Infant In Chief.

We are not yet through November, the month that held the election. Already the new president-elect is acting like a toddler in sore need of a nap. A lot of people were hopeful when Donald Trump came out of the gates speaking like an honest-to-goodness president. That hope is beginning to shrivel.

Here was Trump on Twitter over the weekend casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election he’d just won. Saying millions had voted illegally. He’s back to reading his nutball conspiracy theory websites. He’s spewing the careless untruths a rational person might have thought would end with his surprising victory, tweeting that he won the popular vote after all. He also tweeted that protesters who burn the flag should be stripped of their citizenship, in total ignorance of our Constitution.

Instead of the evil Steve Bannon sitting in the White House maybe the office space should go to a retired middle school teacher. She’d be right down the hallway, readily available when the president needs help understanding how our democracy actually works.

Is there an adult anywhere in Trump Tower who can relieve the man of his Twitter account?

It’s a low bar I know, but I think that at the very least we should expect the president of the most powerful nation on earth to not act childish in the public space.

That’s why his big weekend kerfuffle over the efforts of the Green Party to fund a recount of the vote in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania is so disheartening. Our middle school teacher would explain that this is a legimate part of the process. A similar effort is going in in Minnesota’s eighth district, where the wealthy Republican loser of the race is spending his own money to finance a recount. As is his right. No one is going crazy about it on Twitter. The insight that Trump’s temper tantrum gives us into his lack of self-confidence is frightening.

Suddenly the scenario where the Electoral College takes a meaningful vote rather than merely ratifying the state-by-state results isn’t so far-fetched. The whole point of having such a convoluted system to elect our presient is that it can act as a final check if there’s a massive screw-up by voters. Trump spent the weekend making a convincing case that this has happened.

The more likely scenario is that the Democrats under Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will have to learn to play the role of the responsible adult in our government. If they are smart and careful, they can establish the guardrails the country needs to survive the worst excesses of a Trump presidency. If they get it right, it might also be just the toehold the Democrats need to start rebuilding their brand after the drubbing it took in the election.

The Republicans made the job easier than it might have been by spending the last eight years writing the playbook for gridlock. In the month before the election they were even talking about tying up any Supreme Court nomination made by Hilary Clinton for the entirety of her presidency. That legitimizes a lot of obstinacy on the part of the Democrats. If they’re smart about picking the right battles, they can be more accommodating and perhaps achieve their goals without the accompanying eight percent approval rating the Republicans earned during their years as the party out of power.

For example, the Democrats can work with the new administration on its choices for cabinet posts, but whisper in Trump’s ear that they’re drawing the line at giving the Secretary of State job over to his henchman Rudy Giuliani. They can work with the Republicans on needed changes to the way the health care system works, but insist that any new law be built around the central Obamacare idea that insurance companies cannot exclude people who have pre-existing medical conditions. The 47 Democrats in the Senate can achieve a lot by taking a stand as defenders of the 20 million Americans who’ve finally gained access to decent healthcare under the current law.

Maybe some moves like this will even inspire our president elect to once again be the man we saw in the first days of the election. I so want to respect the office of the presidency. Give me a hand here, Mr. Trump.