It’s tempting to believe most Republican presidential candidates — including the latest media darling, former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley — are more “moderate” than front-runner Donald Trump. And if your low-bar definition of “moderate” is “unlikely to foment an insurrection,” then sure.
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But when it comes to how they’d actually govern, many of their policy proposals are essentially a warmed-over Trump agenda. Among them: plans to dismantle the federal government’s basic functions and abilities to serve regular Americans.
Trump often speaks of “draining the swamp.” When Trump was president, this mostly meant draining the government of experts whose work he found inconvenient — such as those tasked with measuring the impact of his tax cuts or safeguarding the integrity of the 2020 election. He blew up a prestigious statistical agency, for instance, after it produced research he didn’t like, and on his way out the door, he laid the groundwork for a broader purge of civil servants.
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Other GOP presidential hopefuls have now echoed Trump’s attacks on the “deep state” and promised purges of their own.
Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, for instance, has promised to arbitrarily fire every civil servant whose Social Security number ends in an odd digit. More disturbingly, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s approach to domesticating “these deep state people” includes a pledge to “start slitting throats on Day One” — never mind that public workers at all levels of government are already at heightened risk of violent attacks.
Even Haley, who’s supposed to be the grown-up, “moderate” alternative to these histrionic boys, has offered her own more genteel-sounding version of the proposal. She has pledged to impose a “term limit” on all civil servants, so that every public worker would be fired after a maximum of five years.
Not just elected officials in Congress or the Senate. Everyone in federal government.
This sounds like a clever idea until you think about it for, oh, two seconds. It means we’d have to purge and replace every single air traffic controller every five years. Also all the nuclear physicists working for the Energy Department and rocket scientists at NASA, whose depth of expertise can’t easily be recreated on a five-year deadline.
Add to this list food-safety inspectors, who assess sanitary conditions at slaughterhouses. Statisticians who tabulate labor-market data. Epidemiologists who track outbreaks. Arabic and Farsi speakers throughout our intelligence services.
And everyone else who has some valuable, specialized expertise, and who, because of a sense of duty and belief in their public mission, is willing to tolerate constant denigration from elected officials and lower pay than they could receive in the private sector.
Proposals like Haley’s, in short, are a good way to destroy the basic machinery of government. Not the good “creative destruction” kind of destruction, either. It’s just demolition, involving expulsion of as many subject-matter experts as possible — including those who keep our country safe and our drinking water clean and whose skills are hard to replicate at the price we pay.
That’s not the only way Haley, among other supposed Republican moderates, plans to sabotage the broader functioning of government.
Like other candidates, Haley has promised to claw back Internal Revenue Service money dedicated to upgrading customer service and catching more wealthy tax cheats.
Defunding the IRS would have two major consequences. First, it would lead to a more frustrating experience for normal taxpayers merely trying to comply with the law (so, most Americans). Second, it would mean less revenue coming in to fund everything else the federal government does — including border security, law enforcement and other functions even Republicans concede are necessary.
Another proposal: Haley wants to have Congress vote on every federal rule and regulation. Once again, this has the gloss of thoughtfulness, until you do the briefest of homework about its likely consequences.
Congress already has the right to pass new laws (obviously) and to rescind regulations it dislikes. But it can barely get its act together to keep the lights on. Do you really want to require lawmakers to vote on every bit of minutiae usually left to subject-matter experts, such as aviation safety standards or the technical specs for mammography equipment? There are thousands of these rules issued each year.
To be clear, no one claims the federal government is perfect — or even particularly efficient. But there are plenty of serious policy proposals to improve the civil service, assuming politicians genuinely want to strengthen rather than hollow out state capacity.
The Partnership for Public Service, for instance, has proposed a useful road map for investing in top-shelf federal talent and leadership development. The nonprofit has even proposed measures to require senior government executives to get experience outside their core agency — either with other parts of government or in the private sector — as a condition of certain promotions. If you’re worried that senior public servants are too blinkered or entrenched, this would be a way to widen their perspective without undermining subject-matter expertise.
But maybe it’s easier for presidential contenders to run on a platform that government doesn’t work — and then, once in office, ensure that it never will again.
Need something to talk about? Text us for thought-provoking opinions that can break any awkward silence.But when it comes to how they’d actually govern, many of their policy proposals are essentially a warmed-over Trump agenda. Among them: plans to dismantle the federal government’s basic functions and abilities to serve regular Americans.
Trump often speaks of “draining the swamp.” When Trump was president, this mostly meant draining the government of experts whose work he found inconvenient — such as those tasked with measuring the impact of his tax cuts or safeguarding the integrity of the 2020 election. He blew up a prestigious statistical agency, for instance, after it produced research he didn’t like, and on his way out the door, he laid the groundwork for a broader purge of civil servants.
ADVERTISING
Other GOP presidential hopefuls have now echoed Trump’s attacks on the “deep state” and promised purges of their own.
Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, for instance, has promised to arbitrarily fire every civil servant whose Social Security number ends in an odd digit. More disturbingly, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s approach to domesticating “these deep state people” includes a pledge to “start slitting throats on Day One” — never mind that public workers at all levels of government are already at heightened risk of violent attacks.
Even Haley, who’s supposed to be the grown-up, “moderate” alternative to these histrionic boys, has offered her own more genteel-sounding version of the proposal. She has pledged to impose a “term limit” on all civil servants, so that every public worker would be fired after a maximum of five years.
Not just elected officials in Congress or the Senate. Everyone in federal government.
This sounds like a clever idea until you think about it for, oh, two seconds. It means we’d have to purge and replace every single air traffic controller every five years. Also all the nuclear physicists working for the Energy Department and rocket scientists at NASA, whose depth of expertise can’t easily be recreated on a five-year deadline.
Add to this list food-safety inspectors, who assess sanitary conditions at slaughterhouses. Statisticians who tabulate labor-market data. Epidemiologists who track outbreaks. Arabic and Farsi speakers throughout our intelligence services.
And everyone else who has some valuable, specialized expertise, and who, because of a sense of duty and belief in their public mission, is willing to tolerate constant denigration from elected officials and lower pay than they could receive in the private sector.
Proposals like Haley’s, in short, are a good way to destroy the basic machinery of government. Not the good “creative destruction” kind of destruction, either. It’s just demolition, involving expulsion of as many subject-matter experts as possible — including those who keep our country safe and our drinking water clean and whose skills are hard to replicate at the price we pay.
That’s not the only way Haley, among other supposed Republican moderates, plans to sabotage the broader functioning of government.
Like other candidates, Haley has promised to claw back Internal Revenue Service money dedicated to upgrading customer service and catching more wealthy tax cheats.
Defunding the IRS would have two major consequences. First, it would lead to a more frustrating experience for normal taxpayers merely trying to comply with the law (so, most Americans). Second, it would mean less revenue coming in to fund everything else the federal government does — including border security, law enforcement and other functions even Republicans concede are necessary.
Another proposal: Haley wants to have Congress vote on every federal rule and regulation. Once again, this has the gloss of thoughtfulness, until you do the briefest of homework about its likely consequences.
Congress already has the right to pass new laws (obviously) and to rescind regulations it dislikes. But it can barely get its act together to keep the lights on. Do you really want to require lawmakers to vote on every bit of minutiae usually left to subject-matter experts, such as aviation safety standards or the technical specs for mammography equipment? There are thousands of these rules issued each year.
To be clear, no one claims the federal government is perfect — or even particularly efficient. But there are plenty of serious policy proposals to improve the civil service, assuming politicians genuinely want to strengthen rather than hollow out state capacity.
The Partnership for Public Service, for instance, has proposed a useful road map for investing in top-shelf federal talent and leadership development. The nonprofit has even proposed measures to require senior government executives to get experience outside their core agency — either with other parts of government or in the private sector — as a condition of certain promotions. If you’re worried that senior public servants are too blinkered or entrenched, this would be a way to widen their perspective without undermining subject-matter expertise.
But maybe it’s easier for presidential contenders to run on a platform that government doesn’t work — and then, once in office, ensure that it never will again.
