Restoring some sense of normalcy

June 18, 2007

John Emerson raised a point I hadn’t given much thought to, but will be of the utmost importance in early 2009.

I think that when the “honest conservatives” reject Bush they’re just setting up their assault on the Democratic president they expect to see elected next year. Their way of digging themselves out from under the Bush disaster (and obscuring their own massive role in that disaster) will be to swear that “Never again can an American President be allowed that kind of free hand!” This will justify their fighting the new Democratic President tooth and nail for every inch of ground.

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. (When that happens, can we expect the media to understand what’s going on? No, of course not.)

That’s absolutely true. Most of the federal bureaucracy is made up of executive-branch employees, hired as career officials. The Bush gang has politicized this process to an extent unseen in recent political times, perhaps more than any administration ever. The result will be incredibly awkward — come 2009, even a Democratic president will oversee a federal bureaucracy filled with hacks who were hired based on their ability to be “loyal Bushies.”

Worse, as Emerson notes, that same Democratic president won’t be able — or, at a minimum, will have a real challenge on his or her hands — to purge a reality-based administration of far-right hacks. Dems will have spent eight years railing against political interference with career bureaucratic employment; unless President Clinton/Obama/Edwards plans to replace Bush Republicans with Other Republicans, the media will be less than kind.

Nicholas Beaudrot emphasized the Justice Department.

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.

Come 2009, a Democratic president won’t be able to keep most of Bush’s career hires because they’re … how do I put this delicately … unqualified, partisan hacks who were vetted for career positions based on their take on Roe v. Wade. That same Democratic president won’t be able to purge those career hires because that would be perceived as being Bush-like.

Repairing the damage of the Bush years is going to take quite a while, isn’t it?

Yikes, these are truly scary thoughts! The only way out of this conundrum that I can see would be for the “new management” to hold people’s feet to the fire and give poor ratings to those who fail to meet performance standards. It is a given that those who were hired based on their opinions of Roe v. Wade rather than their job-related abilities will fall far short. As it’s very difficult to fire career federal employees, we’ll just have to hope they bolt for greener pastures.

  • Worse, as Emerson notes, that same Democratic president won’t be able — or, at a minimum, will have a real challenge on his or her hands — to purge a reality-based administration of far-right hacks.

    Not necessarily. One of the upsides of the U.S. Attorneys scandal may be that the politicization of career appointments is now firmly established in the public’s mind. “Honest conservatives” can try this kind of spin. Democrats should easily be able to push back.

    I think John Emerson’s post is valuable not as a prediction of what is likely to happen, but as a pointer to what Democrats should be preparing already to fight in the future.

  • Congress now has enough evidence from Goodling’s testimony that they can pass a law authorizing DOJ to suspend civil service protections for every single hire for which she had any role whatsoever. Each of those positions should be re-opened, candidates re-interviewed, and, in most cases, new persons hired.

    Of course the problem is so widespread that this will just be a drop in the bucket, but it would at least be a start and would send a strong message that this was an entirely unacceptable attempt for Bush to grab power extending beyond the length of his administration.

  • Wait until they complain and then leak performance evaluations and cresentials. Then we can all point and laugh/cry at how terrible they all were and move on.

  • I think Dems should start saying, loudly and often, “To save America from all the damage that Bush and the Republicans have done, we are going to have to fire a whole lot of unqualified Bush appointees.” That way, it won’t be a newsworthy surprise so much as an expectation.

  • I strongly disagree. It should just be said out loud from the first that the New Democratic President’s 1st job is to undo the politicization of of the various departments by Bush. People will be hired based on qualifications and because it is a democratic administration most of the qualified hirees will be democrats and progressives since this reflects the majority of Americans.

    Right now the senate needs to block all Bush’s nominees to the judicial bench for it is the judicial that Pat Robertson is trying to infiltrate and Bush is obliging.

  • The president-elect’s transition team should identify all the Regent Law School hacks and other undesirables in the DOJ. Then the new president should fire them all on January 21, 2009.

    It will be like pulling off a band-aid quickly rather than slowly.

    Reverse the Bush stem-cell policy on January 22, and announce the troop pullout from Iraq on January 23. The media will never mention the DOJ again.

  • Firing these people will not be a problem. Two words – Performance Review. Here is the plan 1) evaluate the performance of all the GOP hacks and write performance reviews. 2) fire their punk-asses. 3) if they complain drag out the reviews that will include all the illegal, political, underhanded, secret BS that Karl Rove shat out upon America. We can use this as a springboard to launch very public truth and reconciliation reports on 8 years of the Texas Mafia.

    I doubt the GOP wants that.

  • Agree with david ****#3 above. All hirees should be re-investigated and requalified etc. if hired by these political hacks like Goodling and Schlozman etc.

  • I thiink the American public, when they get rid of the uppermost echelon of Republican idiots, will go along ang cheer the ‘de-Bushification” of government. All the Dem need to say is that they are geting rid of the “heckofa job Brownies” before those incompetents can destroy the functioning of government.

    In fact, getting rid of those people in government who don’t think or want government to work in the first place should be part of the platform the Democrats run on in ’08. The only way to restore the public’s trust in this nations government will be to get rid of the right wing liars. It’s my hope that the Democratic party has a complete list of all the knuckleheads that need replacing and are lining up qualified candidates to replace them.

  • I do hope that the Dems are not beholden to religion like the Repubs are. If that is the case, we’re in deeper doodoo than I thought.

  • Most of the federal bureaucracy is made up of executive-branch employees, hired as career officials. The Bush gang has politicized this process to an extent unseen in recent political times, perhaps more than any administration ever. The result will be incredibly awkward — come 2009 — CB. Why?

    If their instatement was illegal, as it seems to have been since issues of party allegiance were involved, then their status is invalid, and so they have to be replaced. Is a thief allowed to keep the spoils of his thievery?

    Dems will have spent eight years railing against political interference with career bureaucratic employment; unless President Clinton/Obama/Edwards plans to replace Bush Republicans with Other Republicans, the media will be less than kind. — CB. The media will always be ‘less than kind’, no matter what, until the Fairness Doctrine is re-instated, which should be one of the first acts of a Democratic government.

  • Natural Selection will slowly weed out the “loyal bushies”.

    Over time, in a reality based DoJ, the hacks won’t be able to keep up.

  • Agree with most of the comments above. In addition. those GOP hacks that can’t be tossed should be placed solely on cases/projects that require them to push, and be succesful at pushing, the exact policies that they (they GOP hacks) oppose. If the GOP hacks are unsuccessful in pushing and pursuing such things, they should then be fired. What better justice, though, than to force these hacks to promote the Dem causes and to move such causes forward.

  • A couple of things…

    First, political appointees are completely at-will, and in every change of administration, those appointees have gone out the revolving door as the new president’s people came in. The first point to stress is not that “everyone does it,” but that the goal in appointing people to fill these positions should be finding people who understand that while they are being hired by a Democrat, they will be filling positions that underpin the government and have a duty and responsibility to support the principles upon which the government – and the country – is based. So, it’s not just “everyone else does it,” but “we’re going to do it right.”

    Second, I think we can emphasize the restoration of the checks and balances within agencies and department, and fostering of an environment where people are accountable and responsible for their decisions. We need to tell people that “consensus” decisions are a form of “groupthink,” and neither is conducive to good government.

    Third, we need to be on offense, not defense. We don’t need to defend the right to do a better job than those who came before us – the people should always want better and expect better.

    As for the civil service employees, most of them will be reporting to an entirely different breed of supervisor, which may make their tenure shorter than they envisioned. Some will get with the program and be fine, but I think it is less important at the lower end of the scale than it is at the top.

    Finally, with respect to the Justice Department and the US Attorneys, I think the goal of having the best people for the job means that consideration could be given to re-nominating some USA’s who are currently performing as they should be – with independence and objectivity. It will be hard to slap us with the partisan label if we make an effort to consider that just because someone is not a Democrat does not mean they are not or cannot do an excellent job.

  • I agree with Okie #7 – the new Dem president must fire the lot of “loyal bushies” (finding them incompetent, as are their current bosses) on 1/21/09 and undo the worst of the other bush policies in the days after. I don’t think the majority of Americans would object, seeing as how the majority of Americans are unhappy with the state of the union.

    One thing that is key: the new president must nominate the best qualified, impartial person for Attorney General. I’m thinking of someone like Patrick Fitzgerald or one of the top of the fired USAs (Lam, McKay, etc.). I’m sure there are plenty more to choose from, even a Democrat. 😉

  • Screw the media! The Democrats must clean house! The public will accept “the disinfecting” if non-bias guidelines are set up and shouted from the rooftops. The meme must be a campaign to clean up corruption in the Justice Dept.–particularly to guard against “white collar crime” that could emanate from the business community when foxes (Republican hacks) are watching the hen house.


  • There was a time and a need for honest conservatives, and that time has passed. Had these “honest” conservatives spoken up earlier while Bush was wreaking havoc and before it was in their electoral best interests to speak up then they would have more credibility.

    I think it’s important when talking about dealing with Bushie deadenders, or when talking about dealing with any other residual mess that the next administration is going to have to clean up, to repeat again and again that the Republicans can’t be trusted to clean up Bush’s mess because they didn’t see any mess until they started loosing elections.

    And on whether or not to keep on any of Bush’s hires – why trust them?

  • I think a new Democratic administration can “get away” with purging the hacks from the system.

    1. Commit to open government – allow auditors, inspectors, and HR professionals to comb through personnel records.

    2. Develope and implement a very strict and professional performance evaluation and review policy. This will weed out a lot of hacks who are in way over their heads, are incompetent and/or corrupt.

    3. Actively recruit and hire competent, professional bureaucrats and promote them based on performance. This will have the benefit of discouraging the hacks when they realize they aren’t going anywhere.

    4. Where ever there is even the apprearance of corruption – call the police, the FBI and the attorney general.

    If everything is handled with integrity, is above the law, and conducted honestly and openly – we may not get rid of all the rats and scorpions, however we can eliminate a whole bunch of them.

  • How far into 2009 will it be before the conservatives start yelling, “They blame everything on Bush.”

    Comment by Dale — 6/18/2007 @ 10:59 am

    Dale, that started almost seven years ago, and it hasn’t let up for a moment.

  • There must be a “de-Bushification” of all departments of government and every strata, if not, can you say “sleeper cells”? Totally scary and lying in wait for the nest corrupt Repub administration.

    • Comments are closed.