Comment by int_19h | Hacker News Reader

Comment by int_19h | Hacker News Reader

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US already had this debate a long time ago. When Andrew Jackson got elected, he proceeded to stuff the civil service with his supporters, freeing positions by kicking people out, and handing out the now vacant positions essentially as a reward for loyalty during the campaign. It was, quite appropriately, called the "spoils system" - as in, "to the victor go the spoils" (a phrase uttered by one of the people involved in that process).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

This then became the norm for several decades, gradually declining until it was formally sunset by a federal law prohibiting the associated practices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform...

And that system is the one that we had in place basically until Trump. But it should be made clear that it wasn't the civil service that made it partisan again - it was the incoming administration, by doing things like these:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/09/505041927/...

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/22/506629695/...

And then, of course, there was the process of building the cabinet based largely on loyalty. The Trump administration (coincidentally, Trump is a great admirer of Jackson: http://www.salon.com/2017/02/19/trump-embraces-legacy-of-and...) had effectively revived the spoils system. The civil service responded accordingly.

Whether it's good or bad is a difficult question to answer. Like you say, there's a bungling fool in charge. If the crew is in mutiny, the obvious disadvantage is that the ship cannot be easily steered away from dangers... but the advantage is that it cannot be steered towards them, either. Sometimes, dysfunction is really better than energetic action towards the wrong goals.

But, yes, it does set a bad precedent.

In the Jackson era most employeees were direct appointments. So that was typical.

The civil service is the backbone of what makes the Federal government a great institution. The fact that the IRS functions at all after two decades of undermining by congress is a testament to that.

The hardest thing about Trump is figuring out where the incompetence ends and malice begins. The admiration of Jackson is one of those scary things. In addition to being a corrupt racist, even by the standards of the day, Jackson and his policy positions were a shitshow that created depressions and smashed the financial system.

There is no advantage. Like it or not, he won the election fair and square. The people in the civil service did not, by definition they have no authority or legitimacy to undermine him. If the civil service can just stop obeying him for no other reason than because they don't like him, we might as well not have an executive branch, because then "undermine the president" becomes a completely valid tactic for either side to try and steer the ship without actually bothering to win the democratic process that would have let them do it legitimately.

This should be absolutely unacceptable to everyone from either party.

None of this is as black and white as people like to think. To jump to an extreme, Nazis were legitimately elected and we usually scoff at the idea that "I was just follow orders" is a reasonable defence.

If we accept that some form of resistance is justifiable in some situations we have to ask ourselves if these specific forms of resistance are legitimate for these particular circumstances rather than just saying democratically elected leaders can do whatever the hell they want and the civil service should go along with it.

I don't believe any form of resistance is acceptable. If the president is medically unfit to carry out his duties, there is a constitutional and democratic process by which he can be relieved of them. If he is fit to carry them out, then there is no excuse for disobeying his orders other than that they are illegal. If they feel they cannot morally carry out his orders, then they should quit. Nowhere along the line should insubordination and undermining his authority as the democratically elected leader of their country occur.

>democratically elected leaders can do whatever the hell they want and the civil service should go along with it.

Isn't this literally the point of democracy? These people should have no say in what our national interests are other than the vote to which they are entitled.

So do you believe that no one should have been punished for the holocaust, since the elected leader, Hitler, had killed himself, and everyone else was just following orders?

Naked self-interested democracy is mob rule, which is why we try and restrain democracy so that it is not fully democratic. It's why we have a constitution. The reason we have the concept of checks and balances is because democracy needs to be restrained.

Democracy may be better than other systems, but it is not a moral good in itself.

>Naked self-interested democracy is mob rule

Is naked self-interest not exactly what's going on here? Do you think these people relishing the thought of some deus ex machina overturning of the 2016 election by the "deep state" wouldn't be arguing these exact same points were the shoe on the other foot?

>The reason we have the concept of checks and balances is because democracy needs to be restrained.

Where exactly does the unelected and unaccountable "deep state" fit into our system of checks and balances? Do we even know what level of power and influence they have, or over whom they have it? If they do a bad job, will we be able to signal our dissatisfaction with the officials we do democratically elect? Do we even know who these people are?

To paraphrase Ferdinand I, your approach can be summed up as "let democracy be inviolate, though the world perish".

This implies that democracy is the absolute good, which trumps any other. That, if some policy is democratically enacted, that policy is right and proper, and no moral objection can override it. That, for example, mass murder and genocide is legitimate if the decision to carry it out was done via a constitutional democratic process, and that even those targeted by it cannot legitimately resist. Indeed, taken to the absurd (but nowhere guarded against in your definition of "no form of resistance is acceptable") extreme, it would imply that people so targeted would be obligated to dig their own graves and take their own lives, for the sake of democracy.

You are, of course, entitled to such a moral platform, but I doubt that it would be shared by many. History is replete with examples of democratic governments perpetrating atrocities. Indeed, US itself is no exception, from the treatment of Native Americans to Japanese internment. As far as I'm concerned, any civil servant who acted to subvert the latter, for example, by deliberately excluding people from the lists of internees, did the right thing, and I would expect and hope that others would follow their example in similar circumstances.

Democracy is not the end-all be-all; it is but a tool to maximize freedom within the constraints of good government. When the tool is misused contrary to the purpose for which it is intended, it is both moral and legitimate to resist it.

2nd on this comment. Gerrymandering, leaks, torrent of dark money in our process, not to mention the popular vote really undermine the idea that Trump won "fair and square".

You're forgetting about Congress. Laws don't go away when a new president is elected. If civil servants can point to a law then that says they have to do something then the president can't directly override it. (Though there are workarounds.)

Executive orders are limited by what's allowed by the law. There has been some boundary-pushing but some changes require an act of Congress.

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