‘What was the spoils system? Not familiar with that term.’
If I’m not mistaken, the spoils system is the informal strategy of rewarding campaign supporters.
With federal jobs, yes. Like working at the post office.
Republican Presidents gave jobs to Republicans, democrat Presidents gave jobs to democrats.
Then they enacted civil service “reform” and now all these federal workers are union democrats, no matter who the President is.
I say go back to the spoils system, it’s less corrupt than the current system of hahahahaha “merit” hiring.
And YES term limiting Congressional staffers also (if you are term limiting members of Congress) makes sense to me, otherwise you could have shadow government of veteran staffers pulling the strings of wet-behind the ears Congressman.
On term limits in general, it hasn’t helped California at all. Changing out Republicans might be helpful but a democrat is a democrat, they are all the same. I’s sure love to see IL House Speaker Mike Madigan forced to retire though, aside from 2 years of GOP control, he has been Speaker since before I was born.
Oh and FBI Directors and all other executive department Presidential appointees serve at the pleasure of the President, period, as they should.
When Lincoln died as his poorly chosen rat Vice President Andrew Johnson took over, he soon started governing as any rat President would. Congress passed, over his veto, the Tenure of Office Act, seeking to stop him from firing Lincoln’s cabinet members without Senate approval, specifically Secretary of War Edwin Stanton who was impeding Johnson’s agenda vis-a-vis use of he US Military. Johnson tried to can Stanton anyway, and it was under this pretext (violating the act) that he was impeached.
The act was repealed in 1887. In 1926 the Supreme Court found a similar law unconstitutional, an act requiring Senate approval for firing a postmaster without Senate approval, the court specifically mentioned the Tenure of Office Act and deemed that it was unconstitutional as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_v._United_States
So legally speaking, Johnson’s impeachment couldn’t be supported, but I still would have voted to get rid of him because he was awful.