What Presidential Appointees Need to Know About Policy

Part II of a Five Part Framework for Implementing the President's Agenda

Word count: 3,055; fourteen minutes to read.

There’s a paid subscribers-only chat on Substack where I answer anyone’s specific questions and post info and articles that don’t always make it into the newsletter.

I’ve also done a few phone calls with annual subscribers at their request who needed resume advice and had questions on navigating the appointment process.

If you’re looking to become an appointee, then read these two newsletters I wrote (here and here). They’re based on my experience serving as an appointee in Trump 1.0, but be aware I’m not affiliated with the transition or the campaign, and it’s just advice.

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If you end up becoming a presidential appointee, you must understand the roles People, Policy, Process, Politics, and the Press (“The Five Ps”) play in implementing President Trump’s agenda.

Part I on “Understanding People” is here.

Understanding Policy

Appointees play a critical role as a bridge between President-elect Trump’s vision and the federal bureaucracy because appointees will serve as his eyes, ears, and long-arm when it comes to gaining control over the levers of power in the executive branch and wielding them towards implementation of his agenda.

While career officials and contractors do nearly all of the implementation, particularly at the ground level, (there are after all only around 4,000 appointees and millions of them), it is the role of appointee leaders, under the direction of President Trump, to provide sufficient control over the bureaucracy, make the right policy choices, and ensure his agenda is carried out.

Just like you can’t be effective without understanding the human element (how to influence others to move in the direction you want them to move or at the very least mitigate their resistance), you will fail if you don’t understand how to formulate policy options, choose the right ones, design the optimal implementation plans, and deal with the implications.

Fundamentals

For each administration, policy direction comes from the top.

And there is only one real decider in the federal bureaucracy: the president.

This is because the Constitution doesn’t vest anyone other than the president with executive powers (read Article II), and only one person has received (via election) the consent of the American people to run the executive branch.

The president’s policy goals are developed during the campaign, and he’s the one who prioritizes them and determines their sequencing for implementation once the admin comes into power at noon on Monday, January 20th, 2025.

These policies are laid out in speeches and Agenda 47, which I first wrote about in February of this year.

This is President Trump’s strategic vision for America’s future and must be translated into actionable implementation plans.

If you’ve already been selected to be an appointee, or are trying to become one, then the first thing you must do is understand his policy goals in-depth.

Much of the action planning to implement these polices has been done by the transition team and will continue to be refined once the admin comes into power.

Here are several key aspects about policy that presidential appointees must know:

• Policy is Everything: Policy is not just a set of ideas . . . it’s formal laws, regulations, and guidelines, but also informal decisions that don’t get written down or codified, (i.e., the Biden regime’s decision to engage in lawfare against conservatives). At the end of the day, policy encompasses everything the government does to address societal challenges and the concerns of the citizenry. It includes both broad frameworks (e.g., national security and energy strategies) and specific initiatives (e.g., building a border wall). Policy is also a verbal decision to do something when the president says he wants it done. Even if it’s not written down, if the president says do it, and it’s not breaking any laws, then it’s a presidential policy. And technically it can be an X post.

• Personnel is Policy: This is an old adage from the Reagan admin, and it’s true: without the right people, the right things won’t get done. It’s better to have someone less experienced who will implement the president’s agenda than someone with tons of experience who will be resistant to it. Having the wrong people in place prevents the president’s policy agenda from getting accomplished and wastes the time and energy of the administration.

• The Policy Lifecycle: Policies evolve through stages: identification of issues that need addressing, formulation of various options with cost/benefits and SWOT analysis taken into account, adoption (policy decision-making), the crafting of implementation plans, actual execution and troubleshooting, and evaluation followed by refinement based on results. Understanding this lifecycle helps appointees anticipate challenges and opportunities at each stage.

• Stakeholders: Policies affect and are influenced by many different groups, including Congress, other federal agencies, state governments, private sector entities, advocacy groups, and the general public. If you craft a policy without taking into account stakeholders and their reactions, your implementation is likely to be suboptimal and receive avoidable blowback.

Alignment with Presidential Priorities

Everything you do as an appointee must work toward implementing the president’s priorities, not your own or those of someone else.

This means appointees must fully understand President Trump’s policies as it relates to their job and they must align their work and their department’s or agency’s actions with those polices.

Many policies require interagency collaboration, so as an appointee you must be able to work effectively and coordinate with peers in other departments to ensure cohesive policy implementation across the government.

Balance Long-Term Goals and Short-Term Wins

As an appointee there will always be fires to put out and the regular day-to-day management of your organizations and specific offices will need to happen, but it is vital that appointees focus on laying the groundwork for sustainable, long-term policy changes.

Senior appointee leaders in particular should ask this question: “How can I ensure President Trump’s policy changes endure beyond the end of his administration?”

That may mean hiring more conservatives into government or firing career officials known to be liberal obstructionists. It may mean after making an initial policy change you do the work to get it through the Administrative Procedures Act or going to Congress for enabling legislation so it endures.

It may mean ending grants that go to the plethora of government-funded left-wing NGOs so they go out of business. Or it may mean reorganizing departments and shutting down offices and programs.

Whatever the answer is, every policy change the new administration implements should take into account how it continues beyond one term.

Policy Formulation

Developing effective policy requires a blend of strategic thinking, evidence-based analysis, and stakeholder engagement (more on engaging with stakeholders as an appointee can be found in this newsletter).

Appointees should:

• Engage Experts: This includes career staff, but they should not be relied on 100%, and appointees must identify early in their tenure those bureaucrats who will be conducive to implementing the president’s agenda and those who are resistant and will seek to sabotage it. The careers in a department or agency know how the organization runs and will have good advice on crafting the implementation plans because they know the operational and financial sides of things and other “bureaucratics,” but they don’t need to be relied on for certain decisions, like whether or not we should build a wall at the border, or whether we should get rid of DEI or stop funding left-wing organizations with taxpayer money. Others to engage are conservative academics and think tank experts who have studied and written about the issues for years. These groups can help you craft sound policy and implementation plans grounded in research. And of course you want talk to the “customers,” the American people who the policy is meant to help.

• Assess Feasibility: Many things will need to be considered: what the existing law is, the political environment and impacts on other administration priorities, the financial implications of a policy change, how it will impact a department (will you need to hire more people or reorganize), what the impact will be on other departments and agencies (or states or international partners), and what operational issues need to be taken into account so the policy can be implemented successfully. Remember though, just because something is thought to be difficult or “infeasible” doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Pretty much any policy is feasible if the will exists to do it. Policy is a choice to do something. Doing nothing is still a policy choice. And many of those who put up roadblocks or say something can’t be done are wrong.

• Utilize Data and Evidence: Data-driven decision-making enhances credibility and effectiveness. It helps you when dealing with the media, Congress, and other stakeholders if you can show you made an evidence-based decision. The data is out there to support President Trump’s policy agenda, it just needs to be presented in a way that is understood by the American people and other stakeholders. And set up a mechanism to evaluate the effects of the policy. That will help it to endure, allow you to tweak it if needed, and show the country President Trump is achieving results for the American people.

• Anticipate Unintended Consequences: You should always evaluate the potential ripple effects of policies, including those that may impact other sectors or communities. Someone is impacted by every policy change. This goes back to doing your stakeholder analysis and understanding who will be highly impacted by the policy change, who has a high interest in it, and who has the power to influence both the decision-making and results.

Choosing the Right Process

There are four basic ways to make policy, and each has its positives and negatives:

• Presidential Directive: These are Executive Orders, other presidential memoranda, and verbal guidance. These are relatively quick and easy to do because the president can just make a decision and sign a document, but implementing them can be hard depending on what it is because they rely on people in the line departments and agencies to implement. One disadvantage is these sort of policy changes can be revoked immediately on Day One of a Democrat administration.

• Intradepartmental Changes: A secretary with decision rights can make these changes immediately if they have the will (i.e., ending DEI), but as with a presidential directive, it can be changed once a new secretary is in place. A secretary doesn’t have to go through a long, deliberative, policy-making process if he or she doesn’t want to. In a certain sense, just as the president has control over the executive branch, a department secretary has control over his or her department, and can only be overruled by the president, Congress, or the courts.

• Administrative Procedure Act (APA): The APA governs the regulatory process and federal rule changes are codified in the U.S. Public Code, meaning they become law even if Congress hasn’t weighed in. This is one of the major critiques of the APA, that Congress has given up its legislative authority to make law and ceded it to unelected bureaucrats. APA rule changes take time to implement since you have to give public notice, allow for comment periods, make revisions, and explain why you’re pushing the rule. You then need interagency review, have to finish the rule, and give final notice. These are also subject to court challenges (every policy is), but if it passes judicial review and becomes part of America’s administrative law, then it will endure beyond an administration unless a new one goes through the same laborious process to get it changed.

• Congressional Legislation: This is the ultimate way to get enduring policy change, but also the most difficult. Each year when I was in the admin Congressional staff would come to us for input on legislation that was currently being crafted and for ideas on new things to include. It’s important for senior appointees to have good relations with the relevant Members of Congress and their staff because this can help getting Congress to change the law so a policy endures. If Congress made a law that said we must have a border wall, then we would have one, and there would be little that the Supreme Court or a Democrat administration could do to stop it.

Interfacing with Congress

Congress plays a pivotal role in shaping policy, whether through legislation, appropriations, or oversight.

Appointees need to