A Genuine Revolution: How Trump and Elon Musk Are Solving Truman’s Accountability Challenge

Sean Hannity’s remarkable interview of President Trump and Elon Musk is putting the entire DOGE project in a new, different light.In 1952, President Truman warned his successor that presidents try to get things done, but they have remarkably little effective reach beyond the Oval Office. He famously said of President Eisenhower: “Poor Ike; when he was a general, he gave an order and it was carried out. Now he is going to sit in that big office and he’ll give an order and not a damn thing is going to happen.”In the military there is always follow-up to make sure things are implemented as ordered. In the civilian bureaucracy (until now) there has not been a mechanism for follow-up. Mr. Trump learned from his first term that Truman was right. During his interview, Mr. Trump explained how he was solving this challenge with Mr. Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. Mr. Musk told Mr. Trump, as the president put it: “You know, when you sign these executive orders, a lot of them don’t get done, and maybe the most important ones.” Then, Mr. Trump added, Mr. Musk “would take that executive order that I’d signed, and he would have those people go to whatever agency it was — ‘When are you doing it? Get it done. Get it done.’ And some guy that maybe didn’t want to do it, all of a sudden, he’s signing.”I learned this lesson from Senator Mack in 1983. He mentioned a management course he had taken as a bank president. It taught him “you get what you inspect, not what you expect.”I used that phrase as a constant principle in developing the Contract with America and the amazing conservative reforms we passed and got signed into law by President Clinton.One of the reasons Americans are so fed up with politics and politicians is the failure to really change things despite lots of campaign promises.Virtually every candidate runs on changing Washington — and yet Washington rarely changes. The bureaucracy and the lobbyists are permanent. The elected officials come and go.This is changing before our eyes. We are living through a genuine revolution in running the government. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Washington-centered New Deal bureaucratic-lobbyist model is being strongly challenged for the first time.Mr. Trump has the determination and will power to make change happen. Mr. Musk has the understanding of technology that could make inspecting every expectation a reality.As Mr. Musk put it: “If the will of the president is not implemented, and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, and that means we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy. This was an important point. At Gettysburg, President Lincoln did not promise government of, by, and for bureaucrats and lobbyists. He promised government of, by, and for the people. Messrs. Trump and Musk are working to develop mechanisms which will truly return us to Lincoln’s goal.For 92 years — since Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933 — the bureaucracies and their lobbyist allies have grown stronger and more arrogant. They have become the government. They simply reject oversight by the Congress or the president. In many cases, they refuse to answer questions or simply lie.The Trump administration is exposing the world of the unaccountable, inefficient, wasteful, and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy.The early results are staggering. There are billions of dollars in fraud. There are stunning expenditures on ideological programs that most Americans oppose. The inefficiency and incompetence are almost unbelievable.The DOGE’s methodical, high tech auditing approach could educate the American people into a determination to dig out the waste, fraud, and arrogance and return to a much more frugal government.In addition to his work to Make America Great Again and Make America Healthy Again, Mr. Trump has added Make America Honest Again to his to-do list.The DOGE’s work — combined with tax cuts, deregulation, and a focus on work and investment — could lead us to a balanced budget within five to seven years. Then, we could start paying down the federal debt.This will be a major legacy of the historic Trump presidency.

A Genuine Revolution: How Trump and Elon Musk Are Solving Truman’s Accountability Challenge

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