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In a recent “PBS NewsHour” panel discussion, Washington Post Associate Editor Jonathan Capehart criticized President-elect Donald Trump for selecting cabinet nominees designed to “wreck Washington.” Underlying Capehart’s critique is his assumption that Washington in its present form doesn’t need “wrecking.” The majority of Americans disagree with that assumption.

According to election exit polls from CNN, 73 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Among this cohort were 43 percent of respondents who were “dissatisfied” with the state of the nation and a staggering 30 percent who were “angry” about the situation. A voter analysis conducted for Fox News showed that 82 percent of the electorate wanted at least “substantial change,” with a full one-quarter wanting “total upheaval.” 

In retrospect, no polls were needed to see the landslide that was coming. It was evident as soon as the incumbent vice president attempted to portray herself as the change candidate. The incumbent is never a change candidate. So the voters sent Trump back to the White House to do exactly what Capehart is suggesting — to give Washington a good “wrecking.”

D.C. Does Not Reflect America

Americans have a great capacity to deal with adversity, so long as they believe we are all in this thing together. Americans no longer believe that. Rather, they sense that the American bureaucracy is in business for itself, and for good reason.

The place to start is the economic divergence between D.C. and the rest of the United States. We have touched on this unhealthy relationship previously. There are more than 3,000 counties and county-equivalents in the United States. Yet, half of the top ten, and three of the top five, wealthiest U.S. counties in terms of median household income are suburban counties of Washington, D.C. Fifty years ago, just five of the fifty richest U.S. counties were suburbs or exurbs of Washington D.C.  That number has more than tripled to 17. 

Can anyone seriously claim that the economic conditions in inner-city America, or in the (former) industrial heartland counties, or in rural America, have improved during this same time period? Of course not.

To be sure, the federal pay scale is not the sole source of this disparity. Washington draws money from throughout the United States (or just prints it) and distributes it locally through a complex network of government and government-adjacent entities, including bureaucracies, contractors, NGOs and other grantees. In Washington, the same people often bounce back and forth between these groups. The business of Washington is government. And business is good.

Yet, the bureaucracy itself bears a share of blame for the divide. The estimated median income of a single federal civil servant is $135,000 per year. By contrast, the median income of an entire U.S. household is just $80,610. And this is not a fair comparison from the standpoint of the U.S. household.

This is because median household income measures the total income from all members of the household who are employed, as well as from all of the jobs that those individuals work. Because approximately half of U.S. households have two earners, and because another five percent of workers hold multiple jobs, the worth of a single federal civil service job is substantially larger than appears on its face. 

Not only do federal employees get paid more than the average American, they also have a much better chance of keeping their jobs and, thus, their paychecks, in perpetuity. Private sector employees are three times more likely to be terminated than their federally-employed counterparts. Their employment is also more sensitive to economic conditions. Over the last year, the U.S. economy lost more than 1 million full-time jobs while federal employment increased by 50,000 positions.

It is no doubt nice to live in Capehart’s Washington. But other Americans are no longer willing to pay a premium to bureaucrats who only make their lives worse.  

D.C. Treats Americans With Disdain

While wealth in and around Washington grows, those in Washington treat other Americans like fools. We see examples of this across the federal spectrum.

One example is the Department of Defense, an agency quintessentially federal in character. The Constitution expressly provides Congress with the power to “raise and support Armies” and to “provide and maintain a Navy.” We have no problem with that. However, that the federal government is properly in the defense business does not mean that it carries out that business properly.

The Pentagon recently announced that DoD had failed its seventh consecutive annual audit. Of the 28 DoD activities audited, one received a qualified opinion and 15 others received audit “disclaimers,” meaning that the reviewers could not form accurate opinions about the propriety of the DoD accounts. Only nine activities received clean audits, while three audits remain outstanding.

Notwithstanding this abysmal performance, Michael McCord, the under-secretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer, proclaimed that DoD had not “failed” the audit because it secured “about half clean opinions.” Yet there is no place outside of the Washington, D.C. bureaucracy where “about half” would be considered a “passing” grade. Don’t believe me? Go to work and perform only “about half” of your job correctly. Then see how long you keep it.

Furthermore, nine clean audits out of 25 (i.e., excluding the three that are still pending) is not “about half.” It is little more than one-third. This man is the comptroller and chief financial officer of the largest bureaucracy in human history. Yet he cannot — more truthfully, will not — honestly divide the number “9” by “25” when addressing the people he claims to “serve.” That’s disdain.

On the other end of the spectrum lies the Department of Education, a federal agency that has no Constitutional foundation whatsoever. I urge you to go back and read that document. There’s not so much as a hint of federal power over education. The Department of Education’s very existence is an implicit insult to Americans. Its raison d’etre is to take your money, tell you how to educate your children, all based on the theory that you — as ordinary Americans — cannot be trusted to figure out how to do that yourselves.        

What has the Department of Education given us for its trillions of dollars? Boys and men in girls’ and women’s sports, and electricians and pipefitters paying off college loans for the children of the Washington elite.

What has the Department of Education not given us? Better-educated children. In 2023, reading and math scores for U.S. children dropped precipitously. Yes, particularly bad bureaucratic decisions during the Covid pandemic contributed to that failure. However, even prior to Covid, heavy federal involvement in education yielded little or no results. After decades of federal spending through 2011 (totaling $2 trillion adjusted for inflation), educational achievement among U.S. children showed essentially no improvement at all, albeit at three times the per-student cost. And student performance in core areas continued to stagnate or decrease slightly right up until the Covid pandemic.

There are scores of federal departments, agencies, and administrations falling (constitutionally) somewhere between the DoD and DoE that have gleefully taken from the pockets of Americans for generations without facing any accountability, or without fulfilling the promises of their service, or both. 

To most Americans, these institutions need a good “wrecking.” And those Americans sent Trump back to the White House to make sure that government of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats shall perish from the earth.

Joseph LoBue is a retired Naval officer and attorney.