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The executive branch of the United States government operates through two distinct and fundamentally different classes of personnel.
On one hand are the political appointees, chosen by the president to steer the ship of state in the direction mandated by an election. On the other are the career civil servants, the permanent, non-partisan workforce tasked with keeping the engines of government running, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.
This dual system is a deliberate feature of American governance, engineered to strike a balance between two principles: democratic accountability, embodied by the appointees, and institutional stability, provided by the career staff.
Who’s Who: Defining the Roles
To understand the functioning of the executive branch, one must first understand the foundational legal and functional definitions of its two core personnel groups. These definitions reveal their distinct missions, loyalties, and places within the machinery of government.
The Political Appointee: Agent of the Administration
The core mission of a political appointee is to serve as a direct agent of the incumbent presidential administration. They are non-career personnel selected to lead federal agencies, establish policy direction, and ensure that the sprawling executive branch is responsive to the president’s agenda and, by extension, the will of the electorate.
The U.S. Office of Government Ethics defines a political appointee as a “full-time, non-career Presidential or Vice-Presidential appointee” or an individual in a position that has been “excepted from the competitive service” because it is of a “confidential or policymaking character.” Their defining characteristic is their loyalty and accountability to the president who appointed them; they are the instruments for translating an election mandate into government action.
The approximately 4,000 political appointments an administration must fill are not a monolithic bloc; they exist in a clear hierarchy, each with a different level of authority and a different relationship to the president and the Senate.
PAS (Presidential Appointee, Senate-Confirmed): This is the top echelon of the executive branch, comprising roughly 1,200 of the most powerful and visible positions. These are the leaders who require the “advice and consent” of the Senate, a constitutional check on presidential power. This category includes Cabinet secretaries, heads of major agencies like the EPA and NASA, deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, U.S. Attorneys, and ambassadors. Their appointments are subject to public hearings and a formal vote in the Senate, making their selection a matter of intense political negotiation and public scrutiny.
PA (Presidential Appointee, Non-Senate-Confirmed): These are senior-level positions, numbering around 450, whose occupants are appointed directly by the president without needing Senate confirmation. This gives the president more direct and rapid control over his immediate team. Many of these roles are located within the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office itself, and include titles like Assistant to the President, Deputy Assistant to the President, and various policy “czars.” These individuals often serve as the president’s most trusted advisors and strategists.
Non-career SES (Senior Executive Service): The Senior Executive Service is the government’s corps of top managers. While most are career professionals, the law allows up to 10% of SES positions to be filled by political appointees. These non-career SES appointees, numbering around 750, are placed in high-level managerial roles just below the top PAS leadership. They serve as a crucial link, translating the policy directives of the Cabinet secretaries to the career bureaucracy responsible for implementation.
Schedule C: This is the largest category of political appointments, with over 1,500 positions. Schedule C refers to the statutory authority for these roles, which are defined as positions of a confidential or policy-determining nature, typically at the GS-15 pay grade or below. Incumbents often serve as special assistants, confidential assistants, schedulers, and policy aides to higher-ranking PAS and PA officials. They provide the essential support that allows senior leadership to function effectively.
This layering of different appointment types is not accidental. It reflects a historical trend of presidents seeking ever-finer degrees of control over the bureaucracy. While the top PAS layer is subject to a congressional check, the creation and expansion of PA, non-career SES, and Schedule C roles allow a president to bypass that check and install loyalists at multiple levels deep within the agencies.
The Career Civil Servant: Steward of the Institution
In stark contrast to the temporary and political nature of appointees stands the career civil service: the permanent, non-partisan workforce of the federal government. Numbering around 2 million people, the civil service is the engine room of the government, responsible for everything from administering Social Security checks to conducting the census and managing national parks.
The core mission of a civil servant is to serve the public by faithfully executing the laws passed by Congress and upholding the Constitution, providing institutional expertise and continuity of operations regardless of which political party controls the White House.
The Merit System Principles: The bedrock of the modern civil service is the merit system, a framework established by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. This landmark legislation was a direct response to the 19th-century “spoils system,” in which government jobs were handed out as rewards for political loyalty, often leading to corruption and incompetence.
The merit system mandates that federal employees be recruited, hired, and promoted based on their ability, knowledge, and skills, determined through fair and open competition, rather than their political affiliation. This principle is designed to ensure a professional, skilled, and apolitical workforce capable of serving any administration with impartiality.
Types of Civil Service: The vast federal workforce is organized into several categories, each with slightly different hiring rules, but all governed by the overarching merit principles.
Competitive Service: This is the largest category, encompassing the majority of civil service positions. As the name implies, individuals are hired through a competitive process that is open to all applicants and typically involves a written test or a detailed evaluation of their education and experience.
Excepted Service: This category includes positions that are “excepted” from the standard competitive hiring rules, often due to the unique nature of the job. Examples include attorneys, chaplains, intelligence officers at the CIA and FBI, and Foreign Service officers at the State Department. While the hiring process is more streamlined, it is still required to be merit-based and adhere to laws providing preference for veterans.
Senior Executive Service (SES): Established in 1978, the SES is the elite corps of the federal civil service, comprising the top-ranking career managers and leaders. These individuals occupy key positions just below the political appointees and are responsible for leading major government programs and initiatives. The career SES acts as the critical bridge between the transient political leadership and the permanent career workforce, providing both executive leadership and institutional memory.
Comparing the Two Systems
| Feature | Political Appointee | Career Civil Servant |
|---|---|---|
| Basis of Selection | Political Loyalty & Policy Alignment | Merit, Expertise & Qualifications |
| Hiring Process | Presidential Personnel Office Vetting & Nomination | Competitive Civil Service Process (OPM Rules) |
| Typical Tenure | Temporary (serves at the pleasure of the President) | Permanent (career-long with civil service protections) |
| Primary Role | Set/Drive Policy & Ensure Responsiveness | Implement Policy & Provide Expertise/Continuity |
| Primary Accountability | To the President & Administration’s Agenda | To the Constitution, Law, & Institutional Mission |
| Approximate Number | ~4,000 | ~2,000,000 |
The very structure of the federal workforce institutionalizes a fundamental and perpetual tension between political responsiveness and administrative neutrality. This is not a flaw in the system, but its central, defining feature. Political appointees are defined by their allegiance to the president’s agenda, creating a line of accountability that runs upward to the Oval Office. Career staff are defined by their adherence to merit principles and the law, creating a line of accountability that runs outward to the Constitution and the public good.
Pathways to Power: How They Get the Job
The processes for becoming a political appointee versus a career civil servant are as different as their respective roles in government. One is a politically charged gauntlet optimized for ideological alignment and trust; the other is a regulated marathon designed to ensure procedural fairness and technical competence.
The Appointment Gauntlet: The Political Appointee’s Journey
For a political appointee, the path to a government office is a grueling, intrusive, and often lengthy ordeal that begins and ends with politics.
The Presidential Personnel Office: The Gatekeeper
The nerve center of the appointment process is the White House Presidential Personnel Office. Established in 1971, the PPO is responsible for the monumental task of recruiting, vetting, and recommending candidates for the more than 4,000 political positions across the executive branch.
The PPO operates on the foundational principle that “people are policy”—that the individuals placed in leadership roles are the most critical tool for implementing the president’s agenda. Its staff scours the country for candidates who not only possess the requisite skills but also demonstrate a deep commitment to the administration’s goals and priorities.
The Grueling Vetting Process
Once a potential candidate is identified, they enter an exhaustive vetting process designed to uncover any personal, professional, or financial issues that could derail their nomination or embarrass the administration.
Aspiring appointees must complete extensive and deeply personal questionnaires, such as the SF-86 Questionnaire for National Security Positions. These forms require detailed information about an individual’s entire life history, including past residences, employment, foreign contacts, financial holdings, and any past legal or personal issues.
This is followed by a comprehensive background investigation conducted by the FBI, which includes interviews with friends, family, and former colleagues. Simultaneously, candidates must complete detailed public financial disclosure reports, which are scrutinized by ethics officials to identify and mitigate potential conflicts of interest, sometimes requiring the candidate to divest assets at a personal cost.
This entire process can take many months and is so demanding that it can deter otherwise qualified individuals from seeking public service.
The Senate Confirmation Battle
For the approximately 1,200 PAS positions, the final hurdle is confirmation by the U.S. Senate. After the president formally submits a nomination, it is referred to the relevant Senate committee for consideration. The nominee must then endure public hearings where senators probe their qualifications, policy views, and past conduct.
In an era of heightened political polarization, this process has become increasingly contentious and prolonged. A single senator can often place a “hold” on a nomination, delaying a vote indefinitely. These delays can leave critical leadership positions—from Cabinet secretaries to agency heads—vacant for months or even years after a new administration takes office.
This systemic delay is a significant, self-inflicted wound on governance. The very process designed to install a president’s chosen leaders actively undermines their ability to govern effectively from day one, creating leadership vacuums that are directly correlated with poor agency performance and a diminished capacity to respond to national challenges.
The Merit Marathon: The Career Servant’s Path
The journey to becoming a career civil servant is a stark contrast to the political appointee’s path. It is a highly structured, regulated, and competitive process designed to be impartial and based on merit.
The Federal Hiring Process
The process is governed by rules and regulations set forth by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to ensure fairness and uphold the merit system principles. The journey typically begins with a Job Opportunity Announcement posted on USAJOBS, the official employment site of the U.S. federal government. These announcements are open to the public and detail the position’s duties, qualifications, and application requirements.
Application and Assessment
Applicants submit detailed resumes tailored to the specific requirements of the JOA, often supplemented with extensive documentation such as academic transcripts or proof of past federal service. The applications then undergo a multi-stage review.
First, human resources specialists screen them to ensure candidates meet the basic eligibility and minimum qualification requirements. Next, the applications of qualified candidates are rated and ranked, often by a panel of subject-matter experts. This assessment can involve evaluating their described experience, administering written tests, or conducting structured interviews designed to measure job-related competencies.
A list of the “best-qualified” candidates is then forwarded to the hiring manager within the agency, who makes the final selection.
Civil Service Protections
A new career employee is not immediately permanent. They must first successfully complete a probationary period, which is typically one year. This period is considered the final stage of the examination process, allowing the agency to assess the employee’s on-the-job performance.
If their performance is satisfactory, they attain career status and the full protections of the civil service. These protections are crucial: they mean that a career employee cannot be fired for political reasons or personal favoritism. They can only be removed for just cause, such as documented poor performance or misconduct, and only after a formal process that includes notice and an opportunity to appeal.
This job security is the bedrock of an impartial civil service, enabling employees to provide candid, evidence-based advice to their political superiors without fear of reprisal.
Tenure and Transition: A Tale of Two Timelines
Perhaps the most dramatic and consequential difference between political appointees and career staff lies in their job security and tenure. This single factor fundamentally shapes their perspectives, priorities, and incentives, and it dictates the rhythm of stability and disruption that characterizes the federal government.
The Four-Year Clock: Life as a Political Appointee
The professional life of a political appointee is defined by its precariousness and its finite timeline, which is inextricably linked to the president’s term in office.
Serving “At the Pleasure of the President”
With very few exceptions (such as members of independent commissions appointed for fixed terms), political appointees serve “at the pleasure of the President.” This means their employment is not guaranteed by any contract or law; it is entirely contingent on the confidence of the president or the agency head who appointed them.
They can be dismissed at any time, for any reason—or no reason at all. This absolute lack of job tenure is a powerful tool to ensure that appointees remain loyal and responsive to the administration’s shifting priorities. However, it also creates an environment of constant uncertainty, where an appointee’s career can end with a single policy disagreement or a change in White House leadership.
The Presidential Transition
The moment of maximum disruption for the government is the presidential transition. When a new president is elected, it triggers a mass exodus of the roughly 4,000 political appointees from the previous administration. By tradition and expectation, they submit their resignations effective on or before Inauguration Day, leaving a vast leadership vacuum across the entire executive branch.
The incoming administration then faces the monumental task of filling these thousands of vacancies, a process that can take well over a year to complete for senior positions. Even when a president is reelected, significant turnover is common. On average, 46% of top officials serving at the end of a president’s first term resign within the first six months of the second term, seeking new opportunities after four grueling years of service.
This constant churn at the leadership level is a major source of instability and a significant challenge to long-term planning and effective governance.
The Constant Keepers: The Stability of the Career Service
In direct opposition to the cyclical turnover of the political class, the career civil service provides the government’s essential element of stability and continuity.
Continuity of Government
Career staff do not change with elections. They are the permanent workforce that ensures the essential functions of government continue uninterrupted during the often-chaotic transition period. When political appointees depart, it is the senior career executives who temporarily step into acting leadership roles, managing agencies and briefing the incoming team of new appointees on the critical issues, ongoing operations, and legal mandates of the organization.
They are the keepers of the institutional memory, preserving the knowledge of past successes and failures that is vital for informed decision-making.
Protected Service
The civil service protections that grant career employees job security are not merely a perquisite; they are a cornerstone of good government. By shielding public servants from politically motivated removal, these protections create an environment where they can offer candid, objective, and sometimes unwelcome advice based on evidence, expertise, and the law.
This function as a neutral, expert ballast is critical for preventing policy errors and ensuring that the actions of any administration remain within legal and constitutional bounds.
“Burrowing In”: When Political Staff Go Career
At the boundary between these two distinct systems lies the controversial practice known as “burrowing in.” This term describes the process by which a political appointee converts their employment status from a temporary, non-career position to a permanent, protected career civil service position.
Defining the Controversial Practice
The motivation for burrowing is straightforward: it allows a politically appointed individual to remain in the federal government after the president who appointed them leaves office, gaining the job security and benefits of a career employee. While it is permissible for a political appointee to apply for a career position like any other citizen, the process is fraught with peril for the integrity of the civil service.
The Threat to Merit Principles
The practice is highly scrutinized by Congress, watchdog groups, and the media because it raises serious concerns about political favoritism and the potential violation of merit system principles. The core fear is that the competitive hiring process could be manipulated to give an unfair advantage to a politically connected individual.
This could happen if a job announcement’s qualifications are tailored specifically to the appointee’s resume, if competition for the job is improperly limited, or if the selection process is otherwise biased. Such actions would represent a direct assault on the principle of fair and open competition that is the foundation of the career service.
The Oversight Role of OPM
To safeguard the integrity of the civil service, the Office of Personnel Management has a long-standing policy of reviewing any proposed hiring of a current or former political appointee into a career position. This oversight applies if the individual has held a political appointment within the previous five years.
OPM reviews the entire hiring process to ensure it was fair, open, and free from political influence. If OPM finds that a career job appears to have been created or tailored for the appointee, or that competition was improperly limited, it will not approve the conversion.
Despite this oversight, reports by the Government Accountability Office have found instances where agencies improperly converted appointees without OPM review or where the circumstances of an approved conversion still raised the appearance of favoritism, highlighting the need for constant vigilance.
Comparing Professional Backgrounds
Beyond their formal roles and tenures, the political and career workforces are composed of individuals with systematically different professional backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Understanding these human characteristics is key to appreciating the “generalist vs. specialist” dynamic that defines the leadership of every federal agency.
Appointee Profile: The Generalist, the Loyalist, and the Expert
The pool of political appointees is intentionally diverse, drawn from a wide array of fields to serve different functions for an administration.
Diverse Backgrounds
Political appointees are recruited from the worlds of business, law, academia, non-profits, and, most frequently, from political life itself—Capitol Hill, state governments, and presidential campaigns. An administration seeks a mix of individuals. Some are brought in for their deep subject-matter expertise in a particular policy area. Others are valued for their proven managerial skills honed in the private sector. And many are chosen primarily for their political acumen and unwavering loyalty to the president’s agenda, having proven their commitment during the campaign.
A Focus on Policy and Politics
A detailed analysis of Schedule C appointees in the Biden administration reveals a workforce heavily concentrated in policy-focused roles. The most common prior careers were in non-profits, on Capitol Hill, and on political campaigns. While many hold advanced degrees from elite universities, they are less likely to have backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) than the national average.
This profile reflects a selection system that prioritizes individuals skilled in the arts of policy development, political strategy, and communication.
Outsider Perspective
A key justification for the appointment system is that it brings in fresh, outside perspectives to challenge bureaucratic inertia and ensure government agencies do not become insular and detached from the public. Appointees are more likely to be generalists, viewing problems through the broad lens of the administration’s political priorities rather than the narrow, historical mission of a single agency. They are, by design, less invested in the status quo and more willing to disrupt established processes to achieve the president’s goals.
Career Staff Profile: The Specialist and Institutional Historian
The professional profile of a senior career civil servant is, in almost every respect, the mirror image of a political appointee.
Deep Expertise and Experience
The single most defining characteristic of the senior career service is deep, specialized expertise and long-term institutional experience. Senior civil servants are rarely generalists; they are often nationally or even internationally recognized experts in their specific field, whether it be nuclear engineering, epidemiology, or tax law. They have typically spent decades within a single agency or policy area, working their way up through the ranks based on demonstrated performance and knowledge.
The Senior Executive Service: A Bridge Between Worlds
This dynamic is most evident in the Senior Executive Service. The career members of the SES, who make up over 90% of the corps, are the government’s top career managers and policy experts. They are the critical link between the politically appointed leadership and the vast operational workforce of the agency.
The SES was explicitly designed to be a mobile cadre of elite public managers who would provide leadership continuity and a government-wide perspective across changing administrations. A profile of the career SES shows an experienced group, with an average length of government service of over 25 years, and two-thirds holding advanced degrees.
This contrast in professional backgrounds creates a classic management dilemma at the heart of the federal government. The political system selects generalist leaders prized for their political loyalty and responsiveness, while the career system cultivates specialist managers valued for their deep expertise and institutional knowledge.
Empirical research on federal program performance has found that the characteristics more common to appointees (higher education levels, private sector management experience) are uncorrelated with better outcomes. In contrast, the characteristics that define senior careerists (longer tenure in their position, direct experience within their bureau) are strongly and significantly correlated with higher program performance ratings.
This suggests a fundamental mismatch: the skills and attributes the political selection process values most are not the ones that empirically lead to better-managed government programs.
The Daily Dynamic: Making Government Work
Beyond the formal structures and hiring processes, the effectiveness of the U.S. government is determined every day in the dynamic, interpersonal interactions between political appointees and career staff. This relationship can be a source of immense friction, born of conflicting priorities and cultures, but it can also be a powerful engine of collaboration when managed effectively.
Sources of Friction: Different Timelines, Different Loyalties
The inherent structural tensions between the two groups frequently manifest as conflict and mistrust in the workplace.
The Agenda Clash
The most fundamental source of friction is the collision of priorities. The political appointee arrives with a mandate to implement the president’s agenda, often on an accelerated timeline driven by the political calendar. The career staffer, while obligated to serve the administration, is also bound by a duty to the long-term mission of the agency, its legal mandates, and the apolitical, evidence-based principles of public administration.
When a career expert raises legal objections, points out practical implementation hurdles, or presents data that contradicts a desired policy outcome, they can be perceived by the appointee as being obstructionist or politically motivated, rather than as fulfilling their professional duty.
A Culture of Mistrust
Incoming administrations, particularly during a change of party, often arrive with a deep-seated suspicion of the permanent bureaucracy. They may fear that career employees are loyal to the previous administration or are part of a “deep state” that will actively work to undermine the new president’s goals.
This mistrust can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Appointees who believe career staff are untrustworthy may choose to work around them, creating parallel decision-making structures with other political aides, withholding information, and failing to leverage the vast institutional knowledge and expertise that the career staff possesses. This not only alienates the workforce but also significantly increases the risk of policy failure.
Communication Breakdown
Appointees and careerists often seem to speak different languages. An appointee’s world is one of political messaging, stakeholder management, and achieving “wins” for the administration. A career staffer’s world is one of legal statutes, regulatory processes, budget cycles, and data analysis.
An appointee might ask, “How can we get this done quickly?” while a career expert is professionally obligated to ask, “What does the law allow, what will the long-term consequences be, and do we have the resources to do this properly?” This difference in perspective can lead to profound misunderstandings and mutual frustration.
A Blueprint for Collaboration: Best Practices
Despite these inherent challenges, successful governance happens when both sides make a deliberate effort to bridge the divide. Organizations like the Partnership for Public Service have developed a “Ready to Govern” curriculum based on best practices from former leaders of both parties.
For Appointees: Listen, Trust, and Empower
The most effective political appointees are those who recognize that their success is entirely dependent on the career staff who must implement their vision. They build strong relationships by engaging career staff early and often, especially in the first 90 days of their tenure—a period that is arguably the single most important determinant of an appointee’s effectiveness.
They actively listen to the advice of career experts, even if they ultimately make a different political decision. They show respect for the institution and its people, bringing senior career leaders into their “inner circle” for key decisions and empowering them to manage major initiatives. By building trust, they unlock the full potential of the agency’s knowledge and experience.
For Career Staff: Adapt, Advise, and Align
The most effective career civil servants understand that their constitutional duty is to serve the duly elected administration, regardless of their personal political views. They demonstrate their value not by resisting change, but by helping the new leadership succeed.
They proactively prepare briefing materials to get new appointees up to speed quickly. They learn the new administration’s priorities and frame their expert advice in a way that helps the appointee achieve those goals within the bounds of the law and good practice. This approach, sometimes called “bureaucratic jujitsu,” involves leveraging the energy and political capital of the new appointee to advance shared objectives that also align with the agency’s long-term mission.
These “rules of engagement” are more than just polite management tips; they are a practical necessity for overcoming the structural conflicts designed into the American system of governance. They represent the informal, interpersonal “software” required to make the clashing “hardware” of the dual-staffing model function effectively.
The System on Trial: Balancing Political Control and Performance
The dual-staffing system of the U.S. executive branch is a permanent fixture of American governance, but it is also perpetually on trial. The central, unresolved question is whether the current balance between political appointees and career staff optimally serves the nation. This requires weighing the undeniable democratic necessity of political leadership against its documented costs to managerial competence and long-term performance.
The Case for Political Appointees: Ensuring Democratic Responsiveness
The argument for a robust corps of political appointees is fundamentally an argument for democracy itself.
Translating Elections into Action
In a representative democracy, elections must have consequences. Political appointees are the primary mechanism through which the policy preferences of the winning candidate and party are translated into government action. They are the agents who ensure that the vast, and otherwise unaccountable, machinery of government is responsive to the direction set by the electorate. An agency run entirely by permanent civil servants, however expert, might not be responsive to the president the public chose to lead the country.
Accountability and Control
Presidents are held accountable by voters for the performance of the entire executive branch. To exercise this responsibility, they must have the power to place trusted, loyal individuals in key leadership positions to direct agency policy and ensure that their orders are carried out. This “policy control” is seen as essential for overcoming bureaucratic inertia and aligning agency behavior with the administration’s agenda.
Injecting New Ideas and Energy
Career bureaucracies, if left entirely to their own devices, can become insular, resistant to change, and wedded to outdated processes. Political appointees are intended to be a disruptive force, bringing in new ideas, fresh perspectives from the private and non-profit sectors, and a sense of urgency that can shake up the status quo and keep government in touch with the evolving needs of the public.
The Case for a Career Service: The Bedrock of Good Government
The argument for a strong, independent, and professional civil service is rooted in the principles of competence, stability, and the rule of law.
Stability, Expertise, and Institutional Memory
The career service is the nation’s repository of specialized knowledge and practical experience in the complex business of government. This expertise is essential for developing sound policy and implementing it effectively. The stability of the career workforce ensures that government functions continue professionally and without interruption across administrations, protecting against the catastrophic loss of institutional memory that would occur if the entire government turned over every four years.
Guardian of the Law and Public Trust
Career staff have a sworn duty to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, not to a particular president or political party. In this role, they serve as a crucial check on power, ensuring that government operates within legal and ethical bounds. Their impartiality and adherence to merit principles are intended to safeguard the public trust by ensuring that government services are delivered fairly and without political favoritism.
The Performance Paradox
The most powerful empirical argument for strengthening the career service comes from a significant body of research on agency performance. Multiple studies have found a strong correlation between a higher concentration of political appointees in an agency and poorer performance on a range of management and effectiveness metrics. Programs run by political appointees systematically receive lower management grades than those run by career executives.
This performance deficit is attributed to the higher turnover, longer leadership vacancies, and lesser subject-matter experience that characterize politically appointed leaders. This suggests a direct and troubling trade-off: the tools used to increase political responsiveness may simultaneously be undermining managerial effectiveness.
The central challenge of American public administration is not a binary choice between political appointees and career staff. Both are essential. The real, ongoing debate is about finding the optimal balance between them. The arguments for both systems are compelling and rooted in core principles of democracy and good governance: responsiveness on one side, competence on the other.
Eliminating appointees would risk creating an unaccountable bureaucracy, while eliminating the career service would resurrect the corrupt and incompetent spoils system the nation rejected over a century ago. Therefore, every policy debate over the number of appointments, the confirmation process, or the classification of federal jobs is fundamentally an argument about where to set the dial.
The weight of the evidence suggests that in recent decades, the dial may have been turned too far toward politicization, to the detriment of the government’s long-term performance and capacity. This creates a unique vulnerability for public trust in government. Trust can be eroded from two directions simultaneously.
If the public comes to perceive the career bureaucracy as an unaccountable and obstructionist “deep state,” faith in the government’s ability to respond to the popular will is diminished. Conversely, if the public sees the government as being run by unqualified political loyalists who disregard expertise and the rule of law, faith in the government’s basic competence and fairness collapses.
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