Trump is doing OK
Despite the noise, he’s advancing an agenda
The Donald Trump presidency is portrayed in news media as comically adrift — veering from scandal, to intemperate tweet, to gaffe and back to scandal. There is, no doubt, a lot to be said in favor of this depiction. But there is another aspect to the Trump story: His administration has reshaped public policy on a number of issues in a decisively conservative direction.
The Heritage Foundation — one of the nation’s premier conservative think tanks — has reported that the Trump administration has adopted 64 percent of the 334 of the recommendations it made for the new president. This is a pace faster than Ronald Reagan back in 1981, when he adopted 48 percent of Heritage’s agenda.
Many of these “accomplishments” are simply a shift in stated administration policy relative to the Barack Obama administration. Without congressional approval, they are basically just for show. Nevertheless, there have been substantive achievements.
Obviously, the biggest accomplishments are naming Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court as well as 14 (and counting!) confirmed appointments to the appellate courts, enacting comprehensive tax reform and increasing military spending. But the Trump administration has been busy in other ways, too.
The president has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord that set targets for greenhouse-gas emissions. He repealed net neutrality. He limited the amount of land the federal government can acquire in the West. He has reinstated the “Mexico City” policy that prohibits giving money to international groups that support abortion. He has opened up offshore drilling.
I could go on. The Heritage agenda is very granular, intending to reshape public policy across the board. By and large, Heritage experts are too conservative for today’s left-wing academy, but they are top-notch scholars who know the ins and outs of government. For Mr. Trump to implement their agenda is a big victory for those of us who believe in a smaller, less intrusive government that encourages economic growth.
One reason Mr. Trump has accomplished so much of Heritage’s agenda is that approximately 70 former members of the think tank were in the Trump transition team or are now in the Trump administration. The president’s shoot-from-the-hip style of campaigning meant that he did not have much of a policy shop during the 2016 election to set out a specific agenda for governing. Plus, his coming from the private sector meant he did not have his own base of political intellectuals, strategists and minders with a sense of how the government should work. We have seen the ill effects of this inexperience with the endless staff turnover in the West Wing, but it also has meant that Trump has relied heavily on Heritage for his governing agenda.
Another reason for Mr. Trump’s successes is that governing power has migrated to the executive branch, away from the legislature, over the past 80 years. The president has been given a lot of effectively unilateral power by Congress, which means he can reshape policy on all manner of issues. So, even though Mr. Trump has struggled with legislative accomplishments (tax reform notwithstanding), he still has been very active.
The great irony of this is that Mr. Trump promised to be an anti-establishment candidate, unpredictable and outside-the-box. While there is very little “establishment” about Heritage, which seeks to remake the government from top to bottom, it is a conservative policy organization more in keeping with Ted Cruz than Mr. Trump, or at least the Trump of the campaign trail.
Either way, I will take it. During the 2016 campaign, I publicly stated that I would not vote for Trump because I doubted his conservative bona fides. I still do, to be honest. I do not think he has put enough thought into policy to have firm and steady ideas. But he has the good sense to rely on the smart folks at Heritage to enact a genuinely conservative agenda. In government, results matter more than intentions.