Photo Credit:James Bond silhouette with a gun
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Will Elon and Trump eventually take each other on, like gladiators?Ian Fleming was a masterly writer and he wove a web of intrigue and excitement about something stealthy, the world of the government spy.
And the protagonist in that drama was someone we’ve all come to know well, Bond, James Bond. Twenty-six films have come and gone and I would argue they have served to shape not only the world of spycraft and entertainment, but have also had a profound impact on men who see themselves (at least in their own minds) as modern day heroes, fighting against all odds to preserve their societies’ values and way of life.
One of those is Donald Trump, president of the United States, and arguably the most powerful man on the planet (though there may be some pushback from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who currently enjoys the president’s momentary friendship). Only those who’ve never seen a movie that pits two equally matched gladiators against each other will be surprised when those two titans who wear the same regimental colors suddenly realize that the other is vying for supremacy, headlines and adoration. Giant egos are often more vulnerable to the demons within their hosts than the realities that exist outside them.
That is an uncomfortable truth which has been played out on the silver screen in epic clashes though usually between opposing forces that represent good versus evil. The Bond hero works assiduously and systematically to corner the villain in his lair and then confronts him in what has become a classic mano รก mano death match. While this may not be in the final script that has been written on the Elon Musk and Donald Trump partnership, it is more than plausible given the characters’ personalities and the situation in which they find themselves.
How much creative destruction is enough?
That is an open question, but it is not an unanswerable one especially if we acknowledge how powerful men engage with one another and how they end up resolving their differences. Bond kills his opponents, and we praise him for it because the evil and the threats they represent are obvious and we justify any means to their end.
Less obvious, in my opinion, are the reasons to gut American government agencies. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to destroying whole agencies because they appear to be out of step with the current governing political ideology. It is, however, totally and typically American to level an old building, a block or even a whole government department before having done a cost benefit analysis that can prove the need for such devastation.
There is a case to be made for rooting out inefficiency, improving systems and retraining employees to deliver better services. Congress has traditionally maintained that oversight responsibility, and while it can be said that it has been derelict in its duty on more than one occasion to find those inefficiencies and correct them, it is probably unfair to circumvent it completely by giving a delegated individual (Musk) carte blanche to do its job. There are now more than 70 statutory IGs (Inspectors General) that have the authority to inspect the operations of all agencies operating within government departments. It would seem a better choice to empower, fund and encourage those IGs to step up their work and do their due diligence before taking an indiscriminate axe to their agencies’ budgets and personnel.
Even James Bond knows that extinguishing the flames of the fires set by his adversaries without knowing their origin is only a temporary solution. The source of the problems must be identified and then and only then can a plan be implemented to deal with them in any lasting way. That is what Bond would do with a single villain, but, unfortunately, it is not what is happening with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.
For good to triumph over evil in Bond’s world, the villain must be vanquished. In the Trump and Musk world the villain is an amorphous ‘deep state’ carnivore that is gobbling up taxpayer money without providing a tangible service. In order to eliminate it, its underpinnings must also be eliminated for as Musk said in an Oval Office press conference just a few days ago, “We have to delete entire agencies because if we leave part of them behind, it’s kind of like a weed. If you don’t remove the roots of the weed then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”
Musk should have referred to the soil that sustains the growth of the weeds and the grass that grows in greater abundance all around the weeds making it possible for the weeds to coexist with it. Confucius said it best: “The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.” Simply put, entrenched ideas should also bend to justifiable arguments. Cleaning up American government and making it run more efficiently is not an easy task. In order to optimize it, the work of our departments and agencies must not be seen in isolation, but be viewed as part of a larger more interdependent public service ecosystem that is rooted in reasonable expectations and committed to further Americans’ ideals and values. They are not something to be discarded just because they are out of vogue or do not adhere to one political school of thought.
Musk and Trump need to put on their gardening gloves and bend down and inspect the very soil in which our institutions are rooted, but it is doubtful that they will because neither one is a gardener. Both are showmen engaged in performative art and are now sharing the stage and basking in that finite glow of the period known as the presidential honeymoon. Soon, it will be over and the spotlight will dim and the stage will become painfully small. It will be apparent to them that there can be only one headliner remaining on that stage and that the other must find the exit. At that point, there will be no time to share a martini cocktail, whether shaken or stirred.
Stephen Helgesen is a retired career U.S. diplomat specializing in international trade who lived and worked in 30 countries for 25 years during the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush Administrations. He is the author of fourteen books, seven of which are on American politics, and he has written over 1,400 articles on politics, economics and social trends. He can be reached at: [email protected]
Image: Grok AI-generated image, via X
