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Can the Deep State really be diminished or defeated?
President Trump, Elon Musk, RFK, Jr. and others have stated in the aftermath of the election victory that they will be going after the “Deep State” — the seemingly permanent, entrenched, and increasingly sprawling federal bureaucracy. But remember what Chuck Schumer said back during Trump’s first term in regards to any attempt to diminish the power of the administrative state, and in particular the intelligence apparatus: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” While Trump may be able to change the person at the top of the pyramid of various agencies, can a new person really change the culture and priorities of a group of lifetime civil servants who know where the bodies are buried and, regarding the security agencies, possess budgets and data that are shielded from the executive, legislative and judicial branches?
I hope the Trump 2.0 administration can restore the government to something that more closely resembles what the Founders had in mind. But I worry about them and their efforts. The CIA, FBI, Pentagon, Secret Service, IRS, FDA, etc. aren’t just going to sit back and be downsized. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” Trump and his team must know this. I hope they are ready.
Published in General
I agree that our administrative state has grown so powerful that it will be nearly impossible to control it, much less cut it down to a manageable size.
Nearly impossible. Maybe not quite completely impossible.
I truly believe that Trump is the only person on the planet capable of challenging the administrative state head on. He understands what he’s up against, and they nearly destroyed him, so he’s pissed. Mix in his naturally combative nature and seemingly fearless approach to conflict, and maybe he has a chance.
If he fails, which he likely will, I think that our last real chance will have passed.
But heck, you never know. I’ve given up betting against Trump…
Yes, but it requires will. Also, appointments typically go a few layers deep, but cabinet secretaries and directors often choose those appointments with approval. Say Richard Grenell is SecState, he’s going to break some things and appoint people who help him break things, and identify new things that need breaking. Personally, I’d like to see him at CIA.
They have weaknesses we don’t usually consider. They can be made to self deport, maybe.
The society has been lying about a great many things. Assuming someone is thinking about redirecting our trajectory from a position of transitory power, their problem is to select which pebble to move, to start a preference cascade.
There’s an opportunity for three consecutive terms of a Republican presidency.
‘It can be done with smart and timely appointments of capable people who understand the bureaucracy. Congress will also have the chance to use the appropriations process to starve the beast where necessary.
One of the truths I discovered is that if you want something to happen, you need to have a *mechanism* that corrects for any issues of drift, misdirection, infiltration, graft, corruption, mismanagement, extortion,… whatever.
As a metaphor, consider driving your car to a local place that you frequent. You know the route really, really well. Now imagine doing it blindfolded… you probably wouldn’t make it down the block without a terrible accident. Without a mechanism of continuously sensing the situation and taking corrective action driving goes from reliable transportation to dangerous as hell.
(Maybe not the best metaphor; I’m open to suggestions.)
I’ve mentioned before how Indian economist Amartya Sen talks about a “Functional Democracy”, a condition where the leaders can be removed if they don’t do a good job. It provides an incentive for leaders to do a good job, and offers an incentive for others who can do a better job. A Functional Democracy doesn’t have to be a Democracy at all, it could technically be a dictator with a gun to his head.
Anyway, without a corrective mechanism in place, OF COURSE a government agency will turn into the deep state. You shouldn’t expect otherwise.
A sooper-simple solution to keep government agencies from being hijacked into political weapons is to require that each government agency have an equal number of employees from each of the major political parties. ‘Sort of a DEI back-atcha.
You can look up the actual numbers somewhere, but right now most government agency employees are like 85% or more Democrats.
They care about their budgets, their pensions, their job security. To quote Terry Pratchett, “Cuius Testiculos Habes, Habeas Cardia Et Cerebellum“. IIRC, in one section of The Art of War, Trump will find the only model I know for how to handle this. Where he has the authority to do so, he has to make an example of a couple of figureheads. I’d start with that smarmy jerk Chris Wray.
Glad you used the State Department for your example.
Once all is cut back it won’t take nearly the resources an effort required today and the chance for successful performance in the more limited endeavors will be enhanced.
Followed by making an example the pompous Merrick Garland.
I think he leaves with Biden but I share the sentiment. Also Mayorkas.
If that requirement were to be imposed, 35% or more of the employees, who currently are registered Democrats, would re-register as Republicans, and it goes on as before.
Grenell has a background with State as former Ambassador to Germany. He was also Acting Director of National Intelligence at the end of the first Trump term.
The big correction needed at State is the social media censorism bureau, its name escapes me at the moment.
Easy to add: for four years.
Still wouldn’t really matter. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to vote in the Democrat primaries in some places, but that’s a small sacrifice to remain in their positions of power and control.
Democrats have already done that for decades, so they can run for office in places where people have to at least claim to be Republican to have any chance at all.
I don’t think that there is any straightforward way to do this. An overall reduction in the federal workforce is very viable, however. That should disproportionately affect the majority party.
Why not skip the political-allegiance inventory and go straight to loyalty oaths to Trump personally? It’s in the works! Anyone who won’t sign one gets fired—wouldn’t MAGA love that!
Administrations can choose as political appointees whomever they wish, but conditioning employment of regular workers on their political affiliation is banned in the federal merit system, happily.
Most of those losing jobs would be Democrats, for sure, although the remaining staff might still be 85% Democrats; but that’s less of a problem if they’re not allowed to do much anyway.
Two other suggestions:
One unbiased way to deal with the problem is just to eliminate the jobs. They can’t do real jobs. The jobs that Democrats gravitate to and dominate are fluff anyway, so that’ll take them out, but the target problem isn’t the Dems – it’s the jobs. So just eliminate the jobs. That’s like half of DoJ, two thirds of HHS, all of DoEd, a third of DoD, …
One thing I do not want my government involved in is “establishing balance.”
There’s more than one way to skin Sullivan the cat. If you don’t think that, in some agencies, there is a bias in favor of hiring those whose resumes say “I’m on the left,” you are either uninformed or painfully naive.
Suggested rule of thumb: If the function is materially affected by the job holder’s politics, then the job should be eliminated.
To answer your question: No, of course not. As for getting back to the founding fathers: we would be fortunate to get the government we had in the 1990’s. Kudos for your optimism, though.
The problem is that people cagily identify as being for one party when they really are for the other one.
Of course the trick inside this solution is ensuring that we keep the half or other fraction that is truly needed as we toss out the fluff.
I suspect most of that will be fairly easy to identify by position/title.
Getting rid of public sector unions would be a great start. Next, work with Congress to begin a wholesale RIF – reduction in force. The problem with RIFs is that you might not get rid a bad apple under certain conditions (for anyone truly interested in learning more here is the OPM web site: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/workforce-restructuring/reductions-in-force/#url=Overview). Still, it could be possible to move a deep state operative to a position with less responsibility and auhtority, so that would be an improvement.
I’d use some of the savings to boost the lower and middle ranks of our military. It’s way too top-heavy, and younger people quit because the life is hard, even more so with the woke BS foisted on them . . .
Based on my experience in a large corporation I don’t think RIFs work well. Yes, you have fewer people, but the smaller workforce has the same responsibilities. Our IT staff was reduced with the result being worse service and longer wait times for problem resolution. I would expect the same at the Federal level. Unless there was a large amount of dead weight, fewer people with the same workload isn’t a good thing. To what passes for my mind, the problem is that the Feds have their noses in too, far too, many areas. Reducing the reach of the Feds would automatically make some departments and their staff unnecessary.
If Congress will revert to the proper methods of fiscal year budgeting for each department, spending will be earmarked according to function with FTE’s (full-time equivalent numbers of personnel designated). This would cause the RIFS to be in the proper areas. The appointed Department heads must be on board for this effort and make it a major performance objective..
Of course our CIA is so heavily embedded across so much of what influences our culture that until that agency is cut up into thpousands of pieces we won’t be free of it.
Project Mockingbird has stayed alive and well even up to today. Which is why the controlled media plasters subliminal messages into almost anything a person views on normal TV or through the stream services influences viewers on the need for the Climate-crisis programs. (Or else, don’t you know we will all be dead in 5 years. I half expect Greta Thurnberg to run fir President in 2028, despite her not being a citizen or her being over the age of 34.)
JFK suggested dissolving the CIA a long long time ago. Trump is suggesting that RFK Jr might be in charge of oversight of this agency.
This suggestion both pleases me and worries me. We all know what happened to JFK after he made that pronouncement. (As well as his May 1963 Exec Order that would have reigned in the Fed.)
Or do something like I think the New York City schools still do, bad teachers just sit in a room somewhere, being paid for doing nothing, but at least they’re not doing actual damage.