Policy is Personnel
November 22, 1984: Heritage Foundation writes Reagan's inaugural speech; competence isn't a requirement for appointees; Project 2025 guy is the trick shot guy; the Keatons fail at bonding
*THUNK*
You’ve got a brand new job. You are attending your first staff meeting. *Thunk*
Your boss is handing out a manual, to you and all of your peers. *Thunk*
It’s large. It’s detailed. It has 1,093 pages of instructions, research findings, and more importantly, there are over 2,000 recommendations in this document, all relevant to your new job. You will follow them. Make them happen. *Thunk*
It’s 1980, exactly four years before our Family Ties timeline. Welcome to the first meeting of Reagan’s Cabinet. The man who handed you the manual is Ed Meese, who was California Governor Reagan’s right-hand man, and who will eventually be Reagan’s US Attorney General.
The manual was called Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration. It was created by The Heritage Foundation. Its purpose was to give Reagan a plug-and-play plan for government priorities and policies.
Those priorities included raising the defense budget by $20B, giving military aid to everyone in Central America who isn’t communist (the Reagan Doctrine), and reducing income taxes 10% across the board.
Also! Abolish the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Abolish the EPA. Permit school prayer. Downgrade OSHA to a “cooperative” role.
The Mandate also came with a long list of pre-loaded hirable conservatives that the administration could nominate to key positions. Reagan’s Heritage-list hires included Meese, Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, Secretary of the Interior James Watt, Director of OMB David Stockman, Ambassador to the UN Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and several dozen other cabinet staffers.
The Washington Post said the report would “save the incoming administration months of learning the bureaucratic ropes and deciding how best to achieve its goals” It’s rare to have such a checklist laid out before you in a new job. Even kinda nice, right?
“This will be the first time a president has ever been this well prepared to take over” — House staffer & chair of Interior Dept. task force (Washington Post 11/15/1980)
Fifty years of Heritage
The Heritage Foundation was founded in the early 1970s by conservative Washington staffers to forward the cause of conservative policymaking.
It was bankrolled by Joseph Coors Sr. of the Coors Brewing Company, a man that his brother William called “a little bit right of Attila the Hun.” Coors poured funds into Reagan Presidential campaigns in 1968, 1976, and 1980.
At the time, Coors also happened to be facing regulatory pressure about the toxic aluminum tailings from his beer can factory. Reagan repaid him a favor by naming Coors compadre James Watt as Secretary of the Interior in 1981. Watt was dedicated to dismantling all such environmental regulations. He named legal colleague Anne Gorsuch as his EPA Administrator.
In her 2-year tenure, Gorsuch eviscerated the EPA, cutting the budget by 22% and withholding federal funds allocated to toxic cleanups. She was eventually held in contempt of Congress and resigned.
BTW, the year she was first hired, her 17-year old son was elected student body president at Georgetown Prep H.S. And hey! He’s now a Supreme Court Justice! Go Neil!
Mandate II: The Continuing Revolution
OK, let’s fast forward exactly four years, back to our Family Ties timeline. It’s late November 1984, and Reagan has just been reelected in a landslide.
And we encounter — the sequel. Another Heritage Foundation manual, which the NYT describes this week. Mandate for Leadership II: Continuing the Conservative Revolution. Yes, that’s the real title.
Mandate II was also handed out to the Cabinet, on this very week, nearly 40 years ago. Heritage Foundation claimed that Reagan had implemented two-thirds of the policies in their 1980 edition.
This time, the focus was on shrinking the federal government and reeling in the social safety net. They recommended consolidating “scores of need-based programs” They recommended that $20B of federal Medicaid funding be turned into individual vouchers, so people could “shop around” for medical care.
Mandate II also recommended elimination of all federal affirmative action programs, plus a special executive order to prohibit new rules about pay equity for women. And an imperative to build a “Star Wars” missile-destroying defense shield in space!
Reagan will explicitly call out 22 of these Mandate II recommendations in his 1985 Inaugural Address. In its report on the address, the NYT said “while the wording of the President's speech and the [Heritage] foundation's document were different, many of the proposals were strikingly similar”
Mandate VII: Wait, I won? Now what?
Let’s fast forward again!
It’s 2016. America has just elected Trump to be its President. Heritage Foundation is still around. They had closer ties to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, but once Trump became the clear nominee, they realized that he was their big chance, because Trump’s views were, uhhhh..not “well formed.”
“No.1, he did clearly want to make very significant changes, and No.2, his views on so many things were not particularly well formed. So if he somehow pulled the election off, we thought, wow, we could really make a difference” — Ed Fuelner, Heritage Foundation Founder & Chairman NYT 6/20/2018
Immediately after his election, Trump fired the head of his transition team, Chris Christie. In a ceremony, Steve Bannon literally lit binders of his resumés on fire. Start from scratch!
Trump and team then essentially Googled “how do you make an executive branch?” They clicked on Heritage Foundation.
And look! They already had a manual! It was called Mandate VII: Blueprint for Reform. It even included a long list of 3,000 MAGA-ready names for eligible appointees. Those names included:
Scott Pruitt — EPA Administrator, who had already sued the EPA 13 times
Mick Mulvaney — Chief of Staff, Destroyer of CFPB, on whose behalf the President of Heritage Foundation called Mike Pence directly
Rick Perry — Secretary of Energy, who allegedly had to be instructed that the job was about nukes, not oil
Jeff Sessions — Attorney General. No I’m serious, he was! Look it up
Betsy DeVos — Sec. of Education
Betsy DeVos was the daughter of a billionaire “industrialist” who married into the Amway fortune. Once in an op-ed, she made a Hall of Fame direct statement about buying influence:
[M]y family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party….I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now, I simply concede the point…We expect a return on our investment — Betsy DeVos
Trump immediately hired Ed Corrigan, at the time a Heritage exec, to oversee the hiring in 10 different US domestic agencies. Someone on the Heritage Foundation’s transition team told the NYT:
“Any list we touched, we made sure had as many Heritage people as possible”
And BTW guess who was in charge of the 2016 team that staffed Trump’s OMB? Our old friend (and Reagan’s), 85-year old Ed Meese!
Heritage claimed that Trump adopted and implemented two-thirds of its 334 policy recommendations in Mandate VII within his first year as President.
Mandate IX: Project 2025
Heritage is all about who’s in charge. “Policy is personnel” said its founder. In 1981 they were given advice by Lyn Nofziger, confidant of Reagan:
The first thing you do is get loyal people, and competence is a bonus — NYT
About the Trump transition, Corrigan said:
When it comes to personnel decisions, that is the most frequently asked question, even before ‘Are they qualified?’: Are they a change agent? — NYT
It’s the people, people. OUR people. And their loyalty. Competence? A bonus. Qualifications? Meh.
And now, in 2024, Heritage is throwing the long ball on that topic.
Yes, there’s a brand new episode of the Mandate series! And it’s all about personnel, including re-classifying 50,000 federal workers so they’ll be either fireable or replaceable with more “loyal” people.
It’s officially called Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise. You may know it better as PROJECT 2025. Twenty-five of its 30 chapters were written by former Trump officials. It’s Episode IX of their Mandate series.
That’s what Project 2025 is!
One of those authors, Russell Vought, a former Heritage exec, a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist, and Trump’s Director of OMB, is on Project 2025’s Advisory Board. He wrote a “180-Day Transition Playbook” to pop into place immediately if Trump wins in a few weeks. He’s first in line to be Chief of Staff.
The point is that Heritage Foundation has been around a long time. And they’ve been doing pretty much the same thing for 50 years, but with larger and larger piles of money. And much more direct influence.
Reagan called them “a vital force.” Forty-two years later Trump called them a “great group” ready to leverage a “colossal mandate.”
Think about the “Deep State.” Heritage disparages the Deep State as a cabal of entrenched, unelected, and unaccountable bureaucrats who have an “agenda” that impedes change and controls government policy.
But what about Heritage itself? It’s a rich-person-funded organization of entrenched, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who for decades have written plug-and-play policy manuals that evidently define and determine the policy agenda of a President.
Finally, guess who’s in charge of Project 2025’s “Presidential Personnel Database” of MAGA names THIS time? It’s the notorious, petulant burger bro you may have seen on TikTok. He sits alone, across from your POV as though it’s your worst date ever, eating unhealthy food and smugly complaining about awful things, like women and tolerance.
He also made this viral video about his hilarious prank of giving homeless people counterfeit money. So gleefully!
Finally, he went viral 13 years ago, for a VERY different reason. When he was QB at UConn, he made montage videos of his football trick shots. Here’s CNN’s tidbit:
Oh, Johnny. Please hire my next federal government.
Family Ties, S3E10: Lost Weekend
Girls against Boys
The baby is coming soon. MOM and DAD want to have special time with the kids before that happens. Mom will take Mallory and Jennifer to the country, Dad and Alex will stay at the house alone.
Mom has a specific agenda for the “pivotal weekend” with the girls. She made a new surprise photo album with the title: “Keaton Girls, Oh How We’ve Grown”
For Alex, Dad has…a football. For throwing and remembering and stuff.
Dad tries
DAD tries to motivate ALEX to toss the football. “I taught you to throw with this ball,” Dad says.
But Alex isn’t into it. He’s reading his Wall Street Journal. He doesn’t remember when they used to toss the ball and then go to DQ.
Mom tries
The women arrive at a rustic one-room cabin. It’s far too rustic for MALLORY and JENNIFER. But MOM is buzzing with excitement.
Before they even unpack, MOM sits on the bed and tries to motivate the kids into a “rap session.” Mallory asks “wrap what?” We realize that we are watching a 15-year old in the ‘80s who still has no other cultural reference point for the word “rap.” Run DMC’s debut album had only been released six months before this.
Anyway, the girls aren’t into it, they’re disengaged. Mom pulls out the big guns. She puts the special photo album on the table, with a big excited grin. She’s so proud. This is going to be such a nostalgic, bonding moment.
JENNIFER: But these are OLD pictures, Mom.
MOM: I know they’re “old” pictures. That’s the point.
MALLORY [flipping through album with disgust]: But there’s none in here of Alex or Dad.
MOM: I know, that’s the point! It’s just us.
JENNIFER: …But we’ve seen these pictures before, haven’t we?
MOM [agitated]: No, not like this. Not altogether. See?! Not in this format
MALLORY: They’re still the same old pictures
MOM [yelling]: They are NOT the same old pictures! When you put ‘em all together in one book, they take on a totally different meaning! They show the joy, and the closeness that we’ve shared through the years! Now SIT DOWN and SHARE THE JOY!
Dad gives up, and so does Mom
ALEX is still sitting around the house in a tie and sweater vest(?). DAD suggests a chess match and Alex reluctantly agrees. But Alex throws the match. He wants out. He leaves to see a girl. OK, says Dad. Dad is bummed.
MOM, MALLORY, and JENNIFER come home early. They try to tell Mom they enjoyed “the day in the country,” but Mom reminds them they drove 7 hours and only stayed at the cabin for 90 minutes. The girls leave to go to a movie.
DAD bumps into Mom in the kitchen. They failed. But they have each other.
But all is OK
MOM and DAD enjoy a quiet moment on the couch, and the kids all come back early. ALEX got no lovin’. MALLORY nixed the movie because she saw a boy and was embarrassed to be seen on a date with her little sister.
They are happy to see Mom and Dad snuggling on the sofa. They want to hang out and do “family stuff.” (Mom and Dad visibly just want to go upstairs and have sex.)
MOM: What do you make of this, Steven? This morning we were the two most boring people in the world. And now they can’t get enough of us.
Moral of the story - kids grow up and times change. But if you have children with subpar social lives, they will eventually come back and want to watch movies with you.