Government by Impulse

On "Vibe-Presidenting"

AI now promises anyone can be a coder based on instinct—and increasingly, vibes are running the country.

Coined only in February of this year, “Vibe coding” has turned never-coders into AI teachers and even inspired quasi-spiritual manifestos. The experience can be magical, but the brittleness is real. When overconfident AI—and overconfident operators—skip the unglamorous steps (specs, user input, QA, regression tests), it cascades into spectacular failures and unseen vulnerabilities across security, integration, edge-case handling, and maintenance.

This parallels what we’re seeing from Washington: Vibe-Presidenting. Declarations from podium riffs and social media posts lead (AI-assisted) teams scrambling to retrofit rationales and process. Essential federal workers fired then rehired weeks later. National Guard troops picking up trash in place of fired National Park Service staff. Sensitive data recklessly copied to the cloud, creating a nation-scale identity-theft hazard.

These are reminders for why governance runs through regular order not moodboards. Scoping and legal vetting; interagency clearance; notice-and-comment periods; cost-benefit and budget scoring; privacy and cybersecurity review. And these only work if the institutions have memory and trust. Though regular order is far too slow, it enables conflicts to get resolved on paper rather than in court, trade partners acting in good faith, and programs to endure.

Vibes aren’t worthless. Vibe-coding lowers barriers, makes experimentation cheap, and renders ideas tangible at unheard-of speeds. The political analog, done thoughtfully, could offer speed and intelligibility: clearer executive intent, expanded pilots and on-ramps to implementation, and public input that actually shapes final design. But those vibes must eventually be translated into scaffolding, depth, and durability.

Seat-of-the-pants governance ships fast but breaks hard. You can refactor code, A/B-test alternatives, or rollback when all else fails; you can’t refactor a missed benefits payment, restaff a shuttered agency on demand, unwind a data exposure, or rapidly reissue national IDs. Treat the body politic as a coding sandbox and the fallout hits due process, markets that need stable rules and trustworthy data, and citizens whose benefits and rights hinge on boring reliability.