BY ROBERT SPENCER, PJ MEDIA MAR 13, 2022
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
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. ”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 term “spoils system” is today practically synonymous with government corruption, but Jackson began it as a blow against corruption, preventing the establishment of an entrenched bureaucracy that would oppose the president.
The Trump administration made it clear that such a bureaucracy, determined to thwart the president at every turn, is a genuine concern; it is time for a reconsideration of the spoils system. 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.
Unpopular? No doubt in my mind that Trump won re-election by a landslide. Doesn’t surprise me. The country has been so polarized since 2000 that every election has seen the popular vote split nearly down the middle with a small swing vote deciding the outcome. Of course, the nationwide popular vote doesn’t detemine the election.
Unpopular? No doubt in my mind that Trump won re-election by a landslide. Doesn’t surprise me. The country has been so polarized since 2000 that every election has seen the popular vote split nearly down the middle with a small swing vote deciding the outcome. Of course, the nationwide popular vote doesn’t detemine the election. He got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, making inroads in minority communities Republicans never appealed to, especially Hispanics. Just because the coastal elites hate him doesn’t mean most of the country does. Hundreds of thousands attend his rallies. He is beloved by the masses in the Republican Party and all the red states.
With a disclaimer that I am not trying to say anything against Trump as a person, what his rhetoric does is to make tens of millions of people grit their teeth and wait two more years until they can show up the Democrats and Biden at the voting booth.
Politicians very quickly discover that the most important thing for their popularity is to tell their constituents/voters what they want to hear (whether this can or will be done or not) at the best possible moment (and just keep doing it).
Once this is accomplished, the politicians can pretty much do anything they want behind the scenes, at worst they will never have to bear the blame for whatever bad stuff happens.
To equate federal employees with the “Deep State” is kind of strange, I think.
The idea of the President being able to fire government employees at will, for failure to obey orders, is very appealing, but impractical for at least two reasons.
First, Federal employees are now semi-unionized under the Civil Service System. It is not that easy to get rid of even one sub-par employee. There would be many court challenges.
Second, with an (estimated) 2.1 million employees, the federal workforce is too vast for the President, or his Cabinet members, to manage. It would be a huge distraction from more pressing issues.
Here are some possible solutions for reducing the swamp:
1. Eliminate the Civil Service System
2. Privatize as many government activities as possible. The best example is the Post Office. Contract UPS, DHL, or FedEx to do the job.
3. Conduct a massive review of Federal regulations, and agencies, and eliminate all non-essential red-tape, paper-shuffling, bureaucracies.
4. Tie all agencies to specific performance goals, including customer satisfaction.
5. Require all federal employees to submit resignations, which may be implemented at any time, for any reason.
6. Hold all Federal employees accountable to their oaths of office, with jail time, and/or a fine, if they don’t.
7. Review all Federal hires every five years. They may be renewed, or not.
8. All civilian Federal employee compensation and benefits shall be brought into line with the private sector, relative to wages, hours worked, paid holidays, sick leave, vacations, and retirement (at age 62/65). Federal employees must participate Social Security and Medicare.
@Ted
Exactly correct.
Whose poll is this? The WSJ? Does that explain things for everyone?
The story this current WSJ poll wishes to tell is that the most unpopular man in America is still as popular as President Trump. I have no faith in polls, but even if I did, I could tell you this one is not only false, but delusional. Polls are manipulative tools used to fill empty news cycles and sway public perceptions. Well, there are currently no empty news cycles, and the public perception gets reset every time you visit a gas station or a grocery store to find the cost of living is skyrocketing.
It was Lincoln who said :
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time”, but this poll is not fooling anyone for any length of time. The jingle in the pocket, or the silence that is recently replacing it, is a constant reminder of political popularity. The WSJ can play word games and oversample Dems or simply pull numbers out of the sky. No one should be fooled by such blatant dishonesty.
How can anyone take a poll like that seriously. To quote Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?
Could someone please explain to me how it is possible for popular opinion to be split 50/50 between a man with a proven record of doing good for America, and a senile sock-puppet who has done more to harm America than any other president?
If 50% of the people will take anyone, or anything, over Trump, maybe we need to consider another person to break out of this self-destructive rut. If the Democrats, however, continue to be intent on destroying America, we may as well just go to war now and get it over with.
The bureaucracy is nothing less than “the private army” of the W DC corruptocracy and to be specific, the elitocracy made of RINOS & DINOS!
Hi, Sebastien.
That’s something of an understatement.
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/2068774/poll-has-trump-and-biden-deadlocked-in-hypothetical-2024-rematch.html
I’ve just been going head-to-head with Felix about the annihilation of humanity, and then I saw this article about how (yet again) Donald J. Trump is promising to “drain the swamp”. I have been underwhelmed.
Trump won the election in 2020. It was stolen by the Democrat Party communists . . .
There is only one way to level a plying field.
Bulldoze it. Can it be done? I have doubts.