The first month of  Donald Trump’s presidency has been activist, ambitious, and full of adjectives. He is making a difference, as new presidents seek to do, and this is most assuredly a different kind of presidency.

Here are a few of his successes. He has nominated, as he said he would, a respected conservative originalist for the open Supreme Court seat. We expect Neil Gorsuch to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate this spring. He has gotten his four top inner-Cabinet members (State, Defense, Treasury, and Attorney General) nominated, confirmed by the Senate, and off and running. Two of them have traveled abroad already doing the diplomatic business of the United States.

Some of his appointments, such as Nikki Haley to be United Nations ambassador, have been widely supported. Other lesser appointees, such as his Budget Director and Environmental Protection Agency administrator, have been controversial but were narrowly confirmed and are in office nonetheless.

Trump has had cordial diplomatic meetings with four important U.S. allies – Britain, Japan, Canada, and Israel. He has encouraged stock market indexes climbing with his moves to shrink U.S. Government regulations in the finance and energy sectors and with his pledges to cut corporate tax rates. He has jawboned a number of corporations to build factories and offices in America rather than moving them abroad.

He has dominated the news. His challenging relationship with the press has created a situation where the reporters and pundits, from left, right, and center, have no choice but to give extensive coverage to his every action. Just like during the presidential election campaign, wherever he goes and whatever he does – he is the story.

Trump has done a good job of keeping in touch with his political base of middle income white males in mid-America. He lets his most avid political supporters know that he is still a “rogue elephant” fighting for their jobs and to keep “America First.”

And Trump has softened if not changed some of his most strident campaign issues. Maybe the wall along the Mexican border will  be partly a fence. Obamacare will be replaced more than repealed.The one China policy does make sense. A controversial executive order on immigration will be rewritten to make it constitutional. And maybe the United States does need the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

That’s a lot for a new president to get done in just one month.

But this first month of Trump being a “White House Apprentice” has had its unsettling, or as Judge Gorsuch put it, “demoralizing” aspects. Trump has found it hard to transition from campaigning to governing. A top Ronald Reagan adviser once noted that presidential campaigns are all about “destroying your adversary,” while governing requires the art of “making love with your adversary.”

Trump spent an inordinate amount of his first month blaming other people when things were going wrong for him. He blames the media as the “enemy of the American people.” He blames intelligence agencies for leaks. He snaps at even friendly reporters and snears at the federal bureaucracy.

Trump blamed U.S. Judge James Robart, a Republican of unquestioned character, for ruling against him. He blamed former-President Barack Obama for leaving “a mess” and “Obamacare ” a disaster at the very same time 60 percent of the American people had a positive approval rating for the job Obama had done.  He has blamed Nordstrom’s. He’s blamed John McCain. And he even continues to blame his defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton.

He risks being called the  “Blamer-in- Chief.”

Here are some tried and true maxims of leadership that, in light of his rough first month, Trump and his advisers might remember:

Virtually all the polls show a majority of the American people disapproving of Trump after one month in office. They know too, however, that American needs Hamiltonian energy in the presidency-yet only if it is used wisely and constitutionally in service of our shared common aspirations. It is time for him to stop blaming others, take ownership of the nation’s many problems. That is his challenge, not blaming others.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy are political scientists at Colorado College and authors or co-authors of several books on American politics.