DOGE isn’t going to stave off or bring on the end times.

On a Sunday show recently, one Republican commented that incrementalism hadn’t worked, so DOGE had to take a different approach.

This isn’t right, though.

In budgetary terms, DOGE is small-bore stuff, although the relatively minor scale has been masked by its lightning pace, the screaming headlines, and the feeling of a fight between good and evil — it’s been apocalyptic incrementalism.

It’s a mistake to believe that DOGE can, with another round of layoffs or one more end to a grant program, immanentize the eschaton.

DOGE won’t touch the main drivers of spending, and can’t touch them as a legal and political matter; Trump doesn’t want to cut entitlements, and it would require congressional action, regardless.

For the last 50 years, the lowest-common-denominator position of Republicans who say they want to cut government, but who don’t want to reduce any politically popular programs, is to maintain that they can achieve massive savings by targeting waste, fraud, and abuse, along with foreign aid.

What’s different this time is Musk’s outsized personality and social-media presence, together with the (understandable) hunger on the right to kneecap the Deep State.

This has created the impression of scandal after scandal revealed in real time, with instantaneous results addressing them, leading to large-scale changes in the administrative state and federal budget.

The freak-out on the left has bolstered the idea that the stakes are existential.

There’s no doubt that DOGE has identified true outrages and has done good work, but the rush — driven by a sense of righteous urgency — has led to exaggerations and mistakes.

DOGE has had to walk back various claims and reverse field on any number of initiatives, while its formal leadership is opaque, its operating method chaotic, and its legal status uncertain.

That said, Musk deserves credit for changing the narrative around Washington spending, and intelligent cooperation with Congress could produce sustainable reforms and cuts.

Obviously, Musk is energetic and creative. His operationalization of DOGE has kept it from becoming just another government commission that creates a report to molder on a shelf somewhere.

Sometimes, though, the worst thing that can happen to you is that you are on top of the world seemingly getting everything you want, and relishing it. This moment for Musk was his CPAC appearance wielding the chain saw gifted to him by Javier Milei.

The chain saw was a lot of fun. As a relatively brutish and indiscriminate tool, though, it was clearly fraught with peril as a political symbol. Sure enough, Trump is now saying DOGE should use a scalpel.

After last week’s cabinet meeting and some pushback on Capitol Hill, DOGE may be in a less manic, but potentially more fruitful place. Personnel matters should be coordinated with cabinet heads, and Congress should pass rescissions cutting spending.

If none of it will balance the budget or end the administrative state once and for all, it could slim down and rationalize the federal government, which is more than prior Republican administrations have been able to achieve. If DOGE ultimately works out, it will prove an exercise in successful incrementalism.