It’s not something that the political class, nor the media, nor Hollywood, nor historians will celebrate, but an enduring part of President Trump’s legacy will be that he proved the permanent bureaucracy in Washington does not exist to enact the will of the people. In fact, it’s often outright hostile to it.
The permanent bureaucracy, often referred to as the “deep state,” was both denied and cherished by the media during Trump’s term in office. On the one hand, journalists were indignant that the president would suggest such a thing exists. It’s a conspiracy! On the other, the hearts of cable news anchors were aflutter at any “career civil servant” who publicly criticized Trump or attempted to derail his agenda.
The New York Times on Sunday gave yet one more of these un-elected bureaucrats a full space to herald herself for trying to hogtie Trump’s plans from within the Justice Department. “I never harbored delusions about a Trump presidency,” wrote Erica Newland, who had worked in the Office of Legal Counsel up until 2018. “Mr. Trump readily volunteered that his agenda was to disassemble our democracy, but I made a choice to stay at the Justice Department — home to some of the country’s finest lawyers — for as long as I could bear it. I believed that I could better serve our country by pushing back from within than by keeping my hands clean.”
In her role at the DOJ, Newland was supposed to ensure that Trump’s policy actions were framed in ways that kept them legal and constitutional. Instead, she said she tried curbing them.
There was a lot of this in the last four years — the “anonymous” official who worked in the State Department, and the parade of “career civil servants” who testified during the impeachment hearings. James Comey. Each one of these government employees believed their agendas were more important than the one people actually voted for.
It was so tiresome to see these people lauded for their “courage” when opposing Trump in Washington involves absolutely no risk. But at least people got to see that there really is an apparatus in Washington dedicated to keeping everything about our government the same, even when an outsider is elected to the highest office precisely to change it.
That was a massive accomplishment, whether the history books recognize it or not.
