Stephen K. Bannon was still chief White House
strategist when he declared that the mission
of the Donald Trump Administration would be
“deconstruction of the administrative state.”
The opaque, academic language was at odds
with Bannon’s swashbuckling style, but that
turned out to be appropriate. The actual work
of dismantling the sprawling apparatus of the
Executive Branch—the specialized courts,
byzantine rulemaking bodies and independent
enforcement officers—would be carried out by
people who did not make headlines. “If you look
at these Cabinet appointees,” Bannon said in
February, “they were all selected for a reason.
And that is the deconstruction.”
For most of the year since Trump’s
stunning election win, his pronouncements
have commanded the public’s attention the
way an unexpected announcement does
on a long plane ride. But on the ground,
things have been happening. Quietly, the
Administration has taken thousands of
actions, affecting everyone from the poorest
day laborer to the richest investment banker.
And it’s touting its work. “No President
or Administration has deregulated or
withdrawn as many anticipated regulatory
actions as this one in this short amount of
time,” says White House communications
director Hope Hicks.
How you feel about those efforts may
depend on how you vote. An October 2017
Pew Research Center report found that
66% of Democrats believe government
regulation of business is necessary to protect
the public interest, compared with just 31%
of Republicans. That’s one of the greatest
partisan divides on the issue in decades.
In Washington, philosophy tends to
disappear into the swamp Trump pledged
to drain. His White House is stocked with
former executives and industry insiders
who have power over issues in which
former clients have hundreds of millions of
dollars at stake. By mid-June, according to
USA Today,more than 100 former federal
lobbyists had found jobs in the Trump
Administration, 69 of them in agencies they
had tried to influence from the outside.
Consider: it was President Bill Clinton
who signed a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act,
which had prevented banks from betting
your money on Wall Street. And President
George W. Bush imposed almost $30 billion
in new regulatory costs on Americans,
according to the Heritage Foundation.
Ultimately, as with much in life, good
government relies on the good faith of those
in whom we place our trust. Which is why so
much rides on the crew that Trump has put
in charge of his D.C. demolition project.By Massimo Calabresi