Ya gotta love the absolute unawareness of the New York Times.
The other day, columnist Jamelle Bouie headlined:
Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025
In the column, Bouie expresses his alarm at what a reelected President Donald Trump would do — apparently seriously unaware that presidents from Washington to Biden have been doing what Bouie says he fears Trump would do if reelected.
Bouie writes:
Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of plans meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.
Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.
Um … hello?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it seems clear Bouie is utterly ignorant of how the American government is supposed to function.
The basic constitutional structure of the American government is easy to understand. Americans elect a president, a Senate, and a House on the basis of their campaign pledges. Once elected, all work to turn their promises into actual government policy.
The president — whomever that may be — runs the executive branch of government. The career appointees, along with the political appointees of that president, work for the president.
The president — not the career bureaucrats — makes policy.
Does Bouie not think President Barack Obama installed in his administration “an army of political and ideological loyalists” in order to run the government? Really? Really? Of course Obama did just that.
And he had the right to do so. Obama won the election — two of them. He had every constitutional right to “install an army of political and ideological loyalists” who would carry out Obama’s policy directives. The same applies to President Joe Biden. And yes, of course, it would apply to a reelected President Trump.
But according to Bouie, if Trump is elected, he has no right to run the government. Because he would — oh my goodness! — appoint people to his government who have the audacity — the nerve! — to carry out the policies Trump was elected to implement.
But in Bouie’s world, federal civil servants get to implement their agenda, and to hell with the elected president.
I just love it when Bouie said that “Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.”
Excuse me?
Recall.
History records that the federal civil service was created in the wake of a perceived corruption of what was known as a “spoils system,” in which a victorious political party handed out jobs to its favorites, regardless of qualifications.
By 1883, the backlash to this resulted in Congress passing the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. From hence forward, there would be a professional class of government employees who would be nonpolitical and there to professionally carry out the policies of the elected president.
But alas, time moved on and the central principle of nonpolitical career employees running the government went by the wayside.
Now, the federal bureaucrats have been both unionized and politicized. That has resulted in stories like this one from the Washington Post a mere 11 days after Trump was inaugurated. The headline:
Resistance from within: Federal workers push back against Trump
The story said this, bold print for emphasis supplied:
Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make.
Which is to say, the career bureaucracy that was established to eliminate politics from the federal bureaucracy is itself now exactly a political force — and a political force that leans hard left.
Which, in turn, is exactly why columnist Bouie is alarmed. Clearly, in his view, the federal government’s civil servants are in place to pursue the leftist agenda of the moment. And, if Trump wins, he will go about the job of upending the Left’s control, and he will do it by — oh the horror! — installing “an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.”
Hello? Trump will not usurp “either the rule of law or the Constitution.” What he surely will do — and will have every constitutional right to do — is run the federal government as he sees fit. As with all his predecessors, he will have quite constitutionally the right to do so.
And, oh yes. Bouie is horrified that Trump would plan “to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals.”
Which is to say Bouie is horrified that Trump would follow the Joe Biden precedent of politicizing the Justice Department and weaponizing the government — as Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, have done by prosecuting Trump himself. Which is to say, Biden has turned America into a banana republic.
And not a peep of dissent from Bouie or the Times.
Why?
Because as a carrier of Trump Derangement Syndrome, its OK to do these things if the target is Donald Trump.
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