Any honest accounting of the Trump presidency from a conservative perspective will necessarily be mixed and a study in paradox. One of the greatest paradoxes of the current administration is that, in its rush to enact President Donald Trump’s ambitious agenda as quickly as possible, it risks derailing it.

Two examples come to mind. The first is the president’s Department of Government Efficiency experiment. The concept was simple, and music to a conservative’s ears: Reduce the actual size of government by cutting out the superfluous bits. Elon Musk was assigned the task and proceeded with a chainsaw (literally and figuratively). Many examples of truly absurd government spending were identified, but the slapdash and theatrical manner also led to several embarrassments, such as the firing of some 350 employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which was reversed the very next day as someone realized that nuclear security might be essential even under a libertarian assessment of government’s role.