The speed at which President Donald Trump is disrupting the federal government has been likened to the “shock and awe” campaign of the Gulf War — a strategy designed to overwhelm an opponent both militarily and psychologically, similar to the “flooding the zone” and “blitzing.” The idea is to do so much so fast that no one can keep up with what you’re doing, let alone try to stop you.
“Nation Shrugs as Godzilla Eats Washington,” was the headline on a recent piece by journalist Matt Taibbi, who wrote, “Trump has been in office two weeks and changes are coming so fast, even I’m freaked out.”
Since taking office Jan. 20, Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders, nearly a third of the orders his predecessor Joe Biden signed in four years. His actions seem astonishing both in number and scope: calling the closure of USAID, offering buyouts to federal workers, ousting transgender athletes from women’s sports, proposing the U.S. take over Gaza and the Panama Canal, and withdrawing from the U.N.’s Human Rights Council and the Paris Climate Accords, just to name a few.
The legality of many of these actions are in question, and already the courts have blocked some, including the executive order ending birthright citizenship. Beyond the debate about whether Trump’s actions are legal or right, however, lies the question: How long can he keep up this pace? And further, what are the costs — to him personally and to the nation — whether he succeeds or fails?
Does the president have too much power?
Physically, of course, Trump’s energy is legendary. During his first term, there were scholarly papers written about his schedule, analyzing his tweets during the middle of the night and arguing that the president was sleep-deprived. He reportedly sleeps only four to five hours a night and drinks Diet Coke throughout the day. There’s nothing to suggest that the president is going to grow physically tired from all the winning, as he puts it.
Moreover, there is no historical precedence to suggest that the Godzilla approach to governance is politically risky. In fact, the opposite is true, Jay Cost, the Gerald R. Ford nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told me.
If you look at rankings of past presidents like those put out by C-Span, all the presidents at the top of the list were vigorous users of executive power. “Think, for instance, Calvin Coolidge,” Cost said. “Coolidge is not remembered as a great president because he didn’t want to wield the sweeping powers of the executive branch.”
People will ultimately judge Trump on whether he can accomplish his big pledges, such as controlling inflation, boosting economic growth and reducing the cost of energy, Cost said. For much the same reasons, Franklin D. Roosevelt engineered a “profound constitutional change” with regard to the executive branch becoming more powerful between 1933 and 1937, as FDR led the nation’s recovery from the Great Depression with a series of legislative acts beginning with the Agricultural Adjustment Act and ending with National Industrial Recovery Act, wresting power from an ineffective Congress.
“It’s not that there was some great debate about the propriety of an expansive federal government. Instead it was the sense that Roosevelt fixed the problem — that’s how the American people tend to vote,” Cost said.
A ‘constitutional crisis’ or just the first 100 days?
The onslaught of presidential actions has caused some people, especially opponents of Trump’s policies, to howl about the president staging a “coup” while others have announced a “constitutional crisis” is here. Support groups are forming to help people work through “The Trauma of Trump.” And Democrats, of course, are grasping (and perhaps gasping) for anything to counter Trump.
But Matt Glassman, a senior fellow at The Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, takes a much calmer approach, despite not being a fan of the president — in fact, he has called some of Trump’s early actions “pedestrian” and says that what Trump is doing is not so radically different from what other presidents have done in their first 100 days. The main difference, he says, is the level of vitriol toward Trump.
“While there are some things that are problematic, there are some things (Trump is doing) that are normal, that a lot of presidents do when they first come into office, and people are getting into a twist over it, or saying they’re illegal, because Trump happens to be doing them,” Glassman told me.
Budget cuts are an example. “You can say you’re going to slash a trillion dollars from the federal government, but if all you’re doing is small reductions in the workforce and cancelling some contracts with USAID, you’re never going to come close to that number. ... Any administration can make up numbers when they submit their budget and say we’re going to cut a trillion dollars, but actually cutting spending seriously involves going after the big things, and they’ve taken all the big things off the table. Well, that’s 83% of the budget right there.”
The federal government’s biggest expenses are defense, Social Security, Medicare and other health programs, veterans programs and interest on the national debt; Trump said in December that he would not cut Social Security and has proposed ending taxes on these payments.
Glassman also notes that the contracts that Elon Musk says will be eliminated have to go through Congress. “You have to not request that money and then Congress has to not appropriate that money before there is any actual savings.”
Every time a new administration comes in, “They do so many things in the first few weeks that it feels like they’re overwhelming the government. Congress doesn’t do anything in the first 30 days. They’re just getting organized. So it feels like the presidency is the only game in town, it feels like everything is being done by executive order, and you just have to wait a month until everything settles down.
He added: “People think the sky is falling — like a hiring freeze in the federal government. Well, Clinton did that.”
It’s worth noting that as president, Bill Clinton also offered buyouts for federal employees in his “Reinventing Government” plan. During the Clinton administration, the number of federal civilian workers was reduced by 19%, to 1.8 million workers. Today, per NPR, there are 2.4 million federal workers, excluding uniformed military and those employed by the U.S. Postal Service.
But the “sky is falling” hype isn’t exclusive to one side, Glassman said. “Partisans have the incentive to overstate what Trump is doing. They either want people to love it, like Trump does, or they want people to hate it, like Democrats and liberals do. That’s one problem here. No one has the incentive to say, let’s look at this for what it actually is.”
Will the Trump administration slow down?
There are legitimate things to be worried about with the new administration — mass firings at the Department of Justice, for one thing, Glassman said. “But Musk running around canceling contracts, and trying to send federal employees home — that strikes me as a lot less than it looks like.” Not that individuals aren’t being effected, for example, if their job is cut, but the idea that Trump is taking a wrecking ball to D.C. is “85% wrong,” he said, especially since courts are blocking some of the administration ballyhooed actions.
Already, the panicked headlines of last week are starting to shift into a more measured tone, with one headline in The Washington Post reading, “Save the panic over Trump’s ‘power grabs.’ It might be needed later.”
Or, it might not be. Many of the breathless and fear-inducing takes on this president have already proved unfounded. (Remember the “Dictator on Day One” scare?) He is, for sure, testing the boundaries of his power — like Biden did when he canceled student loan debt — and renewing serious conversations about the growing power of the executive branch amid historic polarization that has weakened the will of Congress to push back.
It could be that the frenzied pace may ease as the country gets past the initial “shock and awe” and settles in for the next four years. But don’t expect anyone else to own the headlines like Trump does.
“Trump is a media force of nature. His ability to command attention is like nothing I’ve ever seen in Washington. He will always be making news,” Glassman said. But, he said, “The current pace, where it does feel like you’re standing under Niagara Falls and it’s hitting you hour after hour, I’m sure will slow down to some degree. At some point, you run out of things you want to do right away, and it’s time to slog through Congress.”
Cost, at the American Enterprise Institute, said it’s too soon to know how much Trump will continue to push the envelope. “I think we’re just going to keep being surprised. I expect to be surprised continually here, at least for a little bit.”