Seventeen Days in March

If the people of our great country could only see how viciously and inaccurately my administration is covered by certain media!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2017

If only our President would pay attention to his job, instead of the reporting about his job.

Trump didn’t understand the American Health Care Act nor the legislative maneuvering that would be required to pass it. He endorsed the most unpopular piece of legislation in memory and then declared defeat after only 17 days. 

You have to reflect on that, because it's easy to either ignore what's going on in D.C. (in which case you probably aren't reading this), or to get so caught up in it you don't realize how rapidly this "repeal" movement moved toward collapse.

17 days.  March Madness takes longer than that.  The NFL season (one of the shorter ones in professional sports) takes longer than that.  I'm not sure there are 17 days between the last playoff game and the Super Bowl every year.  Back when people used to take long vacations, they ran for 2 weeks, which is 3 days short of 17.  I teach a "mini-mester" course regularly.  It moves at breakneck speed, and consumes 15 days of class time (with two intervening weekends, it takes 19 days to complete).

17 days in legislative action is no time at all.  It's about the length of time of the average Christmas break between semesters.  17 days of effort, and Trump said "Fuck it!"

And then, only five days later, all is forgiven; or, at least, forgotten:

"I know that we’re all going to make a deal on health care. That’s such an easy one. So I have no doubt that that’s going to happen very quickly," Trump said at a reception at the White House for senators and their spouses. "I think it will, actually. I think it’s going to happen. Because we’ve all been promising, Democrat, Republican, we’ve all been promising that to the American people."

"We are going to be doing a great job. Hopefully it will start being bipartisan," the President added.

Our President has the attention span of a two year old, and the memory of a fruit fly.  He's also going to be "doing a great job."  Someday.  One day.  Well, as long as it doesn't take 17 days.  Because in 11 weeks he's managed to play golf 13 times.   17 days of attention to anything else can mess with your game, ya know?