Government employees could essentially be fired at will or even on a whim.
Nothing says “drain the swamp” like implementing a pure political patronage system.
Banana republic stuff.
“Nothing says “drain the swamp” like implementing a pure political patronage system.... Banana republic stuff.”
True, but we are in a banana republic. That makes this tricky. You can’t leave assassins and insurgents in their place. Trump’s failure was that he was always merely responding and trying to minimize damage. No coronavirus testing kits? You’re fired Deborah Brix. You lied about masking policy? You’re fired Anthony Fauci.
What IDIOT asks for Comey’s loyalty? Either he upholds the law or he doesn’t. Comey didn’t. Fire him. If Comey HAD pledged his loyalty to Trump, Trump couldn’t trust him any more than a mistress could trust her lover (and for the SAME REASON!)
And I don’t reserve this only for villains. I actually think Sessions was a very decent man. But he was utterly the wrong man for the job at AG. Trump should have told him, “can you be my AG, or not? If you feel you’re too compromised, resign. I’ll regret having to do it, but I’ll find a new AG. But you’re not going to wear the crown while you let Rosenstein run the Justice Department.”
In the end, he didn’t choose altar boys... or even decent people. He picked suck-ups. And suck-ups are ALWAYS going to but it off when they can. And he still doesn’t get it.
This is EXACTLY what's in place now.
The problem now is we have a completely one-sided spoils system where only liberals can fill the deep state up with communists.
We are talking about a small percentage of federal employees who's job entails policy making. None of these employees actually do anything useful. Their job is to liaison with NGOs, corperations, media and other "stake holders" who actually write federal policy.
These are the kind of people who have given us the southern border crisis, the Ukraine crisis, and every other jack up mess we are facing.
It all comes down to accountability. Under the current employment protection system there is no way to remove incompetent or malicious employees who refuse to implement lawful policies enacted by the executive branch.
They can simply impalement their own policy preferences and ignore the policy preferences of the American voters.