A CHANGE OF THE GUARD? Trump’s threat to the liberal ‘deep state’

There’s one last way in which Trump’s inauguration represents a return to politics, and that’s as a repudiation of the ideal of a politically neutral administrative state, run by a government of experts whose rules anonymous bureaucrats faithfully follow.

There were echoes of that in Andrew Jackson’s victory, for the unruly mob that had descended on Washington in 1829 was composed of office-seekers who had been promised patronage jobs in the new administration. And many of them got what they wanted, for Jackson introduced the “spoils system” in which career civil servants were replaced by political appointees.

Civil-service reform, beginning with the 1883 Pendleton Act, was supposed to protect us from Jacksonian politics, creating a merit system that tied the president’s hands in patronage appointments. That was meant to give us an efficient government, free of corruption, with rule by scientific experts.

Instead, we got rule by stale ideologues. Today, when the “deep state” of federal workers is so wholly opposed to Trump, and is so partisan in its opposition, when they’ll do whatever they can to frustrate Trump’s policies, there’s an argument to be made for a return to politics and an abandonment of our faith in rule by politically neutral experts.

The patronage system was corrupt to be sure, but it did bring in a new group of thieves with each new administration.