Forty-five years ago Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education. Now, more than a generation later, Donald Trump has finally started to deliver with an executive order that serves as the most dramatic mile-marker in his long march through the federal bureaucracy.

“It sounds strange, doesn’t it? Department of Education. We’re going to eliminate it,” the president said at the White House, flanked by K-12 students seated at school desks. “Should I do this?” Trump asked before putting Sharpie pen to paper. The kids nodded, their apparent enthusiasm matched only by those who have long wanted the department shuttered.

“Reagan wanted to do it, but he faced resistance from Congress, and in a way, even Reagan didn’t quite have the political capital that Trump has right now after his comeback,” said Matthew Continetti, director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.”

The White House is making the most of that mandate. In a roundabout way, the president is also proving right his old rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris, who warned on the campaign trail: “Imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”