Presidents are often hailed in retrospect for what were condemned as failures while in office. The converse is true, too: victories in the Oval Office are frequently ephemeral. President Donald Trump may be the exception to many rules, but in this regard, he is conforming to the pattern of his predecessors.

The classic example of a president who suffered for making the right choice is Harry S. Truman. By intervening in the Korean War, he saved South Korea and showed the Soviet Union that America had the backbone for a fight. It was a courageous decision, but as the war dragged on, it hurt him in the polls.

Or take Ronald Reagan. During his early years in office, millions of protesters marched demonstrating his supposed love of nuclear weapons. But in fact, Reagan was appalled at the prospect of nuclear war. He had thought deeply about how to avoid it. He just didn’t believe that marching was the answer.

And most recently, there was President Barack Obama. He started off spending like there was no tomorrow — his stimulus package alone burned $831 billion. But helped by the election of a Republican House in 2010, federal spending stabilized. It will be hard to describe Obama as simply a liberal tax and spender.

So what about Trump? What failures today might be successes tomorrow, and vice versa?

The media criticizes Trump so continuously that we have a lot of purported failures from which to choose. But three of the biggest ones are the U.S. relationship with Russia, Trump’s supposedly disdainful attitude toward international institutions and trade policy.

On Russia, the Trump administration has been tougher than Obama. U.S. tanks are back in Europe; we’re selling anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, and we’ve quit the INF Treaty with Russia. In retrospect, Trump’s Russia policy will look like a successful return to Cold War deterrence.

The treaty is one of those institutions Trump supposedly hates. But a central error of recent U.S. foreign policy has been to believe excessively in the power of institutions. A club doesn’t just need a house: it needs rules. One of the problems with the treaty is that its rules don’t work. Reagan put it best: trust, but verify. Trump has added a corollary: if you can’t verify, don’t trust.