Ezra Klein: Unwinding Bushism

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June 17, 2007

Unwinding Bushism

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

John Emerson's comments on Brad DeLong's taxonomy of "honest conservatives" brings up a difficult conundrum the next Democratic President will face:

For example, Bush's politicization of the career staff in Justice and elsewhere was a very bad thing, no? And certainly this kind of thing has to stop, no? So we will forbid the new Democratic President to interfere with career personnel, with the result that all of the political hacks Bush put in civil service positions will be untouchable.

Quite right. Even if Democrats take the White House in '08 and are able to install their own political heads, they'll have a staff full of Republican lawyers that have burrowed into the bureaucracy, eager to leak damaging gossip to Congress, slag their new boss, and derail the President. And this is just in one department; we have to assume that similar initiatives have taken place elsewhere in the executive branch. One has to hope that in, say, the Defense Department, political heads will be able to get the career pros to wage war against Bush's former tourists. Otherwise, the PR nightmare may start on day one and never end.

June 17, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

Putting the proverbial cart before the horse does not even begin to describe the concern that you have about this.

It is this type of idiocy that has led to the paradox of a powerless majority in the Congress, inasmuch as Pelosi gave away the game by making the promise of no impeachment out of the concern for losing if she does not make such a commitment.

Posted by: gregor | Jun 18, 2007 12:29:06 AM

they'll have a staff full of Republican lawyers that have burrowed into the bureaucracy, eager to leak damaging gossip to Congress, slag their new boss, and derail the President

This isn't the problem, I don't think. The problem is that they have a radically different understanding--a non-standard definition--of their jobs, the way that agency is supposed to work, and how the various laws and regulations relating to it are to be interpreted. Emerson (and I'm guessing here) is talking about a much more significant action than slagging, derailing, and gossiping; he's talking about something like a Project to Redirect America. Which sounds crazy until you realize that of course that's what you'd do if you thought that the liberal northeastern elites had fucked the country up from FDR on.

Emerson should obviously correct me if he's not talking about that kind of Red rot.

Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Jun 18, 2007 12:32:55 AM

So we will forbid the new Democratic President to interfere with career personnel, with the result that all of the political hacks Bush put in civil service positions will be untouchable.

Who's "we"? Bad actors will be fired.

Posted by: Sanpete | Jun 18, 2007 1:47:48 AM

The solution to this problem is in the hands of the present Congress. It is called "reduction in force".

It cannot be done everywhere, but it certainly could be done in the Civil Rights Division and similar organizations. Reduce the '08 budget to near-zero, so that all the Republican hires have to be laid off. Most are too junior to have "status", which would give them priority in re-hiring. They'd just be gone.

Posted by: Bruce Wilder | Jun 18, 2007 1:49:14 AM

I agree with you completely, this is going to be a big problem. Actually it doesn't have to be--the next President should simply purge all the Bush cronies that can be found. That's called replacing your staff with people who know how to follow the law. The only problem here would be determining who to fire and who to keep.

The danger here goes well beyond incompetence and bad PR for the next administration. Would you trust someone who had helped Bush subvert the Constitution with classified information? Or let them handle voting rights cases? They are all traitors to our constitution and our country!

Posted by: Justin | Jun 18, 2007 4:11:05 AM

Yeah, good idea. Fire all the people appointed by the "wrong" kind of president. I mean, that's what Clinton did when he fired every single federal prosecutor and replaced them, right?

I mean, if their vision of their duties doesn't match that of the executive, then they must go! After all, they are only political appointees, not elected officials. The president doesn't even *need* a reason to fire them, right?

Uh, so what was that prosecutor scandal with Bush about, again, please?

Posted by: Deep Thought | Jun 18, 2007 8:50:56 AM

There's no precedent for replacing certain people at the beginning of a term because they do not serve at the pleasure of the president, like there is with the U.S. attorneys? If there is, I see a few possible solutions, and not all of them nice:

1. Institute a one-time sweep that will occur right at the beginning of the term. This would happen within the first two weeks, or even the first week. Virtually everyone who should be fired would be fired all at once, with their potential replacements already picked out. This should happen at a time when nobody would notice, like on a Friday afternoon. We'd be hypocrites in a few ways, but if it's a one-time thing, then I guess it's not the worst thing to happen.

2. Simply replace the people who are going to do the most damage all at once, even if it means leaving some boobs in power for the time being.

3. Marginalize the people who can't be fired for whatever reason. I'm not sure of the legal way to do it, but it's got to be possible.

4. Establish some sort of review process that will allow the weeding out to take place over a year. It'll suck that it takes that long, but at least it'll be done. And hopefully, it can be something that will actually benefit the department as a whole.

Posted by: Brian | Jun 18, 2007 9:00:06 AM

"Uh, so what was that prosecutor scandal with Bush about, again, please?"

It's not without precedent that the president would replace most if not all of the U.S. attorneys from the previous administration when he is sworn in with people who share his views. However, it usually happens at the beginning of his term, not in the middle. If people are fired in the middle of his term, it's become of some extraordinary reason. Easy enough, I imagine. But that's not what happened this time. And when asked to come up with good reasons for these people being fired, they haven't been able to do so. If their case is so easy to defend, one has to wonder why they haven't done it.

Do you understand now?

Posted by: Brian | Jun 18, 2007 9:07:17 AM

Reduce the size of the federal government by how every many civil servants were hired in the past 8 years with the first budget. Then say 'Oops...we cut too much' and rehire to adequate staffing with some kind of non-partisan mechanism that makes it harder for the next Bush to lard the system with thieving, lying cronies.

Posted by: joejoejoe | Jun 18, 2007 9:19:57 AM

Uh, so what was that prosecutor scandal with Bush about, again, please?

Some people have a problem with firing US Attorneys because they're investigating Republicans or because they won't file false charges against Democrats. The only reason anyone talked about the number of USAs fired was because it was an unusual amount considering the timing.

Are you trying to suggest that impeding federal investigations doesn't bother you? Filing bogus charges? None of that seems to upset you? Of course, it may be that you're firmly ensconsed in the alternate conservaverse in which Carol Lam and David Iglesias, to name just two, really were incompetent and "B-b-b-but Clinton!" is actually an effective defense. If so, I'm sorry for accusing you of poor motives. However, you might consider coming back into the real world.

Posted by: Stephen | Jun 18, 2007 10:00:53 AM

Brian,
Clinton? Fired every prosecutor when he took office. Reagan fired most of them, etc. Sure. Carter fired a prosecutor or two in the middle of a term, as did a handful of other presidents. But here is what kills me....

Clinton, Carter, Reagan, etc. - all fired attorneys appointed by *other* presidents. Bush fired attorneys *he* appointed - and, somehow, this is *more political*.

Pull the other one.

Posted by: Deep Thought | Jun 18, 2007 10:05:20 AM

Hey No Thought,
Don't be so fucking disingenuous. Who do you think you are, Rove Jr. ?
Yer damn right its more political. Clinton Carter Reagan followed established president of DOJ independence. At the biginning of their first term the hire/fire process takes palce, anything after that is for misconduct, voluntary retirements, etc.. and statistically is rare. So Bush Boy crops up with a wack load of second term firings. It stands out. It raises a red flag. What the hey is going on here.

And when you investigate who was fired, what they were doing before they were fired, what excuses were used to replace them and who replaced them, you realise one thing: Rove has taken over the DOJ through the tool Gonzales and is running it as an extention of the RNC electoral programme.
It is possibly the greatest political scandale in the history of the Republic, the deliberate subversion of the DOJ for electoral advantage. Nice party you got there DT.

For more see: www.talkingpointsmemo.com

Posted by: Northern Observer | Jun 18, 2007 10:18:44 AM

Deep Thought, do you have any idea what Ezra was talking about in his post? Because from your comments, it sounds like you don't.

Posted by: Tyro | Jun 18, 2007 12:15:24 PM

This isn't about US Attorneys. It's about staff at all kinds of agencies, at various levels. It's insane to talk about firing all the career people put in by a previous administration. If someone gives cause, you fire them; otherwise not.

Posted by: Sanpete | Jun 18, 2007 1:09:58 PM

Deep Thought, I think you're forgetting that a good number of the people the Bush administration has packed into the federal bureaucracy have demonstrated that they are willing to circumvent federal law in service to their party's interests. This is not a matter of partisanship, "getting even" or (as Bush has done) making sure civil servants match our ideology. Really, it's a constitutional crisis of sorts - the supreme law of the land means nothing if the people charged with its execution ignore it.

Besides, think about the nature of public administration: constitutionality, transparency and accountability are just as important as efficiency. By any measure, a group of holdovers from a previous administration, who were illegitimately selected in the first place on the basis of their loyalty, who have collaborated in circumventing the law and constitution, are not doing their jobs well. They should be fired.

Posted by: Justin | Jun 18, 2007 1:10:17 PM

Sanpete, I don't mean to suggest that all civil service employees be let go. But the political appointees can be shown the door on day 1, and I think the justification for this is quite clear. The US attorneys probably all need to go, for sure, because every one of them is now tainted by virtue of being the ones the administration thought would "play ball."

With regard to the career people, there have to be a number of ways of weeding out the ones who would be trouble. Those lacking experience, or where it's obvious that they were put in place because of their partisan credentials, come to mind. I suppose like Ezra said, a new administration would have to be very vigilant and watch for attempts to undermine them from within.

Posted by: Justin | Jun 18, 2007 1:22:42 PM

It is a little tricky, but I think you could do fumigate the executive branch without violating the law.

First, you have to find all the people who acted in the same gatekeeper capacity as Monica Goodling at the various executive branch agencies. Then, you have to review everyone hired at that agency whose resume went through those gatekeeper's hands. At that point, you will have a list of people who were presumptively hired into their jobs illegally, that is, as a result of illegal political considerations. You don't fire them. Instead, you simply re-compete the jobs. The Bush era hires can apply for their current jobs, but if their Regent University credentials don't stack up to the competition, they are replaced.

Oh, and one other thing. They don't get any credit for their on the job experience.

Posted by: anon | Jun 18, 2007 2:03:02 PM

Deep Thought, do you have any idea what Ezra was talking about in his post

Oh for crying out loud, I'm not Ezra!!!

Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Jun 18, 2007 4:27:42 PM

Jesus Christ, can you imagine what it's like for a Republican president? I mean, who do you think ordinarily works for the federal government, but a bunch of partisan Democrats? What do you think the whole thing is about? Yes, you will now have the same problem Republicans have always had. Except, as demonstrated here, there won't be any objection to getting rid of the few Republicans.

Posted by: Thomas | Jun 18, 2007 7:46:22 PM

Thomas, the fact is that countless Democrats have worked under Republican presidents for decades as nonpartisan civil servants. Now a generation of Republicans have been inspired to circumvent the system, using RNC e-mail accounts, putting the federal bureaucracy to work for "our candidates." Bush has opened this Pandora's box, and it's hard telling if it can be closed now.

Posted by: Justin | Jun 19, 2007 12:02:19 PM

Justin, that's incredibly naive. You can't possibly be serious.

Posted by: Thomas | Jun 19, 2007 2:46:52 PM

Wow, I'm sure that a civil service purge would not be reciprocated the next time a Republican is in office. Every 8-12 years we purge, won't that be fun. The cumulative effect would make the damage Bush's appointees have done to the system seem trivial. If "They did it first" is sufficient basis to do the same wrong acts then we are in for a hell of ride in the last few years of the Republic.

Posted by: Don | Jun 19, 2007 6:23:52 PM

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