Brian Balogh Quotes

United States, Historian
March 5, 1988

Brian Balogh is an American historian, and Dorothy Compton Chair, The Miller Center, at the University of Virginia. He received a 2015 Nancy Lyman Roelker Award.

Many presidents - and they're not all Republicans - they're just determined to take apart this behemoth that's the administrative state. And probably the most famous one is Ronald Reagan.

Brian Balogh
If Donald Trump is one thing, he's a disruptive force who has never met a tradition and precedent that he doesn't want to disrupt.

Brian Balogh

Reagan said that government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem. And he was going to dismantle that government. Well, long story short, he failed to do that. He built up the military to a much greater status, more people in it, and actually more employees after the end of the Reagan administration. And, to achieve his objectives, he did some of the very same things that Trump is doing to achieve his. What Ronald Reagan really wanted to dismantle was the welfare state. And he had limited success in doing that.

Brian Balogh
There's a long history of presidents coming in, saying they're gonna to take on the bureaucracy. What they really mean is they're gonna try to shift the emphasis of where those bureaucrats are gonna work and how they're gonna spend their time towards achieving objectives that presidents want to achieve.

Brian Balogh