Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, alongside J.D. Vance as Vice President, signals a unique opportunity to combine populist momentum with institutional competence. While loyalty to Trump’s agenda is important, his administration’s success also depends on skilled professionals capable of navigating and reforming entrenched systems.

Vance exemplifies this balance. A venture capitalist and a vocal critic of cultural and bureaucratic decline, he ran as a populist not out of contradiction, but from a belief that America’s revitalization requires both insight into its challenges and the technical capability to drive meaningful change. He and his allies bring a pragmatic approach, blending outsider energy with the insider knowledge needed to reshape complex systems effectively.

The timing couldn’t be more urgent. America’s regulatory landscape has become both restrictive and ineffective, stifling progress in critical areas. It often takes longer to approve new infrastructure than it did to win World War II, and the regulatory maze facing businesses grows ever more convoluted. This dysfunction underscores the need for reform that does more than dismantle—it needs to empower.

We need more than pure populist destruction: the administration needs a nuanced approach that provides national direction while allowing flexibility. Simply tearing down federal structures without strategic oversight risks plunging us into a fragmented, unworkable patchwork of state-by-state regulations.

Europe offers a cautionary example of what happens when centralization combines with fragmentation. Strong, continent-wide regulations are applied across diverse national contexts, resulting in a stagnant economic environment. In America, we can avoid this pitfall by promoting coherence over excessive control or disjointed local rule.

America’s early federal system, which balanced limited federal scope with strong state autonomy, was foundational to its success. Yet as federal power has expanded, this balance has eroded, undermining state autonomy. Now, the populist push to curb federal power risks swinging too far in the other direction, potentially creating a fragmented, inefficient system of competing state regulations—resembling Europe’s regulatory jigsaw puzzle more than America’s original, balanced federalism.

The opportunity for renewal lies in carefully reimagining federal leadership. Instead of managing decline, the new administration must aim to foster genuine progress by streamlining the structures that have become obstacles to growth. Balancing populist energy with targeted competence is challenging but essential, as the alternative is a slide into regulatory chaos. The question is not whether America will change; it’s whether that change will lead to a new era of American dynamism or further decline into unproductive gridlock.

Populism, Elitism, and Vitality

The current wave of populism isn’t just about rejecting elites; it’s a revolt against a society dominated by process over purpose, where checking boxes outweighs meaningful achievement. In modern America, even modest goals—like building a shed or starting a business—are stifled by endless red tape and regulatory hurdles that turn would-be entrepreneurs into compliance officers.

This isn’t a matter of petty grievances against the thousand different ways the system stifles the spirit, but a systemic problem that impacts all Americans, from housing shortages stalled by zoning and environmental regulations to medical research delayed by bureaucracy. When following procedure becomes more important than reaching outcomes, we face a system that not only frustrates but actively hinders progress.

Since 2016, populist sentiment has grown not merely as an anti-elite impulse, but as a reaction to an increasingly paralyzed state. Americans are willing to trust competent experts, but today’s overbuilt bureaucracy diffuses responsibility, empowering officials to say “no” while no one seems empowered to say “yes.”

Amid this paralysis, there’s an appeal to vitality and action. Hulk Hogan’s RNC appearance, ripping his shirt in classic kayfabe, resonated as a metaphor for breaking free of bureaucratic restraint. Trump’s “make America great again” and Vance’s critique of managerial society both tap into a broader longing for renewed American dynamism.

This critique is valid: Our governance has become excellent at managing risk but poor at enabling achievement. The solution isn’t to eliminate all oversight but to refocus on achievement over mere risk-management. Imagine a NASA driven by the spirit of SpaceX.

With leaders like Vance, who understand both the pitfalls of bureaucratic management and the need for effective governance, this moment offers a chance to redirect populist energy toward constructive renewal rather than destruction.

Redirecting Energy into Effective Action

The debate about federal power often overlooks a key distinction: leadership versus control. Leadership sets direction, establishes standards, and creates clarity; control, particularly bureaucratic or managerial control, micromanages every detail and process. For decades, we’ve been weighed down by the latter, and it’s time for a change. The American government needs leadership that clears paths, creating enabling rules rather than exhausting constraints.

Its important to keep in mind that not everything in our current system is broken—and certainly the core American idea of separation of powers and rational institutional process still exists. The challenge is distinguishing between vital institutions and practices and calcified ones—between processes that enable and those that constrain. Further, where reform and challenge is needed, mere ideological commitment will be insufficient. This requires understanding what makes institutions effective in the first place and an appreciation for how our legal system operates. There are many ways to sort these distinctions out, but in the end it comes down to a question of incentives and personnel.

Historically, standardization was essential in America’s growth—not to micromanage but to provide reliable foundations for commerce and industry, from steel quality to telecommunication lines. Standards offered a dependable framework without stifling innovation. Today, however, many of these standards have become overly bureaucratic, exploited by federal, state and local governments and special interests. The solution lies not in abandoning standards but in striking a balance—enabling leaders to guide the system rather than let it capture them.

Federal leadership at its best empowers action by creating clear standards, settling jurisdictional issues, and streamlining approval pathways.  Environmental standards illustrate this. Rhetoric notwithstanding, everyone loves the environment. When RFK Jr. joined the MAGA movement, he noticed this too. “I am an old-school environmentalist—a lover and protector of nature. The Democrats obsess about counting CO2, while neglecting urgent issues such as the chemicals in our food, soil, and water… Almost everyone values thriving ecosystems and wildlife. Environment was a unifying issue in the 1960s, supported by Democrats and Republicans alike.” Of course we want good standards for clean water, clean air, and the like. What we don’t want is micromanaging bureaucrats who might tell us the puddle in our backyard is a navigable waterway subject to EPA regulations.

Bureaucratic inertia often leads to protectionism within agencies, where decision-making is diffused to the point that no one can say “yes,” but everyone can say “no.” For Trump’s administration to succeed, institutional reform must aim at accountability and responsiveness, setting clear goals and evaluating regulators’ performance against these goals. Empowering agency leaders to cut unnecessary processes when possible, and to share what worked, will enable learning across departments.

However, these reforms will only be effective if the administration avoids filling key positions with those more focused on ideological purity or online influence—“posters,” as Lomez puts it—rather than on real-world efficacy. As he put it, “Some people should just stay posters.” This distinction between “posters” and genuine professionals highlights a real risk: the temptation to appoint those who signal alignment but lack the skills or temperament to drive meaningful change. Simply put, appointing those who excel at rhetoric but falter in practical application could create a team that stacks up losses in court and struggles to enact lasting reforms. To succeed, Trump’s administration must prioritize appointees who combine ideological commitment with the competence to navigate institutional complexity and deliver measurable results.

The new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, exemplifies this need for expertise. Tasked with identifying wasteful programs, DOGE faces the same judicial hurdles that undermined many of Trump’s first-term initiatives. Its recommendations will inevitably confront a mountain of caselaw. During Trump’s first term, similar initiatives were frequently blocked in court, with the administration winning only about a third of its regulatory challenges—even under Chevron deference, which theoretically favored agency discretion. Without Chevron deference, courts now have broader latitude to scrutinize regulatory decisions, so DOGE will need expert lawyers who can navigate federal processes and build robust cases.  The risk of appointing solely ideological figures is that DOGE may simply repeat past failures, unable to push through meaningful reforms.

For real change, Trump’s administration must rely on leaders who have the experience to operate within a complex institutional framework. Again, Lomez has it right:  “Ideological alignment is necessary but insufficient.” Lomez captures this difficulty by noting how “these selection filters get very narrow, very fast,” particularly when balancing ideological alignment with practical skills. Without this balance, a new administration risks ideological rigidity that lacks the “buffer of competent professionalism,” potentially leading to failures both in court and in policy execution. Effective leaders need both conviction and the skill to enact it. Without this blend, the administration risks ideological rigidity without the buffer of professionalism, leading to court losses and policy stalemates.

Ultimately, the administration needs qualified experts who are competent and genuinely dedicated to reform. This is a chance to empower individuals who earn their expertise through merit and work, ensuring the system runs effectively.

Conclusion

Something feels different in the air. After decades of managed decline, regulatory overreach, and hollowed industrial capacity, we’re seeing signs of a renewed American spirit of achievement. Nuclear power is no longer a relic but a pillar of a clean energy future; private companies are racing to the moon and Mars, and advanced technologies like AI and robotics are transforming daily life. The future is starting to look like the future again.

This isn’t about blind optimism or rockets and reactors. It’s about improving everyday life by reducing red tape and empowering innovation. The challenges we face are real, and untangling bureaucratic inertia won’t be easy. But for the first time in generations, we can have an alignment of populist energy and technical expertise that might just get things done.

What we need now are competent captains who can channel this renewed vitality into real achievements. The Trump-Vance administration, with its blend of populist mandate and technical capability, offers precisely this kind of leadership.

The choice before us is clear: We can let procedural paralysis continue or seize this moment to restore American dynamism—through leadership that enables rather than constrains. The atomic age didn’t happen by accident; it was the result of combining technical expertise with purposeful leadership. We can do this again. The tools are there, the energy is there, and the leadership is there—all we need is the wisdom to use them well.

Let’s make this a new space-age moment—not through naive optimism or reckless destruction, but through the competent, directed energy that built American greatness. The opportunity is here. The question is, will we seize it?

As the age of bureaucratic complacency fades, the choice is ours: We can channel Hulk Hogan and tear through red tape, or we can let American dynamism be subdued in a straitjacket of regulations. With capable leaders at the helm, the future looks bright.