Column: How bureaucrats are fighting the voters for control of our country
Donald Trump was elected president last November by winning 306
electoral votes. He pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C., to
overturn the system of politics that had left the nation’s capital and
major financial and tech centers flourishing but large swaths of the
country mired in stagnation and decay. “What truly matters,” he said in
his Inaugural Address, “is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.”
Is it? By any historical and constitutional standard, “the people”
elected Donald Trump and endorsed his program of nation-state populist
reform. Yet over the last few weeks America has been in the throes of an
unprecedented revolt. Not of the people against the government—that
happened last year—but of the government against the people. What this
says about the state of American democracy, and what it portends for the
future, is incredibly disturbing.
