Post-Trump priorities: the civil service

The third of the ten points that Dan Froomkin (1) has proposed as guidelines for a restoration of democratic governance is: Stop mass deportations.

Dan Froomkin, third goal: Is it time to start planning a post-Trump restoration?

Revive the civil service.

This is a wonky topic but an important one. To convert it into a partisan political issue favoring the Democrats shouldn’t be difficult. Except the Democrats have become so addicted to trying to sound “reasonable” and “moderate” – which means in practice : (1) trying to pander to wealthy donors; (2) repeating lists of poll-tested issues until their audiences begin to nod off; (3) constantly reviving old favorites like “bipartisanship” and “reaching across the ”aisle” as though there is a single voter out there whose vote could be changed by hearing it – that they’ve gotten serious rusty on framing an issue to their favor.

Delaware Sen. Chris von Hollen showed how framing and issue to the Democrats’ advantage when he went to El Salvador to check on an immigrant in his district who had been illegally kidnapped by ICE goons and illegally deported from the country and stuck in a concentration camp run by the Salvadoran dictator. He reframed this issue in a dramatic way that quickly shifted public opinion on the immigration issue from favoring Republicans to favoring Democrats.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom seems to find the role a bit awkward. But he seems to have realized, at least for the moment, that what voters prefer to see from the Democratic Party is a competent group of people who fight for their own side, not ones who try to split the difference with Republicans extremists all the time.

When it comes to the civil service, the key to making it a fighting issue for the Democrats is to stress some form of the notion that government needs to function well. Even on a issue like policing, Joe Biden’s ridiculous “fund, fund, fund the police” mantra, the Democrats never converted that into identifying themselves as making government work well, which most people also understand as working efficiently and legally. Only sadistic MAGA chuds actually get off on a scene like four cops strangling George Floyd to death on a public street. And all the people who do support that? That all vote Republican!! Pandering to those voters just makes it easier for Republicans to win.

No one but mobsters and corrupt sleazebags can support something like the Night Riders gang that operated for years inside the Oakland Police Department, for instance. (2)

Despite chronic cynicism about public employees, most people want the city water supply to function properly. The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi in 2022 (3) – which took place when Biden was still President – could have been dramatized nationally as a case of a Republican Governor and Republican legislators hanging their own capitol city out to dry because it’s a majority-Black city. But Biden was still waiting for “the fever to break” in the Republican Party so that we could go back to some imagined Good Old Days of holy bipartisanship.

That would have been an excellent concrete situation for the Democratic Party to use to paint the Republican Party as the people who don’t care if you and your children and your neighbors don’t have clean water to drink. That’s the Republican Party, not just “MAGA” and not just those mostly imaginary Republicans who were not on board with Trumpism. We’ve seen very dramatically in 2025 already how mistaken a notion that was.

The Idea of “Civil Service”

One of the innovations of Andrew Jackson’s Presidency was the widespread use of the “spoils system,” i.e., appointing partisans to government jobs. In 1833, this meant in practice that the small-d democratic movement the Jackson represented – obligatory reminder here that the US in 1933 (and long after) would not count as a “liberal democracy” at all by 2025 terms, it was a long process of development and expansion – was able provide material awards to local party activists and thereby to strengthen grassroots political organizing.

But most civilian public jobs in 1833 were things like postmasters and toll collectors. There weren’t hordes of tax officials – there’s wasn’t even and income tax yet – or scientists, or food inspectors, or statisticians, or intelligence officials, or public parks to manage, or federal, state, and local health departments.

As the economy developed, not only in the US but in Europe and the rest of the world, the need for reliable public services staffed by people with often substantial educational qualifications that would be managed according to the law and not controlled by partisan political decisions or corruption. More broadly speaking, a competent, professional, and well-managed public sector with civil-service hiring procedures and insultation from petty and/or corrupt outside interference.

Broadly speaking, in the world of the 20th and 21st centuries, competent and professional public services are part of the necessary infrastructure for all kinds of economies.

The pro-democracy, anti-authoritarianism civil society group Protect Democracy points out the problem with government agencies making critical technical decisions based on corruption or purely ideological assumptions:

One agency that illustrates how a politicized civil service could impact the American people is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is charged with ensuring the safety of many foods, medicines, medical devices, and other products.

A well-functioning FDA ensures that Americans can trust the safety of FDA-regulated products, which, according to the agency, “account for about 21 cents of every dollar spent by U.S. consumers.” The capacity of the FDA is also a main factor in determining the speed at which new medicines become available, and in ensuring sufficient public confidence such that companies that develop medicines and medical treatments choose to do so in the United States rather than taking jobs and medical innovations overseas.

However, the FDA’s work is difficult; it requires a highly trained workforce composed of expert doctors, statisticians, biologists, and others, many of whom could easily obtain high-paying jobs in the private sector. Already, there are concerns that the number of departures and early retirements that occurred during the Trump Administration have damaged the FDA’s capacity. (4)

Democrats can politicize the idea that we need professional institutions of government and that it can be done by the Trump process of trying to staff agencies with flunkies, hacks, grifters, and ideological crackpots.

But they can’t do it by doing politics according to the principle of “when they go low, we go high.” Or by talking constantly about “bipartisanship.” They have to dramatize it, fight for it, and make it clear that the Republicans – not just “MAGA” - want only bad and incompetent government.

Notes:

(1) Froomkin, Dan (2025): Is it time to start planning a post-Trump restoration? Heads Up News 06/30/2025. <https://www.headsupnews.org/p/is-it-time-to-start-planning-a-post> (Accessed: 2025-03-08).

(2) Piper, Franch (2023): Oakland’s “Riders” Scandal and the Fraught Road to Police Reform. Bolts Magazine 01/13/2023. <https://boltsmag.org/oakland-police-riders-scandal/> (Accessed: 2025-19-08).

(3) Klasing, Amanda (2022): Mississippi Water Crisis a Failure Decades in the Making. Human Rights Watch 09/02/2022. <https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/02/mississippi-water-crisis-failure-decades-making> (Accessed: 2025-19-08).

(4) Tausanovitch, Alex (2024): The civil service, explained. Protect Democracy 06/11/2024. <https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-civil-service-explained/> (Accessed: 2025-19-08).