It took less than five months, but Elon Musk has repealed a more-than-half-century-old political science principle established by the singer Neil Sedaka. Mr. Musk has shown that “breaking up is hard to do” – the title of the crooner’s most famous song – doesn’t apply in Donald Trump’s Washington.
Actually, in the case of Mr. Musk and his patron Mr. Trump – the power balance between the two billionaires was never quite clear – breaking up wasn’t that hard at all.
It took the political furor caused by a chainsaw (the unfortunate Musk metaphor for his government cuts); resentment from Republican lawmakers (who faced repeated grief at home from constituents enraged by Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency); stunning technological failures (three botched Space X missions, including a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”); cratering economic prospects (the sales backlash against Tesla); and one phrase even more evocative than the Sedaka song lyric …