Picture the classic American retiree. He could be your uncle. Or your father. He takes his meals in front of the TV set. He likes to drive around Florida in his big Cadillac. Maybe he plays a round of golf now and then. He takes organized trips to Europe with the wife—although he’s not big on seeing the sights. Lately, he’s been working a bit of color into his hair so it won’t look so gray. Like others in his age and income bracket, the retiree of today complains about taxes and health care and shouts at the TV when something comes on that he doesn’t like. He spends much of his time minding his investments, and almost all of his time wailing about the imagined good old days.

Oh, you know exactly where I’m going with this. I just described the day-to-day life of the commander in chief of the most powerful nation on earth. I left out a few things, like raging at the support staff and staging ritual moments of forced adulation from his underlings. Seriously, that June Cabinet meeting where the attendees all heaped praise and admiration on the Dear Leader has to be one of the most bizarre episodes in American political history. And if it’s like that working for Donald Trump, can you imagine what it was like being one of his kids?

But, really, don’t you wonder when the actual work gets done? When does the self-proclaimed deal-maker of deal-makers make his deals? When does the manager of the most complex organization in the world do his managing? When does the president do his actual presiding? If you do get answers to any of these questions, please share them with the rest of us. Because, to be perfectly frank, aside from storming around screaming about the unjustness of everything and trying to erase the legislative landmarks of his betters, the president doesn’t appear to be doing a whole lot. Which, based on his track record as a businessman, may be a good thing. Still, it’s hard not to get the sinking feeling that the U.S. is a big, rudderless ship heading out into open seas with a captain muttering under his breath and rolling ball bearings around in his hand.

I would imagine that the far-right wing of the governing party is as appalled by the personal behavior of Trump the man as the rest of us. But by gaming him through flattery they are getting what they’ve dreamed of since the Roosevelt administration: dismantling the firmament of big government. It’s a three-step process: appoint the epically boneheaded to lead crucial departments (or ideologues intent on destroying them), understaff those departments at the deputy- and assistant-secretary levels, and then just slash their budgets. One such division, the Department of Energy, led by the almost comically inept Rick Perry, has attracted the attention of Vanity Fair’s inimitable Michael Lewis.

With a 2016 annual budget of $30 billion, the D.O.E. may be the most important governmental agency you never thought much about. Perry certainly hadn’t. As you recall, during a 2011 presidential debate, he famously called for its abolition but couldn’t remember its name.

I had always thought the D.O.E. busied itself with supplies of oil and gas, and the regulation of prices. Actually (and crucially) it’s staffed with thousands of scientists and is responsible for maintaining our nuclear-arsenal inventory of 6,800 warheads, each vastly more deadly than the bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also monitors the nuclear weapons of other nations and helps their governments keep them out of the hands of terrorists by enabling authorities to detect the unauthorized movement of nuclear material across borders.

In addition, the D.O.E. is in charge of protecting the nation’s electrical grid, which has already been probed by as yet unidentified groups intent on crippling it. If they succeed, they could cause, say, the entire Pacific Northwest to go dark for months. The D.O.E. is in charge of cleaning up the nuclear dumps filled with the lethal by-products of 70 years of making nuclear weapons. The Hanford site, in southeastern Washington State, is the source of a plume of radioactive sludge that has contaminated the ground water and is creeping toward the Columbia River. Containing it is a priority, and cleaning the site, according to a former senior D.O.E. official cited by Lewis, will take 100 years and $100 billion. The department also funds research for the development of alternative energy sources that are initially too expensive and risky for the private sector to take an interest in. Electric cars, like the Tesla, for instance, owe their existence to the D.O.E.