Coronavirus: Donald Trump has a choice to make but will it be the right one?

The cascading crises threaten to ­become so acute and overwhelming that they upstage Donald Trump.

With five months until the ­November US elections, the Trump administration faces a concatenation of catastrophes, crises and critics. The most dangerous pandemic in a century has kicked off an economic crisis more serious than the Great ­Depression, and it’s happening against the backdrop of a toxic political atmosphere, a global ­crisis of confidence among America’s leading allies, and the possible start of a cold war with China.

A normal president would be crushed under the burden; ­Donald Trump is still tweeting and playing golf. To some degree, the crisis enveloping the country and his presidency is his natural milieu. Theatricality has always been central to Trump’s political method. As an insurgent populist candidate, and as an incumbent who nevertheless wants to run as an outsider fighting an entrenched­ system, he thrives on conflict and drama.

Yet even for Trump there can be too much of a good thing. The cascading crises ricocheting across the world threaten to ­become so acute and so overwhelming that they upstage him. Manageable crise­s can make a president look big; unmanageable ones can make him look small. Looking small would be fatal for Trump.

At home, the response to the pandemic, for better or for worse, seems increasingly independent of the briefings and tweets that come from the White House. In foreign affairs, other countries seem to be paying less attention to Trump these days. An oil tanker from Iran, sent in defiance of ­administration warnings, docked unmolested in Venezuela. North Korea is making noises about doubling down on its nuclear program. China has defied Western pressure over Hong Kong, intens­ified its global propaganda campaign, and ratcheted up its military pressure on the Indian border.

The international crises come at a time when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is contending with a congressional investigation of his role in the President’s decision to sack the department’s inspector-general. The building is in ­revolt and the press hounds are baying on his trail, yet Pompeo’s biggest problem isn’t a stream of news stories that will likely get little­ attention beyond the Beltway. His biggest problem is the narrowing path for American diplom­acy abroad.

Trump’s first wave of top ­national-security aides saw their task as trying to impose a conventional foreign policy on an unconventional president. Sometime during his first 18 months in office, the President decided that he no longer needed tutelage and looked for people who would ­implement his policy wishes, however unconventional. Pompeo, among others, took up this task, hoping to develop a policy framework around Trump’s intuitions that would work in the Oval Office and in the wider world. This isn’t an easy thing to do, as Trump’s instincts often work at cross-purposes.

Take China policy. The President clearly believes economic power is the key to national strength and that enhancing America’s economic vitality is necessary to maintain the country’s position in years to come. He also believes that under its current leadership China is a threat to American security and world peace. But Trump and his aides alike struggle to create a coherent policy around these ideas, in large part because the economic strategy and the China strategy, while they overlap in places, don’t ultimately mesh.

For Trump, restoring American economic strength involves fighting what he sees as a profound­ly unfair global trading system, but his concerns about the foundations of American power lead to bitter quarrels with those allies he needs the most.

Neither the President nor his aides have been able to resolve this issue, and inconsistency has taken a heavy toll on American credibility.

Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson, lost the confidence of foreign leaders because he was seen not to have Trump’s ear; now the administration as a whole is losing respect because too many foreign leaders, friendly and otherwise, have concluded that Trump’s policies don’t add up.

“To govern is to choose,” said 1950s French politician Pierre Mendes-France. Trump has a choice to make. Will he restore and reactivate America’s econo­mic and security alliance networks in the interest of a coherent China strategy, even at the cost of deferring other goals? Or will he cling to the role of global disrupter in the face of the greatest storm since World War II?

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL