Make no mistake, New Amsterdam and the herirs of the Scottish Enlightenment are very much steering things stateside now. New York is quite effective at getting things done. But the larger picture of just governance, which is to say the Republic, is in some tension with these highly effective and profitable Machiavels. Which is, no doubt, being discussed over innumerable ambassadorial lunches in DC at the moment.
All might still work for the good, imho. But the question in my mind is whether this motion is the usual pendulum between Republic and Machiavel, or if someone is fashioning notions of a novel flywheel.