The tight ship appears to have given the White House the early narrative it hoped. “It’s as if for the last four years, the country was left in the hands of an irresponsible teenage babysitter, where the mother and father leave and say: ‘Don’t call boys. Don’t have alcohol,’“ said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center. “And now the parents are back. The father runs the household on a strict schedule with a plan.”