Trump promised to drain the swamp … but does he realize how deep it is? ..."Enter President Donald J. Trump.
President Trump has called for “draining the swamp.” What he is in effect setting out to do is to fight human nature. For government intervention in every aspect of our lives has attracted those with the most insatiable appetites for power because there is so much to be gained.
The antidote is to diminish governmental power — if there is less to be accumulated, there will be less of an incentive for the power-seeking to enter office.
But fighting governmental power is in many ways like fighting gravity. For the ability to wield that power on behalf of favored constituents is what keeps the government gravy train chugging. What politician would voluntary seek to depreciate his political currency?
Consider what President Trump is up against: Intense jockeying for positioning at the highest levels of the executive branch among individuals seeking to accumulate power to advance their own agendas; holdovers from prior administrations who hate the president’s guts; bureaucrats who have made a decent living for themselves by and are ideologically committed to the state-expanding status quo; rogue judges acting on the basis of politics rather than the law; congressmen on the Left and Right who for their own reasons — primarily getting re-elected and perpetuating their power — wish to see the swamp continue to fester.
These individuals see a president infringing upon their turf, upending their plans, and threatening the power they have amassed over the course of their careers.
Juxtapose this reality with the goings-on of the president’s first few weeks in office:
Stories of in-fighting among those at the highest levels of the administration — replete with a mass of leaks on all manner of sensitive issues; plants from the Obama administration sabotaging the president’s policies; unfriendly bureaucrats openly seeking to undermine the president via social media; litigation over executive orders that disregards the letter and spirit of the law; congressional backsliding on promised agenda items; and, of course, a media all-too-willing to publicize every last story it can spin as damaging in order to delegitimize and discredit the president. These efforts are all geared towards deterring the swamp draining.President Trump has succeeded throughout his career in cutthroat businesses. To do so in politics will require a deep understanding of the manifold forces arrayed against him, and a strategy to engage them in no holds barred political warfare in all dimensions.
He will have to prioritize his policies, devise strategies to push them through replete with numerous contingency plans given overwhelming resistance, while at every turn protecting against people working to undermine him on the inside and outside.
To counter this will require a flurry of actions in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as well as a cohesive messaging plan geared towards both a hostile media and the general public.
He will have to avail himself of all possible means to aggressively strike at the administrative state, coax Congress to trade his big agenda items for its favored policies, and constrain a judicial branch corrupted by far too many progressive justices, while appointing as many rock-ribbed constitutionalists as he can to the federal bench. He will have to thwart a media that will seek to portray him as an authoritarian seeking to harm countless Americans at every turn, while making a clear, concise, and direct pitch to the public as to why his policies are intended to return power to them.
He will be attacked at every turn because such actions will threaten the livelihood of those whose whole careers have been dedicated to accruing power in politics.
If anyone could take the slings and arrows associated with these policies, it is President Trump, who never apologizes and always counterpunches. He must pair his mettle with the personnel and the plan to achieve his agenda.
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https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2017/02/trump-promised-to-drain-the-swamp-but-does-he-realize-how-deep-it-is#sthash.K3AwdjQx.dpuf
