I’ve started to read Project 2025, a 922-page document titled Mandate for leadership published last year by The Heritage Foundation. It’s a collection of essays by different people on various aspects of the US government and how the “administrative state” should be deconstructed and dismantled to ‘return power to the American people.’ It looks like a prescription to wrest power from ‘woke’ bureaucrats and give it to the president who is assumed to be an almost Godlike being with infinite wisdom and perfect organisational ability. He or she is expected to know what the American people want at any given moment and force that through using a stripped-down executive branch.
It could easily have been drafted up by Dominic Cummings when he was in drink. It reads like a recipe for institutional nihilism followed by a return to monarchy, although the authors don’t use that term. One can’t help but think the wealthy individuals behind Project 2025 are less interested in giving power to the American people and more in increasing their own. Who would challenge/regulate Musk’s companies for example unless it was the federal state? Elected governments are the only way an electorate can have their voice heard collectively, the whole basis of democracy.
The last time the electorate spoke, in November 2020, President Trump didn't want to hear what they had to say.
It is not hugely different to the ambitions of Vladimir Putin in breaking up and weakening the EU, the better to threaten and dominate.
A lot of Project 2025 revolves around their interpretation of what Article 2 of the US Constitution means. This is the opening paragraph of section 2 (page 43):
"In its opening words, Article II of the U.S. Constitution makes it abundantly clear that “[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” That enormous power is not vested in departments or agencies, in staff or administrative bodies, in nongovernmental organizations or other equities and interests close to the government. The President must set and enforce a plan for the executive branch. Sadly, however, a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly “woke” faction of the country."
It also claims that many US agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also "increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to govern."
Many commentators, on both sides of the aisle, would argue about that but there is a certain irony here because, in 2017, Trump had difficulty just reading the 1000 or so words of Article 2. This is revealed in a book: A Very Stable Genius, written by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.
Apparently, as part of a documentary, titled The Words That Built America, someone had the idea that it would be helpful to bring a divided country back together to have all six living presidents, as well as six vice presidents, join in reading parts of the Constitution on camera. Other political figures and actors would read portions of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Each performance was to be edited to "create a lively, unabridged reading of the treasured documents that have united the nation for more than two centuries."
When Trump took his seat in The White House for his bit, the director Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of then House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, said: “You’re lucky you got the easy part. It gets complicated after this ”
However, Trump made it look anything but easy. He "stumbled, trying to get out the words in the arcane, stilted form the founding fathers had written. Trump grew irritated. 'It’s very hard to do because of the language here,' Trump told the crew. 'It’s very hard to get through that whole thing without a stumble.' He added, 'It’s like a different language, right?' The cameraman tried to calm Trump, telling him it was no big deal, to take a moment and start over. Trump tried again, but again remarked, 'It’s like a foreign language'.”
"Some believed Trump would eventually get it, but others were more concerned. The president, already bristling about his missteps, was getting angry. He chided the crew, accusing them of distracting him. “You know, your paper was making a lot of noise. It’s tough enough,” Trump said.
“Every time he stumbled, he manufactured something to blame people,” another person in the room recalled. “He never said, ‘Sorry, I’m messing this up.’ [Other] people would screw up and say, ‘Ohhhh, I’m sorry.’ They would be self-effacing. He was making up excuses and saying there were distracting sounds.… He was definitely blaming everyone for his inability to get through it. That was prickly, or childish.” Though stiff, he eventually made it through without any errors.
Don’t laugh. Trump is many things but capable isn’t one of them. He’s not capable of reading the details and he’s certainly not capable of understanding them or thinking through the consequences of any policy actions. Therefore, he was and always will be at the mercy of unscrupulous advisers.
I also had a smile on page 29-30, in the section dealing with the White House 'structure' and the Office of Communications. The author says:
"The best resource for the Office of Communications is the President. The President conveys the White House’s overall message through one or two inaugural addresses, State of the Union addresses, speeches to Congress, and press conferences. The office must also ensure that the various White House offices disseminate a unified message to the public. The Communications Director and Press Secretary in particular should be careful to avoid contradicting the President or delivering conflicting information."
The president in this ideal world, is supposed to be responsible for providing a unified communications strategy. I’m sure there have been presidents who had the intellect and discipline to set and keep to a coordinated communications strategy, but Donald Trump wasn’t and isn’t one of them. His speciality is crazed rants in which he spouts a lot of gibberish that makes no sense.
There is total disdain for experts. Listen to these extracts on page 10:
"Progressive elites speak in lofty terms of openness, progress, expertise, cooperation, and globalization. But too often, these terms are just rhetorical Trojan horses concealing their true intention—stripping “we the people” of our constitutional authority over our country’s future.
"America’s corporate and political elites do not believe in the ideals to which our nation is dedicated—self-governance, the rule of law, and ordered liberty. They certainly do not trust the American people, and they disdain the Constitution’s restrictions on their ambitions." (my emphasis)
The Heritage Foundation is right behind Trump, a billionaire, a convicted felon, a sexual predator, serial bankrupt, an insurrectionist and possibly a traitor. To charge progressive elites with having no respect for the rule of law is simply stunning.
"Intellectual sophistication, advanced degrees, financial success, and all other markers of elite status have no bearing on a person’s knowledge of the one thing most necessary for governance: what it means to live well. That knowledge is available to each of us, no matter how humble our backgrounds or how unpretentious our attainments. It is open to us to read in the book of human nature, to which we are all offered the key just by merit of our shared humanity. One of the great premises of American political life is that everyone who can read in that book must have a voice in deciding the course and fate of our Republic."
This is the rationale underpinning for a kakistocracy, a government by the most stupid and we can see just how this is panning out with his choices to fill important offices of state with idiots. His Secretary of State for Defence is Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host!
A few days ago, Trump's son Donald Junior told an interviewer he didn't want people in the new administration who thought they "knew more than my father."
Don Jr. says he is helping his dad to pick his cabinet members:I want people who don’t think they know better than my father— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) November 7, 2024
Since Trump knows nothing, it's clear why the process is taking so long. Finding human beings in Washington who know less than Trump can't be easy, but it appears they are actually managing to do it.
I think we should all brace for a tricky few years until the clown car crashes and burns - as it will.
