When you vote for a President, you’re choosing more than just that person

Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 promotes a sweeping change to the federal government

Presidential elections headline the two major party candidates, with the decision on Election Day being (for most voters) which one to cast of ballot for. At the moment, this choice appears to be between Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Joe Biden, the current president and Democrat standard-bearer.

But while the President wields great power and “the buck stops here” as far as any final decisions, the winner comes into office or remains in office as the head of an administration. This group is comprised of the cabinet secretaries and those who serve as their undersecretaries and all manner of other appointed offices in the chain of command.

The executive branch, however, is a much larger entity that these appointees. There are also the civil servants who remain from administration to administration. While these governmental employees are often derided as ‘bureaucrats’ and accused of thwarting the policies and goals of whatever President and party is in charge, they are usually the ones who operate the machinery of government—be it a ranger at a national park, a Federal Aviation investigator, the receptionist at a military base, the beloved IRS agent, or a statistician with the Department of Agriculture.

These employees are part of the Civil Service, created in the latter part of the 19th century as a reform to the spoils system that had been in place since George Washington took the oath. Instead of often inexperienced party loyalists occupying the various positions you have career professionals and instead of a wholesale turnover with each new administration you maintain a measure continuity. Presumably, you also have more impartial, evidence-based decision making rather than partisan calculations.

Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world—which is true of those in the Civil Service. And those coming into office, from the President on down, understandably would like their decisions on policy carried out, not slow walked or shelved.

Yet, from another perspective, these career professionals, with their experience, expertise, and not being dependent on the party-in-power for their job, are another ‘check and balance’ on governmental power and the tendency that those in high office have to be arbitrary and even authoritarian with their decisions. They keep the nation on a more even keel, helping avoid the lurches that sudden policy changes might cause—ones that are often ill-thought out or even meant to stick it to the other side.

For a body politic as evenly divided as we currently are, with the extremes in both parties advocating for those lurches, even welcoming them, ‘steady as she goes’ is often the best choice.

With this in mind, I’m re-printing an article I saw yesterday in a daily newspaper. It referenced Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that, if enacted, would seem to promise a radical change in the executive branch and to the Civil Service, along with other consequences. Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank, although given what’s being promoted, ‘radical’ rather than ‘conservative’ might be a more appropriate adjective.

This article reminds us that when you vote for a President, you’re choosing more than just that person.

A conservative leading the pro-Trump Project 2025 suggests there will be a new American Revolution

NEW YORK (AP) — The leader of a conservative think tank orchestrating plans for a massive overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win said that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts made the comments Tuesday (July 2) on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, adding that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back.”

Democrats are “apoplectic right now” because the right is winning, Roberts told former U.S. Rep. Dave Brat, one of the podcast’s guest hosts as Bannon is serving a four-month prison term. “And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts’ remarks shed light on how a group that promises to have significant influence over a possible second term for former President Donald Trump is thinking about this moment in American politics. The Heritage Foundation is spearheading Project 2025, a sweeping road map for a new GOP administration that includes plans for dismantling aspects of the federal government and ousting thousands of civil servants in favor of Trump loyalists who will carry out a hard-right agenda without complaint.

His call for revolution and vague reference to violence also unnerved some Democrats who interpreted it as threatening.

“This is chilling,” former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson wrote on the social platform X. “Their idea of a second American Revolution is to undo the first one.”

James Singer, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, pointed to this week’s Fourth of July holiday in an emailed statement.

“248 years ago tomorrow America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense,” Singer said, adding that Trump and his allies are ”dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”

Roberts, whose name Bannon recently floated to The New York Times as a potential chief of staff option for Trump, also said on the podcast that Republicans should be encouraged by the Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling.

He said Monday’s decision — which gives presidents broad immunity from prosecution — is “vital” to ensure a president won’t have to “second guess, triple guess every decision they’re making in their official capacity.”

In an emailed statement on Wednesday, Roberts reiterated his comments from the podcast, saying Americans “are in the process of carrying out the Second American Revolution to take power back from the elites and despotic bureaucrats.”

“These patriots are committed to peaceful revolution at the ballot box,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s the Left that has a long history of violence, so it’s up to them to allow a peaceful transfer of power.”

Roberts pointed to the protests after the killing of George Floyd by police in 2020, some of which erupted into crime, vandalism and violence. Democrats, in turn, have accused their Republican counterparts of violence, using the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in which Trump supporters tried to forcibly overturn his loss to President Joe Biden.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said Roberts’ comments about a “second American Revolution” are “a bit terrifying but also elucidating.” The 1,000-page Project 2025 playbook calls for far-reaching changes in government, including rolling back protections for the LGBTQ community and infusing Christianity more deeply into society.

“Roberts, the Heritage Foundation, and its allies in Project 2025 want to reorder American society and fundamentally change it,” Beirich said. “He’s said the quiet part out loud.”

Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist.