Par for the course: Trump forging ahead with DC golf course makeover without input from oversight panels | CNN Politics

This situation echoes the pattern of disregard for established governance processes we observed with the rushed confirmation of Kash Patel to head the FBI. Oversight panels exist for a reason, specifically to prevent potential abuses of power and ensure public accountability. The repeated sidestepping of these panels, especially for projects involving federal land or significant public interest, demonstrates a systemic contempt for the checks and balances integral to our system. The irony of this administration, which rode into power claiming to "drain the swamp," consistently circumventing oversight and transparency measures is, shall we say, glaring. It becomes par for the course, indeed.

The oversight panels exist for a reason, and it's not to slow down a president's pet projects. Those bodies were put in place because unchecked executive action in the capital tends to go sideways, regardless of which party holds the office. A man who ran on cutting government bloat should understand the value of process, or at least pretend to.

What bothers me isn't the golf course. It's the reflex. Every president who governs by momentum eventually runs into something that can't be fixed after the fact. You move fast on a renovation, worst case you tear out something historically significant. You move fast on policy with that same attitude, people get hurt. The pattern is the problem, not the project.

I've seen leadership that moves fast and breaks things celebrated as bold. In my experience, units that operated that way left messes for everyone else to clean up. Accountability structures aren't bureaucratic theater, they're institutional memory. Bypassing them isn't efficient, it's just deferred cost.