Trump Fight Against Bureaucracy Successful

As Ronald Reagan’s personnel agencies transition leader in 1980, his first director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and later author of Heritage Foundation personnel reports, including as lead author for Heritage’s Project 2025 personnel chapter, I am often asked what I think about President Donald Trump’s first days in office.

In short, it has been the most well prepared and best performing presidential transition in history. It had the earliest and largest number of cabinet nominees and staff, the most thoughtful and earliest announced executive orders and agency guidance, and a president ready to lead. Of course, this is a second term (there has only been one other nonconsecutive president), so President Trump knew what he faced. Trump has succeeded wildly, far beyond any of his predecessors by the comparable point. He has dominated the inauguration and the following days and weeks like no other modern chief executive.

DD

About the Author

Donald Devine

Donald Devine is a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during his first term in office. A former professor, he is the author of eleven books, including his most recent, The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order, and Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles.

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As Ronald Reagan’s personnel agencies transition leader in 1980, his first director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and later author of Heritage Foundation personnel reports, including as lead author for Heritage’s Project 2025 personnel chapter, I am often asked what I think about President Donald Trump’s first days in office.

In short, it has been the most well prepared and best performing presidential transition in history. It had the earliest and largest number of cabinet nominees and staff, the most thoughtful and earliest announced executive orders and agency guidance, and a president ready to lead. Of course, this is a second term (there has only been one other nonconsecutive president), so President Trump knew what he faced. Trump has succeeded wildly, far beyond any of his predecessors by the comparable point. He has dominated the inauguration and the following days and weeks like no other modern chief executive.

DD

About the Author

Donald Devine

Donald Devine is a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during his first term in office. A former professor, he is the author of eleven books, including his most recent, The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order, and Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles.