This won't shock anybody who served time working in the government bureaucracy but the biggest obstacle facing President-elect Donald Trump likely isn't the Elite Media or the Deep State, but rather the management ranks of the career federal civil service.
"Wait a minute, Tapscott," you may be muttering. "Are you telling us that nameless, faceless bureaucrats are going to be more powerful and influential in blocking Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda than the 'journalists' at ABC/CBS/NBC/New York Times/Washington Post and the political plumbers 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.
Before we continue this discussion, allow me to point out that I represent the fourth generation of my family to work in government, spending four years in various positions on congressional staff, and three years as a Reagan political appointee in the executive branch.
My father was a career civil servant working for the Department of Defense, one of my grandfathers was a career postal worker and one of my great-grandfathers was a rural mail carrier for the government back in the horse-and-buggy era. I point out these facts because respect for career public service is a family tradition for me.
Ok, back to the conversation: Fully 42% of those federal managers surveyed declared their intent to either strongly oppose or oppose Trump once he is sworn in and back in the Oval Office, assuming the RMG Research results are representative of the 2.3 million federal career civil service workforce that carries out the day-to-day work of the government.
More of the RMG Research respondents, 44%, said they would either strongly support or support Trump's agenda. But then we read that among the federal managers who identified themselves as Democrats, two-thirds said they would actively oppose orders advancing Trump policies.
The irony here is that the basic argument that prompted congressional approval of the Pendleton Act way back in 1883 that established the present merit-based civil service was that a professional, non-partisan government workforce would be more efficient and better able to serve citizens than had the "Spoils System" that was replaced.
Regardless of whether they supported or opposed it, the people's will, as expressed in the presidents and congresses they elect and the laws thus enacted, would be carried out regardless of the personal opinions of the workers in the most efficient, professional, and expeditious manner 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 dramatic departure from the spoils system under which an individual's political views were the criteria by which he or she could keep a government job. 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.
Initially, only a small slice of federal workers were covered by the "merit system," but those ranks were steadily expanded to the point that by the time President Jimmy Carter left office in 1981, 90% of all civilian employees.
Along the way, the career service bureaucracy became steadily more entrenched, and, after JFK enabled federal workers to unionize in 1962, all but immune from management accountability and wielding millions of campaign contributions to support candidates — virtually all Democrats — who would protect them and expand their ranks with bigger 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 reality facing the second Trump presidency is that the administrative state that largely defeated his first-term efforts to force accountability on it is even more powerful today than it was four years ago.
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.
And because they use government power to defend and extend their political influence, the merit system has become a modern analogy of the spoils system. Under the spoils system, your political views were all that counted, and you could do whatever you wanted with your position so long as you protected your political patron.
You were accountable to no one but that patron, and you didn't have to worry about losing your job so long as your patron was happy 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 accountable to anybody, and for all practical purposes, they can't be fired as long as their Democratic patrons are happy with their performance and powerful enough to protect them.
See the pattern?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member