Writer’s note: This is the first of a two-part assessment of President Trump. The second one will be published later this week.

Part One

It’s time to face the reality that the Donald Trump experiment is an unmitigated disaster.

Americans voted for change. They wanted a leader who was not tarnished by the swamp known as Washington D.C. What we got was an inexperienced, self-aggrandizing egomaniac who cannot even mobilize his own political party.

What have we learned from this unsavory moment in American history? The most important thing is that experience in governmental affairs and diplomacy really matters.

Obama was a liberal version of Trump, and he screwed up the country for eight years. He was a local community organizer and served two years as a senator (most of that time he was campaigning to be president). Obama’s lack of experience and inability to connect to his colleagues in government greatly diminished his presidency. And now he is considered to be a failed leader by many Americans with virtually no legacy of any value.

Immediately after Obama, the electorate made the same mistake and voted in Trump who was equally unqualified to lead the nation. Yes, he was a successful businessperson, but so what? During his campaign he honed his agenda. It was controversial and in your face. But in many aspects it was a solid plan that would accelerate economic growth, make America stronger globally and deal with those that threaten our country and our world.

The problems were that Trump lived up to his reputation and has become a bully to his colleagues in government, and it soon became obvious that he had no idea how to navigate through the myriad of government bureaucracies.

The evidence of the latter is as clear as day. He has been unable to efficiently build a team below cabinet level appointments. Turnover of his advisors is embarrassingly high making his administration that much more useless.

But most important is that no one in Washington likes the man and few want to help him or be a part of his team. Frankly Trump has done little to rectify this situation because of his erratic and uninformed behavior and asinine tweets. He showers people with praise who say they want to assist him in some regard, including members of Congress and even his own aides, then eviscerates them when they get bogged down or suddenly push back.

The saddest part of the Trump saga is the attitude of Democrats and the media. Both were so angry that their hopes for the presidential race were crushed that they attacked the new president and made it impossible for him to succeed. They should have been more focused on Hillary, the bumbling candidate.

Democrats (aka the do nothing obstructionist party) were so dead set on making Trump fail that they fought against legislation that would have been good for the country. No productive ideas or offers to work on issues that both parties wanted have materialized. Some analysts say the state of the Democratic Party is actually worse than Republicans notwithstanding the horrendous performance of Trump and the GOP led Congress.

Ever since Election Day the press has bludgeoned the president. Granted, much of the criticism was well deserved. But the manner in which the press berated Trump personally will go down in history as one of the fourth estate’s worst moments.

There is no such thing as reporting of the facts any longer. Sniping, parsing of every word and hypothesizing the worst outcome from every mandate or comment by the administration dominate newspapers, blogs and cable TV. As Americans we expect the press to be informative, not act as the ultimate judge of our leaders. We need to leave that role to the voters armed with the truth.

The bottom line is that Trump is hurting our country more than he is improving it. His time has expired. We need to prepare ourselves for a great event that could have a lasting effect on our government and reputation around the world. That event will be the resignation of Donald Trump.