The swamp is deep.
The swamp is not just deep, it is also filled with back-biting critters. DJT faced incredible problems in cleaning it out, particularly since he had to depend on many establishment Pubbies who in fact were more than willing to quietly obstruct his policies. His experience with Sessions as AG was instructive. He needed a DC insider to know how to deal with each of the different agencies, but by employing experienced DC types who were familiar with the inner workings of each of the departments (which was a logical plan), he ran the risk in each case, of taking on a beltway beltway bandit who would happily turn around and sabotage his the game plan. And that clearly happened more than once. But it would have been impossible to take on DC with a strategy reminiscent of that used by Sherman during his march to the sea. In retrospect, the reality is that the swamp is not only deep, it is dirty and filled with serpents and ‘gators. All critters that profit greatly from their Federal environments, regard their pelf and positions as lifetime entitlements, stick together as “public servants”, and will try to destroy anyone who attempts to limit or interfere with their bureaucratic world. And it extends beyond DC. Remember what the postal inspectors from Long Island tried to do to the postal worker from Eire, PA (as revealed by Project Veritas)? My experience with the gov’t tells me that when a new “political” appointee comes into one of those agencies and tries to alter guidelines or management according to new (i.e., conservative or Pubbie goals) they will be firmly told by the permanent “public servants” of that agency that those changes cannot be done — as they would violate the Code of Federal Regulations, and that instituting such changes would require an act of Congress (and years of regulatory changes) to be legal. So once the Federal agencies are dug in and have their policies and procedures firmly established, changing their course is not something that a new President can quickly or easily accomplish. It is why they call it the “permanent government”.