A Personnel Disaster
In the last century relatively few people were actually affected by a new administration. Normally only the top two or three levels of management were political appointees, with the mass of people being career government service people. This all changed with the Hedgemony which turned back the clock to the days before civil service reform and made every possible appointment and job political.
Ellroon of Rants from the Rookery has made the point several times recently, and she is correct, the next administration is going to be forced to review everyone hired at all levels since January of 2001 in every department of government. This isn’t a matter of partisanship, it is a matter of competence. When political views trump all other considerations you get people without the necessary education or experience filling important slots and the result is the response to Katrina.
The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security have documented problems, but every department has been tainted by this.
It doesn’t make any difference who wins the Presidency, if they want the Federal government to be effective, they are going to be forced to do a top to bottom house cleaning.
2 comments
The Democratic candidates have to be nuts to take on this huge job. As you note, Justice & Homeland Security are hardly the only tainted departments.
This one troubles me – Petraeus Helping Pick New Generals.
Input? Okay. But to preside over the board doing the picking – I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could fling him.
He is the least senior four-star in the military and doesn’t head an area command, this will not go over big within the military.
When the military is in trouble, you go back to tradition to keep things together and this isn’t the tradition.