ELPHABA STREET:

You'd think a billionaire would know what every investment prospectus preaches: Past performance does not guarantee future results. And you'd think a TV star would understand the need to add layers and complexity to a protagonist over the course of a long-running series. Yet Trump persists in his one-dimensional role: rebel without a pause button.

A fascinating -- and, for patriotic citizens, dispiriting -- account of life inside the Trump White House by the New York Times recently disclosed that the amped-up monotony of this presidency is entirely intentional. From the start, Trump conceived of this drama as a relentless serial. "Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals."

However, he forgot to make the audience root for the star. In Trump's confrontations with multiple women who allege that he sexually harassed or assaulted them, most Americans are with the women, according to Rasmussen. In Trump's rivalry with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a majority of Americans back Mueller, according to a Post-ABC poll. Overall, Trump's Gallup approval rating has not been above 40 percent since early summer and lately has been hovering in the mid-30s.

If his presidency were truly a TV drama, it would be canceled.

Or it would be relegated to a niche cable channel or streamed on YouTube for an especially grumpy, iconoclastic audience. And this is exactly the problem. Trump and his so-called strategist Bannon (after the Moore debacle, Trump may finally stop taking his calls) appear to have learned their politics from cable and the Internet. Conduits such as Bannon's Breitbart and the Sean Hannity show can be very powerful in a partisan primary, but their business model involves pandering to a minority. They don't need a big audience as long as they mesmerize a small one.

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