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November 23, 2008
Is this a good thing to do?
As the sun sets on the Bush administration, the survival rite known as burrowing is under way. Burrowing is when favored political appointees are transformed into civil servants and granted instant tenure on the federal payroll. ... [Obama] aides will have to circumvent or dump any Bush burrowers intent on sabotaging that effort.As a general matter, if what these government agencies do is purposeful, doing something that for all their warts we want them to do, then burrowing is a good policy. We want to be able to recruit people to run agencies from the mass of regulators that they employ. Yet we don't want them to have to retire or find a new and unrelated job when the leave by necessity. Their leadership role will have developed unique skills and knowledge related to the agency's operations, and if they can't help run it, they'll surely help lobby it. Similarly, when we recruit others from the military or business to do so, we want them to be able to continue to help after the end of the current administration. If skilled an knowledgeable former leaders are willing to take a paycut and a demotion to continue to work for that agency, we the people should be happy about that. Not only do we get the immediate benefits, but knowing that senior government service leads to a career if one is desired makes it easier to attract top talent.
These reasons are the major motivation for abandoning the spoils system of appointment we used to have in American government in the 19th century. Unless you want everyone in government chosen more for their political connections than their subject expertise, you want a avenue for professional exit of leaders to return to ordinary service. To do otherwise may serve a small ideological agenda at the expense of an enormous decrease of competency and quality.
This isn't an argument for keeping the incompetent or the corrupt. But because government is political, employees have a process to protect them from unduly political firings. The probably have to many protections, but I see no reason to single out former leaders for harsher treatment.
Posted by OneEyedMan at November 23, 2008 9:05 AM
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