President-elect Jimmy Carter is spending a large share of his time this month digging through some 7,000 names of job applicants and other possible appointees to fill the 2,200 positions in his administration that are not covered by Civil Service. The public impression is given that his appointment power extends only to that limited number out of the millions of Federal employees.
Democratic Presidents have never permitted Civil Service to impede their political objectives. Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson ruthlessly eliminated holdovers — Civil Service to the contrary notwithstanding — and used every possible tactic to put liberal Democrats on the payroll and keep them there. No holds were barred in their purge of Republicans from the previous administration.
Franklin Roosevelt set the precedent in the Commerce Department in the early days of the New Deal. Under “emergency” powers, he fired several hundred holdovers from the Hoover Administration and put a freeze on all new hirings. Then he established the NRA in the same building — with all new personnel.
The new employees were hired through the employment office of the Democratic National Committee —- not transferred from the Commerce Department or other Federal bureaus. Two years later, when the NRA was declared unconstitutional, all the NRA employees were hired directly into the Commerce Department and blanketed into Civil Service.
When President Truman wanted to load his friends in the Pendergast machine onto the Federal payroll, he peremptorily closed some agency offices and then reopened them in Kansas City. This shook many employees off the Federal payroll, and opened up plenty of Federal jobs to reward the political machine that elected him.
After John F. Kennedy became President, he abolished the entire Federal agency dispensing foreign aid, thus eliminating all the Eisenhower appointees. Kennedy then immediately created a new travel giveaway agency under a new name -—— and hired a new staff of all Kennedy supporters.
President Kennedy was particularly adept in using the technique called “reorganization” in order to bring his people into the Federal Government at every echelon. This is a perfectly legal device for outmaneuvering Civil Service. Under a “reorganization” plan, the President can abolish agencies, bureaus, divisions and jobs -— and then create new ones to take their place. He can wake up different titles for the same old jobs so they become available for new personnel.
The technique of “reorganization” requires a few smart and skillful lower-echelon employees to the necessary detail work. President Kennedy hall such people in ample supply, and it appears that Governor Carter has, too. Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford never seemed to have such persons on their staffs.
The liberals have always used this political tool with consummate skill in order to pack the bureaucracy with their fellow liberals. Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford deluded themselves into thinking that Civil Service was a total bar to any organized effort to change the ideological bent of the bureaucrats,
Another technique of the Kennedy Administration was to effect a total changeover of consultants. There are thousands of so-called “consultants” who work varying amounts of time for various Federal agencies at per diem pay. One of Kennedy’s first acts after becoming President was to send all the consultants then on the payroll a cordial soft-soap letter thanking them profusely for all their past services, and informing them that the new Administration was eliminating all consultants and would have no further need for their services. A couple of months later, Kennedy hired all new consultants of his own choosing.
One of the major reasons why conservatives find it hard to hang on to political office after they are elected is that they do not understand that patronage is the name of the game. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that Jimmy Carter is not likely to make that mistake.
