Republicans Are Failing Unless They Are Disrupting, Discrediting, And Destroying The Bureaucracy

Editorial Note: This article is a lightly edited transcript of Theodore Wold’s remarks at the Claremont Institute post-midterms event, “What Should The GOP Do Now?” It is published with Claremont’s permission.

I am from the West, and love folk tales. I’d like to begin with a folk story.

A presidential candidate had a somewhat uncertain policy agenda. His supporters claimed he wanted to reform Washington. Detractors claimed that he was really seeking revenge. This candidate also accused his rivals of fraud and stealing elections during his presidential campaign. On the campaign trail, the candidate for the presidency was well-known for claiming that he would initiate these broad reforms in Washington. He’s gonna either throw people in jail or he was going to kick all the b-st-rds out.

He wanted to take out high-ranking officials for their public corruption and malfeasance as well as for their arrogant disregard for law and order. Now, unfortunately, haste and probably some naïveté about the real Washington confused his purpose in the main, and, depending on who you ask, he left the civil service stronger and more powerful than it was before he even started his campaign.

Gen. Jackson was correct to confront the civil services. Gen. Jackson Gen. Jackson was correct to state that he was going after Washington bureaucrats. Gen. Jackson probably had the right idea to accuse John Quincy Adams, who was accused of playing with elections.

But I think, as is often the case with conservative attempts at reforming Washington, Gen. Jackson’s ideal was right but the execution was lacking. Gen. Jackson’s idea was essentially an attempt to make the implicit link between electoral politics and the governance of the regime explicit.

Making the Bureaucracy More Responsive to Voters

The general said it at several points: “You can’t keep a political organization together without patronage. The loyalty of those who fought with you in a campaign, your supporters who bled for you … they surprisingly expect to actually participate in governance if you’re successful and they want to be rewarded for that. What better way to affirm the support and loyalty of your team than make them the postmaster in Lewiston, Maine?” Most historians will agree that Jackson was executed in error.

For well over a century, we’ve all been told the progressives’ folk tale about the Jacksonian revolution: that he didn’t really get rid of any of the bureaucracy, but what he did do was he brought in a rabble, and created the spoils system. This story tells that the nation is held captive by the crooks and cronies until the heroes arrive. The Pendleton Act was passed when progressives ransom democracy.

The Pendleton Act (and all of its progeny that follow up through Jimmy Carter’s 1978 civil service reform), had essentially one goal, which was to insulate the civil bureaucracy from political

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