Anyone who has spent time in the federal government won’t be surprised by this, but the management divisions of the job national civil service are likely to be the biggest challenge facing President-elect Donald Trump.
Advertisement
” Wait a minute, Tapscott”, you may be muttering. Are you telling us that the nameless, faceless officials will have greater power and influence than the” editors” at ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and the social technicians of the Intelligence Community?
Why yes, that is exactly what I am saying, and Exhibit A here is a recent survey conducted for the Napolitan Institute by RMG Research of 500 federal civil service managers being paid at least$ 75, 000 and living in the Washington, D. C., region.
Permit me to state that I am the third generation of my home to work in government, having spent four years on legislative personnel and three years as a political appointee under the Reagan administration.
One of my uncles was a career post employee, and one of my great-grandfathers was a remote email provider for the state in the horse-and-buggy time. Because regard for my job public support is a family tradition, I want to point out these details.
Okay, to bring this up again: assuming the RMG Research findings are representative of the 2.3 million federal job legal services labor that performs the government’s day-to-day tasks, nearly 42 % of those provincial professionals surveyed stated their intention to either highly oppose or oppose Trump once he is sworn in and once again in the Oval Office.
More of the RMG Research respondents, 44 %, said they would neither clearly assistance or help Trump’s plan. However, according to what we read, two-thirds of the national supervisors who identified themselves as Democrats said they would constantly resist orders that would advance Trump guidelines.
Advertisement
The irony is that the fundamental reasoning that led to the creation of the current merit-based civil service that led to congressional approval of the Pendleton Act back in 1883 was that a professional, non-partisan state labor would be more effective and capable of serving citizens than the” Treasures System” that was replaced.
Regardless of whether they supported or opposed it, the people’s would, as expressed in the presidents and congresses they elect and the laws so enacted, had been carried out regardless of the individual opinions of the workers in the most successful, professional, and expeditious fashion possible.
Pendleton, by the way, was an Ohio Democrat senator who had previously been the vice-presidential running-mate of Gen. George McClellan, the Democratic opponent of President Abraham Lincoln’s re-election in 1864.  ,
That merit system was a significant change from the spoils system, which allowed a person to maintain a government job based on their political beliefs. If you were of the wrong political party, you lost your job because” to the winner goes the spoils”, including the winner appointing political friends, donors, and supporters to government positions.
The professional, non-partisan, merit-based career civil service was a precursor of the progressive movement’s claim epitomized by President Woodrow Wilson that relying upon “experts”, especially those trained in modern science and convinced that government, properly empowered and efficiently managed, could solve all of society’s ills.
Advertisement
The “merit system” initially only covered a small portion of federal workers, but those ranks gradually grew to the point where, in 1981, 90 % of civilian employees were no longer employed.
Along the way, the career service bureaucracy grew more established, and after JFK, federal workers were all but immune from management accountability and benefited from millions of campaign contributions to support Democrats who would protect them and grow their ranks with more government.
But the more “professionalized” the federal workforce has become, the more solidly it has become the fourth branch of government, aka the “administrative state”. The administrative state uses regulations, guidance, and its own” judiciary” — i. e. administrative law judges — to enforce its will, entirely apart from anything remotely resembling electoral accountability.
The administrative state that largely defeated his first-term efforts to impose accountability on it is even more powerful today than it was four years ago, according to the second Trump presidency.
These people give new meaning to the idea of” slow-walking” any idea, program, proposal, or politician seeking to reduce the power and influence of the career bureaucracy. They leak, they bury, they create endless reviews, and so forth and so on.
The merit system has evolved into a contemporary version of the spoils system because they use government power to defend and expand their political influence. Your political views were the only thing that mattered under the spoils system, and you could do whatever you wanted with your position as long as you kept your political patron at heart.
Advertisement
You had no obligation to hold anyone but that customer accountable, and you didn’t even have to worry about losing your job as long as the customer was pleased with your performance and powerful enough to protect you.
Nowadays, career bureaucrats brand every proposal to reduce federal spending, cut the number of federal programs, or require government workers to account for their on-duty conduct and work product as an attack on the merit system, an attempt to return to the spoils system, and a danger to public health, law and order, common decency and the survival of civilization.
Today’s career civil servants aren’t held accountable to anyone, and for all practical purposes, they can’t be fired as long as their Democratic supporters are satisfied with their performance and powerful enough to protect them.
See the pattern?
