The Morning After

By G. Murphy Donovan

The most dangerous man for any government is the man who is able to think things out…and comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.  – H.L. Mencken

Elections seldom settle much of anything.

However, what seems to be a common sense outcome does present opportunities to change the atmospherics or the vectors of policy. All the angst about everything, that may or may not be done, comes into sharp focus “the morning after.” And it’s not necessarily a question of what to do so much as it is what can you do?

Indeed, we might ask ourselves today; if the wisdom of crowds has prevailed, what now?

Close elections seldom produce mandates. If near fifty percent of voters don’t like the results of a national election, the win can be pyrrhic – and pyretic; both of which have poison pill potential, if we can mix a few metaphors. Popular sentiment, a winning vote count, is not really a measure of success when the apparatus of power is still in the loser’s hands.

Politically and culturally; the entire West Coast, most of the Great Lakes states, and the Northeast, including New York, at the local level, are liberal radical Democrat Party sinecures. Indeed, you can argue that most of urban America is a far left political monoculture. More significantly, the vast majority of all apparatchiks and civil servants inside Washington, DC, and the so-called DMV (District, Maryland, & Virginia), are liberal Democrats.

No matter who wins any national election, real power still abides with that deep state, the unelected civil servants in those many cabinet fiefdoms and federal agencies who can make or break any given policy or program.

Realistically, the most important actors in Washington, DC are not elected officials. Real power does not reside with elected or even appointed mandarins. Real power rests with that vast army of unelected federal civil servants, toxically tenured administrators.

And let’s not be naïve, the most important job for most government drones is to keep their jobs. Good luck with that demographic.

Guaranteed tenure is the mother of federal arrogance – and sedition.

Inside the Beltway, bureaucratic inertia dictates that resistance must be the knee jerk response to any new leadership or policy, especially if the new leadership is not a member of “the party.” Change is the enemy of tenure, inertia, and the status quo.

The administrative state, aka ‘deep state’ does not suffer policy revolution or presumptuous newly elected fools gladly. “The enemy within” is the politicized civil “servant;” in the Intelligence Community, in the State Department, at the Justice Department, at the Pentagon and all the other federal bureaus where no one ever gets fired for incompetence or failure. Need we mention partisans like Clapper, Comey, Brennan, and Nuland – or  boondoggles like: Vietnam,Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, those Russophobia hoaxes, and now the ongoing Ukraine dumpster fire?

If we learned nothing from recent decades of American political history, we should acknowledge that federal partisanship, and failure, have been normalized. Sadly, partisan incompetence in public institutions has been rationalized or ignored by a legacy media that, like RAND Corporation and Brookings, has become both revolving door and apologist for the usual suspects. Indeed, the federal corporate complex, as both Truman and Eisenhower prophesized, has become a breed of feral cats that now lick their own genitals in concert – at taxpayer expense.

Cat ladies indeed.

Common sense and prudence are not common currencies inside the Beltway. Beyond the flag waving and genuflextions to democracy and freedom; the real game in Washington DC is the game – winners and losers, zero sum as they say at the RAND Corporation.

Winning an election is the easy part of politics. Winning allies and collaborators for change, after the voting and rancor ends, is the real challenge. Albeit, given the state of the nation and a host of foreign policy challenges, there is still a silver lining in 2025.

Nobody on team Trump needs a job or a promotion. So why not take them at their word? They actually believe they can make America great again. What’s not to like? So why not let them try?

Other than ego and achievement, folks on team Trump have no motives or agendas other than legacy, accomplishment, and improvement. For too long, Washington has been dominated by lawyers and professional politicians like Harris and Biden who are net consumers, not creators, of national wealth and prosperity,

Donald, Elon, and Vivek, are already wealthy beyond corruption. Indeed, the best thing that team Trump brings to the table is the proven talent to get things done, make things work, get things built. And to complement the pragmatists, you also have social and compassionate players like Kennedy and Gabbard – economic pragmatism leavened with environmental, health and social concern.

Again, what’s not to like?

If Truman and Eisenhower were correct about the dangers of corporate/federal corruption, why not give a team of outsized, successful corporate mandarins a shot at fixing the efficiency, accountability, and governance problems?

We could then call progress in America a revolution without guns. Whilst good ideas may create good institutions; over time, too often the institution becomes the enemy of the idea. Change and/or the decay of political cultures are natural processes. Beyond personalities, the only real choices now are how we manage and support any brave new world.

Good luck with that, America.

G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of Intelligence and national security –  Follow him on X