Will you know how? Or how long it will take? Will the Congress support you? Will the people, once confronted with just what it actually means to “reduce the size of government”?
I spoke with Herman Cain in 2011 and asked him this same question. He answered it, and I believe he knows how and has the grit to what’s necessary. So does Donald Trump. It is, after all, a skill set, honed by experience, that is peculiar to the private sector.
This is why I have always suggested you and Trump team up, (A Trump-Cruz Slate, Why Trump Should Go First), there is much on-the-job you will need to learn, while up to your neck in alligators bequeathed to you by the past administration.
Your only allies will be the people, as many of them as you can get on board. No matter whether it’s you or Trump elected, the Left will go into their basements building bombs, for Trump maybe only metaphorical bombs, depending on how he comes out swinging, but for you, for real.
In the field of bureaucracy-busting I know what needs to be done and how to do it. There are several ways, in fact, only I don’t recommend the Lenin method of just tearing everything down, then starting all over again from scratch. Ideologues of every stripe seem to prefer this. In many ways Lenin never imagined Russia is still generations away from rediscovering moral sextants they lost in 1918 because of what he and Stalin put into place the next thirty years. But neither do I recommend the slow drip-drip-drip-attrition method favored by many who always want an escape valve that can be recaptured, 4, 8, 12 years later, especially if Congress remains in the hands of shameless cravens such as Mitch McConnell. The private sector businessman knows some pain needs to be felt, and it’s about time the people who’ve been dishing it out for decades now has to feel its sting. Most will bounce back, for the private economy will expand as fast as the government sector will recede, actually faster, since many in the government sector will have no taste for competing in an op market economy, where succeeding depends entirely on merit.
It has to be a team effort, Ted, covering every cabinet post, for there will be wrecking aplenty, especially from inside the Washington establishment, and Congress, but also from the corporate and financial sectors, and again, your only source of moral or political support, Ted, will come from the people themselves and their business sector, not Wall Street’s. The people have to know, up front, what cutting the power and size of government really means, relieving at least half a million federal employees of their worthless, redundant livelihoods, not only for the pain it will cause, but the giant teat that will be jerked out of their mouths that they likely haven’t given much thought. It’s a great thing to talk about, but most people will find it difficult to give up a state check in exchange for self-respect once called upon to fork over. Provocateurs and land mines will be hidden everywhere, for you and the people.
The people need to want, with all their hearts, to see sheep grazing on the Washington, just as they had been only a hundred years ago.
Obviously, this cannot happen in four years. Or even 8 or 16. It will take at least a generation, just as it took the Founders 36 years to cement the pilings of our Republic into the earth, 1788-1825, so that we could withstand a war (1812) and the depredations of Andrew Jackson, (1828) the real first 1st-generation American president. Take note that your status as 1st generation is a mark against you, so there is much you have to overcome personally to succeed.
Look to Marco, and then consider the turns you made that he did not. You took the hard, longer road, while he took the easier path, where talk outweighs deeper introspection, so today, while the same age, you are at least twenty years more mature. But an impresario who can play the Constitution on a cello as if he were YoYo Ma, does not a national leader make. or even an executive manager. And in these times you must be both.
Consider going to school another four years. Be an apprentice, but in a job from which you cannot be fired by your boss. I think you two would make a great team if you and Trump can finds the right chemistry. It couldmean the beginning of that generation we need to fix things, long after Donald I are dead, but you will still be around to dance on the graves of the Left.
In any case, if you cannot figure out how to fire half a million people, while keeping the heavens from descending on your head, and cellar-bombs from bursting around your ankles; if you cannot wreak the people’s revenge on the bureaucrats while also letting them know you are jerking an awful lot of teats out of their mouths…if you can do these things, then you are a man whose promises will match his deeds.
