Still, sort of amazingly, Kudlow got the job. But is it really a job worth having under these circumstances?

The part of Trump’s agenda that most excited Kudlow was the tax cuts, particularly the massive cuts in business taxes. But for all of Trump’s talk about a “phase two” to tax cuts, a second round is highly unlikely to happen this year or even in the rest of Trump’s first term given the precariousness of the GOP’s congressional majorities. Moreover, passing future tax cuts will be difficult, both politically and fiscally, as trillion-dollar budget deficits become the norm. Where Trump does have power is on trade, which means Kudlow may be spending the bulk of his time trying to prevent bad policy rather than promoting good ideas. Or, even worse, Kudlow will play the good soldier and twist himself into knots trying to justify Trump’s protectionism today as somehow leading to more and freer trade tomorrow.

And that’s really the problem. Kudlow’s ascent really doesn’t mark the apotheosis of supply-side economics or even a greater GOP commitment to broadly pro-market policies. More likely it signals the last gasp of 1980s-style Reaganomics as a force in the Republican Party.