W. James Antle III writes that we shouldn’t care about the integrity of the civil service:
Given the overwhelmingly Democratic tilt of the career bureaucracy in most civilian portions of the federal government, I must say I’m not terribly concerned that Bush’s “burrowing” is going to derail any Obama administration initiatives.
I understand what Antle is saying. But by the same token would he be shrugging it off if a Democratic administration was trying to “burrow” political appointees into the upper echelons of the career military? The FBI? The CIA? I doubt it. But to avoid making the pure hypocrisy play, let’s say that for my part I think this would be a bad idea. But the non-military, non-police, non-intelligence arms of the federal government deserve to be treated as seriously as the elements of big government that conservatives find congenial.
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