The Trump Program’s Reaganite Precursor

The more things change, the more things seem the same. Facing a struggling economy and weary electorate following his 1980 landslide victory over incumbent president Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan touted “Morning in America.” The new president indicated that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” and promised to “drain the swamp”—a phrase to be heard again—by cutting budgets, reducing regulation and thinning the ranks of federal employees.

So began the Reagan Revolution. Forty-four years later, the Trump Triumph looks almost eerily similar in some ways, especially as details of his plans to streamline government emerge. Yet assuming too close a parallel would be a mistake.

The circumstances that spawned Reagan and Donald Trump inspired their plans for reshaping government. Reagan took office with 2.1 million employed in the executive branch. His election followed an economic upheaval caused by high-priced oil, price controls, heavy-but-failing investment in synthetic fuel production, skyrocketing inflation, and heaven-bound interest rates. To make matters worse, failed foreign policy had led to more than 50 Americans being held hostage in Iran.

Election Day 2024 may one day be labeled as another revolution—or, maybe, as a disruption—lifted by a Reagan-like patchwork of blue-collar workers, rural Americans and coalitions of minority groups. In a similar way, it followed major economic disruptions caused by a pandemic that killed 1 million Americans, an extended economic shutdown, excessive stimulus spending, runaway inflation, and severe foreign policy challenges in the Middle East and Ukraine. Iran was involved with Hamas’s capture of 101 hostages in Gaza, including several Americans.

An electorate also troubled by offshored industrial jobs and failed immigration policies heard Trump’s shouts of “Make America Great Again.” Trump did not match Reagan’s 489 electoral votes, but won an impressive 312 versus Kamala Harris’s 226.

Inheriting some 2.3 people million federal workers—about 10 percent more than Reagan did—Trump now brings back promises to drain the swamp and give the government shock treatment with major department closings and regulatory and worker rollbacks.

Today, the number of federal regulations is another story. In 1980, the Code of Federal Regulation, the resting place for all active federal rules, stood at just over 100,000 pages. Last year, the count was 195,000. In this way, We the People are more restricted by rules than ever. Pages of regulation, not the number of people employed in government, are the first thing that should be drained. 

The timing to reassess the scope of our government was right in both cases. After years of unrelenting federal intervention, we need to rebalance the economy and search for a new normal.

To bring fundamental change, Reagan’s enthusiastic budget director, David Stockman, set in motion review activities that aimed to reduce the cost of governing. These were supplemented by the activities of the Grace Commission, headed by industrialist J. Peter Grace. The commission brought on 150 private sector executives, funded by a separate foundation, who worked throughout government to find ways to save money. Grace instructed his fellow workers to “be bold” and “work like tireless bloodhounds. Don’t leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.” 

In 1984, the commission provided almost 2,500 recommendations, which it claimed would save what would be $1.3 trillion in 2024 dollars over three years when fully implemented. Since many of the recommendations required legislation that was not forthcoming, the savings obtained fell to the neighborhood of $300 billion in 2024 dollars, which, of course, is not chump change.

Trump is following the pattern seen in Reagan’s Grace Commission. He has named the multibillionaire Elon Musk and the former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency with the goal of finding ways to cut $1 trillion from federal spending. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Trump and Reagan have similar goals for government reform, but there is one fundamental difference separating them: Reagan spoke fervently for unleashing the free spirit of man—of all men and women, wherever they lived, even behind the walls that once divided East from West Germany and separated Americans from competing nations. He was unrelenting in his support for freedom and free trade, while understanding that at times the goal would be compromised.

In some of Reagan’s most spirited words, he told of how he wanted America to be like a “city on a hill,” describing this vision in his 1989 farewell address to the nation:

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

Trump has another vision of America, presenting himself as a protective Colossus standing in our harbors, bargaining across America’s closed borders to determine who and what may enter by immigration controls and tariffs. 

The Trump result, if somehow successful through the exercise of leverage or other means, cannot be considered a Reagan-like revolution. The government may become smaller and more efficient, in some sense of the word. But the nation’s movement toward being Reagan’s shining city on a hill will have to wait for another day.