This One Quality Makes Trump a Dire Threat to the Deep State, Reagan Veteran Says

Don Devine is proud that The Washington Post once attacked him as President Ronald Reagan’s “terrible swift sword of the civil service,” but even he is blown away by the muscular reforms of the Trump administration.

That doesn’t stop him from giving advice on how to slay the deep state leviathan, however.

Devine, who served as the second director of the Office of Personnel Management under Reagan from 1981 to 1985, warned that public-sector unions will always oppose efforts to bring the administrative state to heel, so any conservative will have to take on these issues with steely resolve.

“They’re going to be fighting you no matter what you do,” Devine told The Daily Signal. “The unions in the government, which shouldn’t even be there … The unions, that’s their job, all right? If you do anything, they’re going to go to the courts after you.”

“So, what’s the answer? You got to do it anyway, you got to fight them,” he explained.

Public-sector unions, who represent federal government employees, have filed multiple lawsuits to block President Donald Trump’s reforms on everything from DOGE getting access to federal data to the firing of probationary employees to the removal of collective bargaining privileges.

Trump has just the stomach to face this threat, however, Devine said.

“This Trump guy is something else, I mean he’s so brave, it’s incredible,” he added. “But you have to take chances to get anything done in this system.”

Picking Fighters

The president has chosen unconventional appointees to head federal agencies: either individuals without the on-paper qualifications the press prefers or appointees who were attacked by the very institutions they’re now tasked with leading. Examples include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard; Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.

Trump’s appointees are “clearly people with more courage than sophistication—and that’s what you need. You need people that are willing to take risks,” Devine argued.

“Every instinct in government goes against what you’re supposed to do,” the former OPM head explained. He recalled giving advice to aspiring Washington, D.C., insiders.

“Who wants to be a success in Washington?” he recalled asking. When everybody raised their hand, he would say, “If you want to be a success, I’ll give you the secret to it. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. I guarantee you you’ll get out of here in four years and people will say, ‘You know, I never heard anything bad about him. I bet you he was great.’”

“That’s why it’s so wonderful that Trump has picked these people that never would have been picked in any other administration—including ours, I will say,” he remarked. “I mean, this is by far the best transition I’ve ever seen and I follow them pretty closely over the years.”

Reagan and the Civil Service Reform Act

Few presidents have made tackling the administrative state a key priority. Luckily for Reagan, President Jimmy Carter had worked to pass the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 before he took office.

“They really redid the whole civil service,” Devine recalled.

Democrats today balk at Trump’s reforms, such as the Schedule F reform that makes it easier to fire federal bureaucrats, but the 1978 law laid the groundwork for Trump—and it was passed by a Democratic House and Senate and signed by a Democratic president.

Devine noted that the Civil Service Reform Act established the Office of Personnel Management, which he would become the second person to head.

His old professor at Syracuse University, Alan K. Campbell, advised the government on how to reform the civil service and served as its first director.

“He taught me about how you really run government,” Devine recalled. Yet Campbell lamented that the first administration to get a full chance to use the OPM would be a Republican one.

“I’ve spent the last four years putting this new Civil Service Reform Act into effect that gives you more control over the bureaucracy and you’re gonna get the benefit of it and not us,” he recalled Campbell saying.

Devine wryly recalled that Carter actually campaigned on reforming the government. He recalled the Democrat saying something to the effect of, “Listen, I’m still a good old liberal. The problem is, the government doesn’t work. You’re going to have to give the political people control over the government or it isn’t going to work.”

He said the real problem with government boils down to incentives.

In the private sector, a manager will ask if one facet of the company is making a profit or not. “If it’s not, you know, you get rid of it or change it.”

“You don’t have that mechanism in the government,” Devine noted. “In fact, the mechanism works exactly the opposite way. If you go down and find out that they’re not doing well, ‘Oh, were’ not solving poverty,’ you put more money in.”

The Situation Is Far Worse Now

Reagan achieved a great deal, but he never had a Republican House of Representatives to help him pass transformative legislation. Devine said things are “so much worse” now, in part because Democrats no longer believe in restraining the administrative state and because the national debt has increased a great deal in the last 40 years.

Unlike Reagan, Trump has a majority in the House, but it’s tight.

Ultimately, Devine said Trump’s courage is most important. He held up The Washington Post front page with his picture and the caption, “Reagan’s Terrible Swift Sword of the Civil Service.”

“That’s what the Trump people should be aiming at,” he said. “The front page of the Post saying how bad you are.”

The post This One Quality Makes Trump a Dire Threat to the Deep State, Reagan Veteran Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.