It probably escaped your notice but, in addition to the institutions of democratic government, the public health, the free press, congressional oversight, and every ethics law back to Pericles, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago also has declared war on the legacy of President Chester A. Arthur. In this, he seeks to make cronyism great again. From Politico:



Specifically, the Office of Personnel Management is refusing to brief Capitol Hill on the status of the agency and federal employees’ teleworking arrangements, Democrats say. “Congressional oversight isn’t an optional exercise to be left up to the Trump administration,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), chairman of the government operations subcommittee of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

“Our committee has serious questions about OPM’s decision-making related to Covid-19, including unclear telework guidance; a lack of actions taken to protect federal employees; and now we learn, guidance or standards to reopen government that abdicate any leadership responsibility. This lack of accountability from OPM will not be tolerated.”



By now, of course, contempt of Congress must be seen as an essential part of the administration*’s strategy, along with grab-it-all and Let Jared Do It. But the really interesting part comes along later in the piece, when it discusses a guy named Mike Rigas, who is a double-dip Acting. He’s the acting deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget as well as the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, which is where he enters our story.



Rigas has told colleagues that he questions the constitutionality of the 1883 Pendleton Act, which codifies using merit to pick government officials, and believes that all executive branch employees should be political appointees, according to a person who has discussed the matter with him. The arrival of Rigas comes amid a push by McEntee and his allies to install other Trump loyalists across the executive branch.

McEntee is working in concert with Paul Dans, OPM’s new White House liaison and senior adviser, whose rapid efforts to consolidate his control over other agency appointees has irritated some officials. Dans has also castigated other OPM officials for relying on career employees he suspects are Democrats, according to two people familiar with the interactions. He also has been asking how many policy jobs the government can shift from career officials to political appointees, a line of inquiry the people saw as an effort to install Trump loyalists in key posts.



The Pendleton Act was passed to eliminate from the federal government the rancid elements of the old spoils system. The push for civil service reform had so split the Republican Party that President Rutherford B. Hayes was moved to fire several members of the influential “Stalwart” wing of the GOP, who were dedicated to the old spoils system and attached to the political machine of Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York.

What a ticket. Buyenlarge Getty Images

Eventually, Hayes decapitated the Conkling-allied leadership in the office of the Collector for the Port of New York, an office that was legendary as a money spigot for those inclined to view government service in that way. One of the men Hayes fired was its director, Chester Arthur. Here is where it gets interesting. Hayes chose not to run for a second term. The Republicans nominated James Garfield of Ohio for president, and none other than Chester Arthur as his running mate. Garfield wins and, four months into his term, he gets shot by Charles Guiteau, described universally, then and now, as a “disappointed office-seeker.” This event provides a certain public momentum behind a change to the way the federal government hires people.



Arthur succeeded to the presidency because Garfield’s physicians were boobs and bunglers. Suddenly, he became a convert to the cause of civil-service reform. (Somewhere out there is a Disappointed Office Seeker with your name on it.) Democratic Senator George Pendleton, who’d been pushing for reform for a decade, found that his civil-service reform bill had some wind in its sails at last. Of course, it took the GOP’s pasting in the 1882 midterm elections to hand the Congress over to the Democrats, thereby giving Pendleton’s bill the final push to the president’s desk. Arthur signed it on January 16, 1883. Conkling never forgave his former protege.

And that’s where things pretty much stood, until Camp Runamuck blew into town three years ago and every damn thing went up for grabs. I can’t think of a worse time to go back to the spoils system than the current moment under the current administration*, the only real talent of which seems to be spoiling whatever it touches.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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