Tesla CEO Elon Musk is out.
He is scaling back his political involvement and activity after investing a significant amount of time, effort and money first in campaigning for President Trump and Republicans. He lasted only a few months helming the Department of Government Efficiency.
His disastrous record will linger far longer.
Musk's critics underestimate him at their peril. Take the politics out of it, and his success would be an inspirational American story of innovation. Indeed, it wasn’t long ago that his progressive critics sang his praises and bought his electric cars in droves. Here was someone who was going to help fight climate change and move the world to a greener future. His company, SpaceX, rescued stranded American astronauts who had remained stuck at the International Space Station for months.
But we can’t take the politics out of it. Musk spent $288 million to help elect Trump. Then Trump picked him to lead DOGE, and liberals turned against him.
Musk kicked off his attendance at the Conservative Political Action Conference by wielding a chainsaw. Argentina’s President Javier Milei presented “the chainsaw for bureaucracy” to Musk on stage after using it as a prop during his own 2023 presidential campaign.
“Move fast and break things” is a slogan often associated with Silicon Valley. It means to embrace a swift experimental method for development, prioritizing a rapid-fire pace and innovation over perfect execution. Many American tech companies have embraced this approach that cultivates development and disruption. Computer programmers and software developers are encouraged to create, smash and sprint until they find a solution.
That ethos might work for Google, Apple and startups, but a frenetic pace does not provide the stability and consistency that a functional free society needs.
We need individuals with the ability to govern who make the best decisions for the common good. Most computer programmers do not have the skills to solve complex problems involving public policy, just as most politicians don’t have the skills to program a computer.
Expertise in one field (technology) doesn’t mean mastery of every subject. Michael Jordan torched his opponents as a basketball player, but he has yet to find similar success as a team general manager. Also, you shouldn’t ask a car mechanic how to fix a plumbing problem.
The American public loathes politics so much that we concede so much ground to technocrats and other ill-qualified people in hopes that they have all the answers. Yet tech lords remain as unqualified regarding national affairs as the butcher, baker and candlestick maker.
Musk’s efforts were unsettling because he was unaccountable to anyone, unlike a senator or a president. DOGE’s approach to government reform was as subtle as that of Jason Voorhees, the villain of most of the Friday the 13th movies. Musk has departed DOGE, but he leaves behind a mess that will affect vital government services upon which Americans depend.
For example, DOGE dismissed 800 employees from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, raising worries about the accuracy of weather forecasts with hurricane season approaching. DOGE’s efforts to find fraud and waste in the Social Security Administration backfired and resulted in delays and complaints from senior citizens.
Musk is accustomed to making unilateral changes without approval, and that's just what he did at DOGE. He pushed for Gary Shapley to become the next IRS commissioner without consulting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Bessent makes that appointment, not the leader of a made-up department.
Peer past the sometimes-frustrating bureaucracy, and one finds hard-working individuals supporting the vital missions for the American people.
By DOGE’s own estimates, Musk’s team will fall short of its stated goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. Of course it will. Without changes to defense spending and entitlement reform, it was always just a pipe dream.
Instead, the real unstated mission of DOGE was to make working for the federal government untenable. Unfortunately, on that front, Musk had more success. Morale among the federal workforce gets understandably low when the next email could be notice to clear out your desk and vacate the building.
DOGE’s reforms come at the expense of functional government and to the harm of the American public.
Donavan Wilson is a writer based in Washington.
