why a civil service cadre?

history steps in

Thanks to each of you who responded to my genuine request for feedback on Friday. The candor and suggestions were incredibly helpful. When I tell you in each column that I welcome feedback, it’s because I…need…your thoughts, regardless of the nature. Please continue to send any ideas my way, any time. I will, as indicated Friday, stop sending a daily column as I do not want to overwhelm anyone as I now understand was occurring. I will also not launch chats at this juncture as a sole responder felt he had time for that commitment.

Most of you are neither civil servants nor historians; mercifully, you are not political scientists, either. Today’s New York Times provides a brief but instructive reminder of the origins of a professional civil service in the United States.

The BLUF, as commonly said in the military shorthand for Bottom Line Up Front: We needed it rather than because we sought to create a bureaucracy for its own sake.

A non-partisan, professional corps of skilled and often highly educated employees keeps the government working for all of us, even when we don’t as individuals like the policies involved. We pay them a decent salary so they not feel the need to steal from the public coffers. They live under rules (more below) on their politics. Most civil servants take drug tests, have their lives examined periodically to get security clearances to handle government information, and work 365 days a year unless they take leave they have earned.

None of us ever like all government policies (nor will we) but we assume the policies are administered in a predictable, equitable manner. Inefficiencies, by the way, often result from someone in Congress passing restrictions or incentives to assure a particular outcome in the system that wasn’t necessarily established in the beginning, be it for individuals, businesses, or something else. This behavior is at the heart of our check and balance system we have cherished for nearly two and a half centuries.

Enter James Garfield, a guy from a poor family in northeast Ohio. He studied at Williams College before practicing law and then serving in Ohio’s legislature. Garfield also engaged in the evolving practices of the Christian church in the mid-nineteenth century. He fought with the Union Army at both Shiloh and Chickamauga before winning his first election as a nine-term Republican Member in the House, an early Representative from this young political party. The United States was a smaller but ambitious nation when Garfield first arrived at the Capitol in 1863.

Politicians, from our earliest days, played an instrumental part of filling the small but vital bureaucracy of the United States. The “spoils” system, as it was known, acknowledged that the victor in any federal election had the privilege to fill the government positions by rewarding his supporters with the spoils of his victory—paid jobs. It was an acknowledgment of a de facto debt the victor owed to his supporters during the first century of this country’s existence. Elected officials, whether in the Executive or Legislative branches, chose from a stable of personal friends or campaign contributors to carry out the work for the people, even if these workers were unqualified or saw this as an opportunity to benefit personally rather than to conduct the people’s work. The spoils system, unsurprisingly, led to corruption and competition. The system, in short, was fraught and anything but professional for an expanding country.

James Garfield took the oath of office for the presidency on 4 March 1881, well experienced as a former House Member in Washington’s ways. He had participated in the time-honored process of putting forward names to serve in various positions, including abroad. The new president’s links to those supporters for whom he recommended employment were deep. Charles Guiteau, however, viewed his role in Garfield’s election as meriting a diplomatic post, a desire the new president spurned.

Angry, Guiteau decided to extract retribution against the Chief Executive by shooting him in July 1881. Late nineteenth century doctors, perhaps in place because of that very spoils system, ineptly treated the president, ensuring to his death two months later. The country was appalled by the entire spectacle, even if the outcome was perhaps unsurprising. Washington, after the revulsion wore off, took the opportunity to address long-simmering challenges revolving around government service.

The reforms became known as the Pendleton Acts of 1883. The revisions to hiring processes stood on the foundation that “public offices are public trusts to be administered solely for the public good” rather than to stuff the pockets of partisan supporters with personal motives. This was a radically different approach.

The Pendleton efforts modeled federal hiring on systems elsewhere in the world, some dating back hundreds of years. Competitive employment resulted from written examinations providing benchmarks for knowledge and experience. Employment added protections to prevent partisan or punitive pressures upon the employee’s decision-making. In short, the Pendleton reforms created civil service commitment to the Constitutional processes of government rather than to the whims of individuals who could intimidate to affect outcomes.

The federal system in the United States never entirely abandoned partisan hiring, however, as presidents always retained the ability to place their preferred personnel in some positions. At the beginning of every administration since 1952, the “Plum Book” is a list of presidentially-appointed positions appears. This lists 7,000 jobs at various ranks filled in non-competitive processes.

Cabinet secretaries for each department and their most senior under/associate/assistant secretaries, for example, carry the imprimatur as the president’s representative over the portfolio for which each wins Senate consent.

In the twentieth century, the Executive Office of the President and associated agencies staffed by personal choice rather than competitive application, putting them similarly outside of the checks and balances system. The number of personal appointees, thus partisans, is a token within the larger federal system.

Civil servants across the board, except the President and Vice President, are bound by the Hatch Act, a 1939 law to “prevent pernicious political activities”. It prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan actions for or against anyone. The Hatch Act strikes me as a mechanism to reinforce the intent of the Pendleton reforms but it seems virtually forgotten today.

The current administration chafes at both a public workforce seen as disloyal to the president’s will and overpaid. Yet the jobs demand people sufficiently knowledgable of what has and has not succeeded in past execution. Additionally, paying competitive salaries assures the servants will not be tempted to engorge their bank accounts at the federal trough. The Courts have never ruled on the legality of the Hatch Act but most civil servants obey it scrupulously.

The contemporary discussions about hiring, firing, and partisanship in the workplace remind us of what many long considered a by-gone era. Today, it would appear that the civil service system will both undergo legal challenges as does virtually everything else in our society and shift dramatically away from its non-partisan approach. Some are unfazed by the dangers of resurrecting problems of the pre-Garfield era but it’s hard to know how much support for a new “spoils” system has beyond the president himself and his immediate circle. To complicate everything, never has a non-elected agent had the determinative role in shaping the civil servant corps.

One would hope the violence Charles Guiteau unleashed against James Garfield is past but we are in a new era where countless unforeseen events are occurring. Because actions create consequences, we truly have no idea where this is leading, today, four, or twenty-five years from now.

In the meantime, a couple of million civil servants are caught in the middle. Most continue doing their jobs as they fear the next electronic communication is a pink slip. Again, civil servants execute programs on our behalf every single day rather than in the abstract. The vast majority work on behalf of you and me the taxpaying public does not stop, even if some question its value.

The Congress has the power of the purse, according to Article One of the Constitution. If Congress decides to withhold money for a previously authorized activity, of course the activity ceases. But someone relied on the program at some point as Congress, in conjunction with the Executive, authorized it. The idea that Congress is not part of this discussion is constitutionally peculiar at best. Perhaps Senators and Representatives don’t want to admit abandoning programs their voters endorse.

The current attack on civil servants is humiliating for professionals, be they relatively new employees or seasoned personnel who are repositories of problem-solving experiences. In the end, that’s actually what the civil service does in the United States. For all of the whining about government bureaucracy and regulation, each and every regulation was passed (by someone in Congress and signed into law by the president) in hopes of advancing something deemed in the public interest. Sometimes programs conflict with each other. The Civil Service finds reconciliation between objectives and means to achieve results.

Civil servants don’t pretend to be perfect but the majority do their best to fix errors. The people involved are not space aliens nor did they usually invent their jobs out of whole cloth; they are neighbors in Lenexa, Kansas or Huntsville, Alabama. They may conduct Alzheimer’s Disease research, administer food stamp benefits under the legal standards set forth by elected officials, assure the clean water near golf courses in New Jersey, or deliver foreign military sales to Taiwan, all of which are programs in cabinet departments to advance our national interests.

Our federal government is just that—the state for all citizens, theoretically equally protected under the law. Would we want the same treatment they are receiving if we were the ones asked to continue providing the goods and services? Don’t we want the best people to want to work these positions as professionals, whether working in the printing shop of the Government Printing Office or in the communications shop at the Director for National Intelligence?

I welcome your responses to any portion of this column. My goal is to create measured, civil conversation to facilitate better understanding of the challenges we confront while remembering that any and every action creates consequences.

Thank you for your time. Thanks additionally to the paid subscribers who make this work possible as I appreciate it.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Candace Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and The Murder of A President. New York: Vintage, 2011.

Michael Crowley, “Civil Service, an Ideal Born of an Act of Violence, Faces Serious Threat”, NewYorkTimes.com, 13 February 2025, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/us/politics/trump-civil-service-history.html?searchResultPosition=1