This is an often-used tactic. First-term outgoing executive declares a bunch of policies last-minute that his supporters love, incoming executive cancels all of

This is an often-used tactic. First-term outgoing executive declares a bunch of policies last-minute that his supporters love, incoming executive cancels all of them. Since the policies were untested, they became symbolic rather than a demonstrably failed experiment. When the first executive tries for a second term later, they can use this as an example of how they tried to do X, but their replacement didn't even give them a chance. I've seen this exact thing done many, many times, and not just in the American presidency.