried and failed to pass comprehensive health care reform. But he spent over a year lobbying congress, negotiating with lawmakers and advocating in public for it before he finally gave up. That’s what putting your back into it looks like. Trump, by contrast, seems to have spent about as much time golfing at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida as he did trying to get the law off the ground.

Some of the blame must rest with Paul Ryan. The bill was compromised from the start. Its very true that bills are often compromised by the end of the process, indeed its virtually compulsory, but they need to be attractive at the beginning. Ryan committed the cardinal sin of negotiating with himself, attempting to pre-empt the objections of the loose confederation of warring tribes that constitutes his caucus. So by the time they first saw the bill, nobody at all wanted to touch it. If he had started out with a bill someone liked and was willing to fight for, he might have had more success.

But the frankensteinian monster he created made no friends. Moderates hated it for gutting Medicare and Medicaid, knowing that would put them in hot water with their older constituents. The more conservative elements of the GOP such as the House ‘Freedom Caucus’ were aghast that it didn’t go nearly far enough and were unable to justify voting for what was in their eyes still a big government program to provide healthcare.

All of this might have been worked through if the President had been strongly behind it. But Trump seemed to be more occupied with shaving strokes off his handicap than with actually carrying out one of his signature campaign promises. A few speeches, a phone call here and there and that was it. The bill died for lack of anyone to fight for it. Steve Bannon, one of Trumps chief aides, intervened disastrously by essentially threatening several House Republicans with political retribution if they failed to fall into line. Apparently that only served to stiffen their resolve while simultaneously making any future such threats less effective. All in a days work for Steven.

So the healthcare law is dead. But this whole shambolic display raises a question: Is the Trump Presidency fit for purpose? The administration seems unable to meet what were previously basic expectations of competence and self interest. Resignation in scandal for high profile appointees, multi-round losing battles with the judiciary, embarrassingly demonstrated lies to the national media, congressional investigations into impropriety and now a humiliating defeat in congress. All this in only 68 days. This was meant to be the low-hanging fruit. Tax reform was meant to be on the agenda, and if you think healthcare is complicated wait until you see the U. S. Tax code.

Adding further doubt is the nature of the Republican party right now. To be blunt, the GOP is composed of groups who can’t stand each-other. Pro-business moderates, tea-party conservatives, religious conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists and populists are all pulling the party in different directions, vying for control. This is the reason why John Boehner packed it all in to go back to Ohio and fret about his vegetables.  Even a talented and committed leader with a clear plan would have difficulty getting that mess to stand in line. Whereas Trump’s performance has been foolish, dissolute and aimless,

Mario Cuomo said that campaign in poetry but govern in prose. ‘Build the Wall’, ‘Repeal and Replace’, ‘Make America Great Again’. These are all fine poetic sentiments as far as campaigning goes. And so they should be. Campaigning is about glittering generalities, declarative sentences and clear contrasts. But governing is messy, granular, specific and murky.

Trump has proved himself a better poet than prosaist. To illustrate this, let me leave you with a quote that has been going around from his own magnum opus, ‘The Art of the Deal’, that is simply too appropriate to pass up:

“You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on”