On Friday, Axios began
to publish a deeply researched and important series by Jonathan Swan,
explaining that if former president Trump retakes power, he and allies like his
former chief of staff Mark Meadows, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), and head
of Trump’s social media network Devin Nunes are determined to purge our
nonpartisan civil service and replace it with loyalists. In a normal
administration, a new president gets to replace around 4000 political
appointees, but most government employees are in positions designed to be
nonpartisan. Trump’s team wants to gut this system and put in place people
loyal to him and his agenda.
When
he campaigned for the presidency, Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of
officeholders who, he suggested, were just sucking tax dollars. Once in office,
though, Trump grew increasingly angry at the civil servants who continued to
investigate his campaign’s ties to Russia, insisting that figures like former
FBI director Robert Mueller and former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein,
who appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russian interference in
the 2016 election, were Democrats who wanted to hound him from office. (They
were, in fact, Republicans.)
Trump’s
first impeachment trial inflamed his fury at those he considered disloyal. The
day after Republican senators acquitted him on February
6, 2020, he fired two key impeachment witnesses: U.S. Ambassador
to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman,
the top expert on Ukraine at the National Security Council. Ironically, Vindman
had testified in the impeachment hearings that he had reassured his father, who
had lived in the Soviet Union and was worried about Vindman’s testifying
against the president, not to worry because in America, “right matters.” Trump
fired Vindman’s twin brother, Yevgeny, at the same time, although he had
nothing to do with the impeachment.
A
Trump advisor told CNN the firings were intended to demonstrate that
disloyalty to the president would not be tolerated.
Within
days, Trump had put fierce loyalist John McEntee in charge of the White House
office of personnel, urging him to ferret out anyone insufficiently loyal and
to make sure the White House hired only true believers. McEntee had been
Trump’s personal aide until he failed a security clearance background check and
it turned out he was under investigation for financial crimes; then–White House
chief of staff John Kelly fired him, and Trump promptly transferred McEntee to
his reelection campaign. On February 13,
2020, though, Trump suddenly put McEntee, who had no experience in personnel or
significant government work, in charge of the hiring of the 4000 political
appointees and gave him extraordinary power.
Trump
also wanted to purge the 50,000 nonpartisan civil servants who are hired for
their skills, rather than politics. But since 1883, those jobs have been
protected from exactly the sort of political purge Trump and McEntee wanted to
execute.
A
policy researcher who came to Trump’s Domestic Policy Council from the Heritage
Foundation, James Sherk, found that employees who work in “a confidential,
policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” job can be exempted
from civil service protections.
On October 21, 2020, Trump
signed an executive order creating a new category of public servant who could
be hired by agency heads without having to go through the merit-based system in
place since 1883, and could be fired at will. This new “Schedule F” would once
again allow presidents to appoint cronies to office, while firing those
insufficiently loyal. One Trump loyalist at the Office of Management and Budget
identified 88% of his agency as moveable to Schedule F.
Biden
rescinded Trump’s executive order on January 22,
2021, just two days after taking office.
According
to Swan, Trump has not forgotten the plan. Since the January
6 insurrection, he has called those former colleagues who
did not support his coup “ungrateful” and “treasonous.” In a new
administration, he would insist on people who had “courage,” and would
reinstate the Schedule F plan in order to purge the career civil service of all
employees he believes insufficiently loyal to him.
The
idea of reducing our professional civil service to those who offer loyalty to a
single leader is yet another fundamental attack on democracy.
Democracy
depends on a nonpartisan group of functionaries who are loyal not to a single
strongman but to the state itself. Loyalty to the country, rather than to a
single leader, means those bureaucrats follow the law and have an interest in
protecting the government. It is the weight of that loyalty that managed to
stop Trump from becoming a dictator. He was thwarted by what he called the
“Deep State,” people who were loyal not to him personally but to America and
our laws. That loyalty was bipartisan.
Authoritarian
figures expect loyalty to themselves alone, rather than to a nonpartisan
government. To get that loyalty, they turn to staffers who are loyal because
they are not qualified or talented enough to rise to power in a nonpartisan
system. They are loyal to their boss because they could not make it in a true
meritocracy, and at some level they know that (even if they insist they are
disliked for their politics).
Between
1829 and 1881, all but the very highest positions throughout the government
were filled by the president on the recommendations of officials in his party,
so every change of administration meant weeks of office seekers hounding the
president. After the Civil War, the numbers of federal jobs climbed, until by 1884
there were 131,000 people on the federal payroll. Assignment of these jobs was
based not on the applicants’ skills, but on their promise to bring in votes or
money for their party. Once a man scored a government job, he was expected to
return part of his salary to the party’s war chest for the next election.
And
then, on July 2, 1881, a man who
had expected a government job and didn’t get it retaliated for his
disappointment by shooting the president, President James A. Garfield, in the
back as he walked up the stairs of a train station in Washington, D.C. The
assassin expected that Garfield’s successor, Chester A. Arthur, would reward
him with a job.
Horrified,
Americans recognized that a government that was for sale by the political party
in charge created men who saw government only as a way to make money and were
willing to tear the entire system down to get their cut. Even though they hoped
no one else would go so far as Garfield’s assassin did, they could see that
such a system attracted those who could not get a decent job on their actual
merits.
So
in 1883, Congress passed and President Arthur signed An Act To Regulate and
Improve the Civil Service of the United States, more popularly known as the
Pendleton Civil Service Act. It guaranteed the government would have skilled
workers by requiring applicants for positions to pass entrance exams, and then
protected them from being fired by an incoming president of the opposite party.
At first, only a few jobs were covered, but presidents expanded the system
quickly. Our government employees became highly qualified, and loyal to the
country rather than to a president.
That
seems likely to change if Trump gets back into office.
—Heather
Cox Richardson
Notes:
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pendleton-act#transcript
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/politics/alex-vindman-donald-trump-impeachment/index.html
https://www.axios.com/2020/02/13/johnny-mcentee-white-house
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/john-mcentee-white-house-security-clearance/index.html
https://www.axios.com/2022/07/23/donald-trump-news-schedule-f-executive-order
https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/democrac/28.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.