In the increasingly unlikely event that Donald Trump is elected president, it should be conceded that he could prove to be a transformative chief executive in unexpected ways—indeed, in ways that good progressives would, ordinarily, welcome. Case in point: The federal civil service.
For decades, it has been an article of faith among the chattering classes that one supreme weakness of the executive branch is that our senior civil servants lack the power and discretion of their European equivalents. Unlike, say, Britain, where ministries and executive departments have permanent undersecretaries who straddle governments and wield considerable influence—think of Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes, Prime Minister—the federal government in Washington is turned upside-down when administrations change. The Department of State gets a whole new senior bureaucracy, of course, along with the Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). So, for that matter, does the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
It’s not difficult to imagine the length and depth of Hillary Clinton’s list of eligible general counsels and deputy secretaries: She and her husband have been fattening their Rolodex since the 1970s, and mid-level officials from the Bill Clinton presidency no doubt see themselves as tanned, rested, and ready. But it’s hard to imagine that Donald Trump has ever given much thought, or really cares at all, about the various plums (embassies, museum boards, visiting committees for the service academies) a president bestows. Or the dozens of agencies—the National Science Foundation, Federal Highway Administration, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Federal Housing Administration, United States Institute for Peace, Office of the Surgeon General, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Commodity Credit Corporation, Office of Management and Budget, as well as the aforementioned HUD and CFTC—whose upper management need to be filled.
Trump’s tiny inner circle is likely to gravitate toward the White House, which would deliver most federal agencies not to fundraisers or ex-law partners or retiring congressmen but into the hands of senior civil servants. Merit, not money, would be decisive. For government reformers of the past century or so, this would be a dream come true—and far more likely under President Trump than President Clinton.
Take the State Department, for example. Diplomats have been complaining for decades that ambassadorships—even embassies in critical strategic capitals—are awarded not to those most qualified for such assignments but to those who have raised the most money for winning candidates. Indeed, as the volume of Foreign Service griping has risen over the years, the number of political appointments to diplomatic posts has increased. The Obama administration has been especially offensive, routinely sending bundlers and partisan hacks to serious places like Berlin.
President Trump could be the answer to our diplomats’ prayers: He has far fewer major contributors to reward than Hillary Clinton, and apart from a few obvious destinations (Mexico City, Moscow, Beijing) of personal interest, is unlikely to worry about who runs our embassies in Brasilia or Nairobi or Kiev. Instead of Bundler X purchasing Embassy Y, Trump would be content to reward some eligible, long-suffering State Department expert who never dared to dream beyond Caracas or Equatorial Guinea.
