Smaller Government Could Be Trump’s Meaningful Legacy, if He’s Careful

I defended DOGE last week and it might as well have been two years ago. Elon Musk’s continued work rolls along impressively and has the promise to achieve the lasting legacy President Trump reportedly desires, but the president must prioritize to secure it.

After confronting the frenzy of accusations against Trump and Musk last week, let’s think about DOGE’s long term path. DOGE is a serious sign President Trump wants to make a lasting difference and not merely have a seemingly successful string of “wins” until he retires. The speed of his actions make sense: given how much of the agenda will get locked up in court, moving swiftly now is the only hope to get it worked out in the brevity of a single term.

I’ve criticized the president repeatedly for not being a real conservative in the past. His first administration increased government size and in his third campaign, he sounded more like Bill Clinton than Ronald Reagan. DOGE is a notable change, where a small gem from his platform that was easy to dismiss as rhetoric has become the polished crown jewel.

With the executive order yesterday mandating four employees to be terminated for every new hire and more deeply embedding DOGE into different departments, the President is instilling a small government culture that could outlast his term.

He may not be a philosophically consistent conservative, but he appears to have embraced leaving a government that is. Just perusing the constant stream of canceled contracts DOGE publishes on X is stunning — and likely to please most ordinary people, not just conservative ideologues. Few want their hard earned money taxed to pay a contractor $1.5 million to observe a mail center or enable the Department of Agriculture to grant $9 million for promotion of gender ideology in Latin America.

No wonder the Democrats are busy cussing out the president, feigning terror over a constitutional crisis. Again. For all the angst over Trump’s last term and years anticipating the potential for another, I doubt many Democratic leaders really meant what they said in the race.

Political movements genuinely fearful of an authoritarian build broad ideological coalitions to bring together everyone possible to resist. We see that in Hungary, for example, where liberty minded conservatives and far-left parties have joined hand in hand to attempt to fight strongman Viktor Orbán.

While some Republicans crossed to support Harris, the Democrats did not follow such resistance movements’ tactics. Instead of seeking moderate consensus to widen resistance, they doubled down on gender ideology, DEI, abortion and other far-left favorites.

The simple explanation for this is they didn’t believe their own rhetoric about Trump. You give up pushing your agenda when facing a real threat. You only give lip-service to such when you believe, say, a 1990’s New Democrat consensus is somehow too steep of price to pay to stop the “villain” you really believe is just a buffoon.

I believe they really thought the worst that could happen with Trump is what happened in 1.0. There would be a few setbacks, but those would justify an expansive lurch left in the next campaign.

Trump’s great untapped threat has never been to democracy, but to Democrats’ decades long bureaucratic empire expansion. Few, myself included, thought Trump would actually activate that threat, and thus, the Democrats bargained a loss would be better than giving up their cultural revolution for a moderate vision.

Trump called the bluff. With DOGE and related efforts, he is now doing something that far more conservative speaking presidents never got around to doing: shrinking government. A smaller government is antithetical to dreams of a world where lovers of traditional values and individual liberty of conscience are reeducated by the Democratic-led bureaucracy’s program of which the pronoun wars and government-led social media censorship were opening salvos.

The progressives would have done far better to moderate for the time being. Their greed for rapid replacement of traditional morals and expansion of government involvement in every aspect of life handed victory to someone happy to burn down the byzantine apparatus for that project.

The Democrats had ready straw-men of Trump, but the Trump actually intent on shrinking government is not a ready target. Those straw-men have had to become gymnasts. Democrats intent on forcing the pro-life to support abortion (and imprisoning protestors), intent on forcing everyone to act as if biological sexes aren’t a reality, intent on expanding government involvement throughout life, now must make Trump out as the authoritarian. Trump, they claim, is building an authoritarian government by making the government much smaller. Pray tell, how many dictatorial types wanted a smaller, less intrusive government?

They aren’t mad because Trump is becoming authoritarian. They are mad Trump appears determined to oversee a demolition of the progressive-authoritarian march started by FDR’s New Deal and extended by LBJ’s Great Society. Even the partially court encumbered efforts of the first three weeks undo decades of work toward pushing everyone into the narrowly bounded, ideologically progressive future hailed by this generation’s initialed politico, AOC.

Building a massive project takes much longer than disassembling them. That’s great news for most everyday Americans who prefer equality of opportunity, less so for those who dream of a European-style socialism complete with the quixotic quest for equity of outcome.

The Democrats do have a hope, if they can stop hyperventilating long enough to see it and it’s one Trump, Musk and the rest of the administration shouldn’t overlook while on a “winning streak.” The biggest risk to the project is the current inflation, which played a significant role in dashing Kamala Harris’s presidential hopes. If the economy doesn’t improve within the next year, Republicans will lose the House in 2026 and the end of Trump’s term will mirror his first, plagued by investigations and impeachment efforts.

A recession, ala 2008, would be the excuse for a big government candidate to seek an otherwise impossibly rapid undoing of DOGE’s work. To solidify a smaller government one needs to not only shrink it, but steward an economy that is resistant to arguments a bigger government is necessary to “save us.”

Given that much of the economy is beyond the president’s control, this usually comes down to luck as much as anything. This administration may be unique, though, because of its fascination with one place the president can deeply impact the economy.

Trump has a decision: does he love the idea of lasting government efficiency more than he loves “beautiful” tariffs? Trade wars aim to increase domestic jobs, a laudable effort that would help with kitchen table inflation. Government efficiency could do the same through lower taxes, reduced deficit spending and reduced artificial demand from the government itself.

Especially in the high tech world, the tariff path to meat and potatoes issues is a slow one, if it works at all. How many items depend on a supply chain decades in the making in China? Tariffs may only inflate costs, not bring production home.

Many of those jobs will take years to establish even if the desired outcome of moving jobs Stateside happens. Years more than the president has to cement a lasting legacy, with plenty of time for the next leaders to undo some or all of it.

Most Americans seem to get Trump’s three prong strategy right now: smaller government, American production through protectionist tariffs and a reversal of the government’s enforcement of conformity to progressive values. People only think in these big picture terms, though, as long as they expect it will help put food on their tables.

If Trump goes too far with tariffs, making it harder to afford everything from lightbulbs to cell phones, the economy could easily go from an aide to an albatross. Democrats are demonstrating they care far more about promoting transgender affirmation and surgery in Columbia than practical issues right now, but they could easily adapt.

In our global economy, protectionist trade may not accomplish everything Trump hopes even in the long run. DOGE, on the other hand, could be a lasting gift to the generations ahead, a gift of freedom of thought and from debt.

I hope the president keeps focused on this effort, which covers two of his three prongs, and doesn’t let the outlier of tariffs obscure his worthy efforts.