The federal and state bureaucratic agencies are perhaps the least interesting (to the average American) and some of the most important parts of our government. The recent attacks on the so-called "deep state" have targeted the people employed by these agencies with the express intention of "terrorizing" them---firing them wholesale and trying to scare them into resigning.
To understand why these attacks are a bad idea we need to look at the history of the civil service.
Originally, the federal government employed very few people, an estimated 300 in 1790. The number has gradually increased to over two million people since 1980. Of course the total U.S. population has increased similarly.
Originally presidents were free to employ people as they wished, and handing out federal jobs soon became an import lever for building political support. President Andrew Jackson enthusiastically used this power to bolster his power, proclaiming that "to the victors belong the spoils." Federal employees were often asked to contribute money to the president's political campaigns, and ignoring these "requests" could bring dismissal.
Although early presidents surely did not willfully appoint incompetent people to federal jobs, they placed a higher value on political loyalty than on ability.
As federal civilian employment gradually increased, the power to hand out jobs became more and more important. President Jackson was dismayed to find that John McLean, his inherited Postmaster General, did not approve of the spoils system. Yet the Post Office was a principal location of patronage jobs in those days. Rather than firing McLean, which would have been politically costly, Jackson solved his problem by appointing McLean to the Supreme Court!
After the Civil War, when the federal civilian employment began increasing rapidly, a turning point came after President James A. Garfield was assassinated by a disappointed job-seeker. Under his successor, Chester Arthur, Congress enacted the Pendleton Act, the beginnings of our modern merit-based civil service.
The Pendleton Act shifted from the "spoils system" to a merit system based on competitive exams. It created a Civil Service Commission to administer the exams and protect federal employees from being fired for their political beliefs or partisan loyalties. Although at first the Pendleton Act applied only to a few federal jobs, it was gradually extended to protect nearly all jobs below the highest executives in each department.
More recently, additional federal legislation, the Hatch Act of 1939, limited the right of federal civil servants to engage in partisan politics. This legislation protected civil servants from being pressured for money or political support by their bosses.
Still further federal legislation required state governments to enact similar civil service protections for their employees if they wanted to continue receiving funding from the federal government.
All in all, the merit based civil service system that resulted from these reforms allowed the federal government to wage World War II very effectively and to maintain national security during the Cold War years (1945-1991). Scientific research conducted by civil servants or by private corporations and universities under contracts negotiated by civil servants have stimulated our economy with developments like radar, computers, and the internet.
Although it is fashionable to criticize "bureaucrats," it is impossible to understand modern government without understanding their importance. Our contacts with government are largely with bureaucrats and most day to day government decisions are made by bureaucrats.
Despite the widespread impression that bureaucrats are incompetent paper-shufflers who cannot write or read plain English, their organizations are extremely efficient. Their very sluggishness in dealing with nontypical cases is a side effect of the rules by which they deal efficiently with routine problems, and one person's "red tape" is another person's protection from arbitrary treatment by powerful government officials.
And most of them don't just process paperwork. My own father, like many other federal civil servants, was a technical expert--in his case as an electronics engineer working on military projects for the Defense Department.
Rather than demonizing bureaucrats, we owe them our gratitude.
Have you hugged a bureaucrat lately?
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