How to drain a Swamp.
Virtually all Americans believed, until the inauguration of Donald Trump as president on January 20, 2017, that when someone became president, he could begin to implement his agenda. Certainly Old Joe Biden’s handlers have done so with a vengeance since they took over; but when Trump became president, he immediately began to encounter resistance from entrenched members of the government bureaucracy who refused to do as he ordered. Some worked actively against Trump, while the establishment media assured us that these self-appointed “deep state” saboteurs were the courageous guardians of “our democracy.” At his South Carolina rally Saturday night, Trump continued to tease a 2024 run and made a new promise about how he would break the power of the unelected “deep state.”
“We will pass critical reforms,” Trump said, “making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States. The deep state must and will be brought to heel.”
It’s a commonsensical solution, as Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance pointed out. “Everyone is losing their mind about this, but I’ve been calling for it at every town hall I do. Either the president controls the executive branch or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, we don’t live in a Republic, we live in a civil service driven oligarchy.”
Ummm, hate to be the one to have to tell ya and all, JD, but…
Quite so. And although the “deep state” only came to the attention of most Americans over the last few years, the controversy over the hiring and firing of civil service employees is one of the oldest controversies of the republic. As Rating America’s Presidents explains, Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828 on promises to end the hegemony of a privileged aristocracy, and, to drain that swamp, he would need his own men in key positions. He removed a large number of civil service employees and replaced them with men of his own faction, which came to be known as the Democracy, or Democratic Party. This came to be known as the spoils system, after the old adage “To the victor belong the spoils.”
The spoils system essentially died with the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881. Garfield believed that the spoils system was an unending source of government corruption and pushed for measures that would end it, only to be shot by a man who publicly proclaimed that he was doing so because he belonged to the faction of the Republican party, the Stalwarts, that supported the spoils system. Garfield’s successor, Chester Arthur, was a Stalwart, but he demonstrated immense personal courage and honor in choosing to carry out the wishes of his slain predecessor rather than implement his own contrary agenda. His decision to do this effectively ended his political career, as he almost certainly knew it would, and yet he stood firm.
Can anyone even imagine a modern ProPol sacrificing his almighty DC sinecure solely on principle? Oh HELL no. America was indeed a very different country then, and Americans were very different people.
The proponents of civil service reform never envisioned a situation in which unelected and unaccountable opponents of a sitting president in the FBI, the Justice Department, and elsewhere would be determined to destroy the president — or at the very least make it impossible for him to carry out his policies — and could not be removed from their jobs because of civil service regulations.
Wouldn’t government work more smoothly, and the executive branch be able to operate more effectively in the way the Founding Fathers envisioned it would, if the president were able to clear out the employees of these agencies who opposed him and replace them with people more in line with his vision?
The spoils system has no defenders today, and has had none for over a century. It should have more. Trump is on the right track.
Perhaps, perhaps. However, that Swamp creatures were willing to do murder to preserve their spoils-system perks and privileges all thE way back in 1881 probably tells you all you need to know about just how likely Trump’s proposal really is to ever see the light of day today. There’s no indication that Swamp critters have moderated their determination to defend their prized Ruling Class status, not that I’ve ever seen. Anybody truly serious about ending the spoils system of legalized graft and corruption had best be prepared to commit violence in the attempt; it’s a lead-pipe cinch they’ll have plenty of it visited upon them by those who hope to thwart any meaningful reform.
- Entries
I have to disagree with the linked piece. If the proponents of civil service reform (meaning the current system) did NOT foresee the unelected bureaucracy becoming the true rulers, they were complete and utter blind fools. History has many, many examples of rule by the mandarins and human nature does not change for the better.
I have believed for years now that the spoils system would be better than what we have now. It would have problems (of course it would, no system populated by humans would not), but they would at least be different than the ones we have now. The deadwood must periodically be purged from any system, and our current lifetime tenure civil service has no mechanism for doing so. And since peaceful vote-driven reform is apparently impossible, our host is correct that violence will be the only way. Maybe it will be total systemic collapse, maybe it will be civil war (the hot kind, not the cultural kind we have been in for my entire life), maybe it will be conquest by outside forces, maybe it will be some Islamic jihadi setting off a nuke in DC. Something will eventually purge the system, one way or another. But eventually could be a long time off yet.
“I have believed for years now that the spoils system would be better than what we have now.”
The absolute worst system is always the one entrenched and unchangeable. I’d prefer that every single bureaucrat be fired every 4-8 years than to allow unelected and corrupt assholes to have any power.
The problem is the SEIU. John Kennedy said government cannot be unionized with a disaster. We now have a communist business running our country. It is not deep state it is deep union