Obama to Fire All Civil Servants, Replacing Them With Obama Loyalists

Warner Todd Huston* | November 18, 2009

In the Washington Examiner Mark Tapscott is decrying the Obama Administration’s bold new directive to rid government of anyone that was hired during the Bush years so that Obama can replace them with his loyal operatives. Tapscott is saying that this violates the spirit of civil service and brings back the spoils system instituting a “partisan political factor” to civil service jobs.

Well I say it’s about time. Unlike Tapscott, I say bring back the spoils system and do away with the professional civil servant. Let Obama fire every Bush appointee and put in his place political hacks, buddies, and friends. And then let the next president do the same… and so on, and so on.

First let’s explain what happened. As Tapscott reports:
John Berry, President Obama’s director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), has issued a new directive that is clearly designed to weed out any Bush administration political appointees who “careered-into” the civil service.


Tapscott explains that this Berry fellow has altered the rules to make it likely that Bush appointees will not be “approved” by OPM and that leaves their positions open for Obama to fill with his supporters and friends. Sure it’s a Sovietesque system that Obama wants to institute. Sure it’s a disruption of government and a complete slap in the face to honest civil servants that have spent decades in their jobs.

But so what?

Well, I not only support Obama’s new spoils system, I think it should go even farther. Dispense with this whole notion of “qualified” personnel for civil service. Let’s get rid of the OPM entirely and just fire everyone that worked for Bush regardless of how well they do the job. Obama should dump them all and put his own people in. And, as I said, the next president should do the same.

You see, I am for the spoils system, that old fashioned system where a new president would reward his buddies and supporters by giving them federal jobs.

Now, we all know why the spoils system was eliminated. It made the federal government horribly unstable. Jobs were usually filled by ner-do-wells that just wanted a handout and this system filled the government with people wholly unqualified for the positions offered. It clobbered the effectiveness of government slowing the wheels of progress tremendously.

And I pine for those days. What we sorely need today is a government that does less, CAN do less, and will do less. We need a government that barely fills all its positions before the next president comes into office to start all over again. After all, the largest number of federal jobs only serve to drag down our economy and feed off our treasury. In fact, it would be great to see a president wasting his time for months on end filling these jobs, too.

Why am I in favor of all this incompetence and wasted time, you might ask? Because if the president is stuck wasting months dealing with hangers-on seeking spoils jobs, if the government finds positions left empty and “jobs” not done, if the whole political system is slowed to a crawl while placemen and job seekers try to get their handout… tell me what will be happening?

Think about it.

Yes, what will be happening is that government won’t be bothering we the people! Government will not be spending time annoying the people, trouncing on businesses, wasting our tax dollars on idiotic faux jobs that don’t need filling anyway. Even better it also means that public employees unions will be gone, baby gone. Who needs to waste federal funds on a pension plan if no federal worker ever gets more than 8 years in their useless, make-work jobs?

Sure, bringing back the spoils system might return us to a day when government is less effective. But just like the Congressional Effect system of economic tracking proves, the country is always in worse shape when Congress is in session, when government is “doing something.” As they say, the most feared words in all of history are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

On the other hand, this effort does prove that Obama is pushing the Chicago Way all the way to Washington. See, here in da Windy City, it ain’t what ya know, it’s who ya know.



Contributor's website: http://thenma.org/blogs/index.php/huston