DOGE has been erasing whole government departments without bothering to think about the impact their loss will have on millions of Americans who depend on their services.
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As Elon Musk and his DOGE acolytes take a sledgehammer to the long-established American system of governance, it’s worth remembering that many prominent features of our national government developed in response to very real threats to the health and well-being of “we the people.”
This tradition of defending American democracy and the public livelihood by extending the reach of government expertise goes back to George Washington. Before he became a soldier and our first president, Washington was a self-trained land surveyor, a profession that called for strong mathematical and analytical ability — skills that he drew on to help engineer the structure of checks and balances that defined the distinctly American approach to democratic government.
Washington’s governing challenge was how to bring 13 fractious former colonies into a functional confederation. There were suggestions that, to form an effective government, the newly liberated colonies needed to choose their own king or supreme commander. Washington preferred the term “president,” which raised the question of how to address the president.
John Adams, who would succeed Washington as president, suggested that “your excellency” would promote the proper air of authority. Washington said, ”No.” He may have been thinking of the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence: ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” That one sentence overturned the centuries-old contention of Europe’s feudal nobility that the authority of kings and princes descended from God. Washington was not having it.
The presidency, as Washington defined it, was at root a job of managing the government’s affairs. The job of Congress was to represent and answer the needs of the citizens of the original colonies that had now become states. Balancing the competing interests that soon emerged proved anything but easy.
When the first governing body of the newly formed United States, the Congress of the Confederation, met in Philadelphia in 1783, it was threatened by veterans of the Revolutionary War who had not been paid their promised wages. Alexander Hamilton pleaded with the Pennsylvania State Militia to protect Congress. It refused. Four hundred angry former soldiers descended on a Congress meeting in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.
Congress members fled to Princeton, NJ, which became the de facto capital. Then the de facto capital moved to Annapolis, MD, and finally to Trenton, NJ. By 1787, it was back in Philadelphia, and the drafting of what was to become the US Constitution began.
The problem with paying the army and navy veterans’ back pay, Hamilton quickly realized, was that while some of the newly formed states were relatively wealthy, others were too poor to fund the cost of a government, much less able to meet the veterans’ demands. The only solution was for all the states to pool their resources.
Congress realized that it could not depend on any of the state militias to defend it. The solution was to form an independent federal territory, which became the District of Columbia. Philadelphia became the temporary capital for 10 years while Washington, DC, was under construction.
Federal Agencies Created To Solve National Problems
This kind of ad hoc solution to a pressing problem became a feature of American democracy down through the years. Fast forward to the early 20th century when the mass production of food products, especially fresh meat in slaughterhouses, was recognized as a major threat to the health of the American public.
Even when politicians can’t agree among themselves, or when political control shifts as it is designed to do, the agencies that administer the laws underpinning our society continue to function — and do so without the sharp zigs and zags that make both business and personal planning problematic.
A landmark in the movement to combat this threat was the 1906 novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which documented in vivid detail the slipshod practices of the meat industry. The US Food and Drug Administration was founded in 1938 to protect the public from poisons and toxins entering the food chain from slipshod practices in slaughterhouses.
Eight years later, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was formed to combat deadly outbreaks of malaria sweeping the southern United States. The CDC dispatched trucks to spray against mosquitoes that spread the parasite that killed thousands of Americans each year. By 1950, malaria was virtually wiped out in the 48 states.
Since then, the CDC has evolved into the world’s premier early-warning center against deadly outbreaks such as Ebola, SARS, MERS, COVID-19, and bird flu.
Each of these government agencies has a specific reason for existing, but the civil service as a whole has an even greater role in government. It provides access to expertise on complex issues that most members of Congress simply don’t have time to acquire on their own.
More importantly, nonpartisan civil servants provide a center of stability and continuity to the nation when intense party rivalries and political polarization make it impossible for elected leaders to act effectively. The public knows that even when politicians can’t agree among themselves, or when political control shifts as it is designed to do, the agencies that administer the laws underpinning our society will continue to function — and do so without the sharp zigs and zags that make both business and personal planning problematic.
No one voted Musk into power, so it’s natural to ask how the protective power of our nation’s highest office suddenly morphed into a destructive power vested in an unelected megadonor. Does that not invoke the very definition of corruption?
The importance of a nonpartisan civil service has been demonstrated in other countries as well. In the last century, France went through several paralyzed “republics,” but daily life continued without severe hardships because its civil service remained up and running. Belgium was without an elected parliament from December 2018 to August 2020. The country continued to function normally during that period — again because of its civil service.
A Perversion of Power and Purpose
It’s that sense of security and safety that Elon Musk’s DOGE wrecking-ball has threatened. Musk makes it clear that when he approaches a federal agency, he is not interested in reform; he wants to gut it completely. Speaking at the 2025 World Governments Summit in Dubai, Musk said:
I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave (sic) part of them behind, If you leave part of them behind … it’s kind of like leaving a weed. If you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then easy (sic) for the weed to grow back.
No one voted Musk into power, so it’s natural to ask how the protective power of our nation’s highest office suddenly morphed into a destructive power vested in an unelected megadonor. Does that not invoke the very definition of corruption?
The ultimate duty that Washington saw in his definition of the presidency is the role of commander in chief — protector, defender.
When everything else fails, it is the president who is expected to defend both the Constitution and the rule of law — the two principal bulwarks of our representative democracy — from assault.
In 1783, when the 400 Revolutionary War veterans, angry because they had not received payment due for their service, drove Congress out of Philadelphia, President Washington sent 1,500 troops to restore order.
In later years, when angry slaveholders and the powerful elite known as “robber barons” opposed duly elected US governments with deadly force and corrupting wealth, the defense of the constitutional order was led by presidents who marshaled a majority of citizens behind them.
When a president fails to do that — indeed, when he does just the opposite, leading an attack on our democratic system — and when Congress fails to respond by invoking its constitutional power of the purse or the fail-safe option of impeachment, the very survival of our country is at risk.
That is precisely where we find ourselves as we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence.
