Why Conservatives Should Love Government Unions

Why Conservatives Should Love Government Unions
by billo

November 30, 2002

Talk radio and Fox News were abuzz in the weeks before passage of the homeland security bill promoting the President's desire to remove civil service protections from federal employees in the nascent department. Missing in this discussion was an important point. There is only one thing Conservatives should despise more than an entrenched federal bureaucracy protected from duly elected officials. They should fear a federal bureaucracy that does not have those protections.

An apolitical civil service is necessary for democracy. Failure to achieve a cadre of career civil servants to provide stability is one of the reasons that young democracies fail. The civil servant can advise the elected official without fear. The civil servant provides stability and continuance of government services ignoring the sometimes chaotic winds of change that occur in vigorous democratic states. The apolitical civil service ensures that governmental services are provided without regard to political affiliation.

This does not mean that politics is inappropriate in government. It is, however, inappropriate in the delivery of service. The difference lies between policymaking and implementation. Policymaking is inherently political. Implementation of those policies should not be. It should not matter whether you are a Democrat or Republican when you call 911. Democratic neighborhoods should not have their streets maintained while residents of neighborhoods with high GOP representation dodge potholes.

Those who would remove protections to ensure an apolitical civil service destroy the services they pretend to enhance. Republicans claim that large-scale hiring and firing by politicians will result in merit-based promotions because of the personal qualities of President Bush. Perhaps. Let us assume that President Bush, unique in the history of mankind, is a politician who will not engage in politics. He will not be President forever. Eventually, a President will use political power to political ends. It is the nature of the beast.

A civil service not protected from patronage will fall prey to it. The future is not a Bush meritocracy. It is the Clinton travel office. It is the firing by Clinton of all 93 federal attorneys who had been hired by Bush Sr. It is the use of the FBI by President Nixon for political dirty tricks. It is the collection of dirt on politicians by J Edgar Hoover for political influence.

One of the greatest challenges to nations moving towards democracy is the development of an apolitical civil service. It is difficult to create, because it in part relies on a tradition and recognition of the value of apolitical service not present in young democracies. It is difficult to maintain because the natural tendency of politicians is to politicize. The United States has developed a strong tradition of apolitical service within its cadre of civil servants, enhanced by history, expectation, and force of law. Laws exist to inhibit civil servants from engaging in politics, and laws exist to protect civil servants from politicians.

But it can all be lost. Once introduced, politicization means loss of institutional memory and continuity of service as mass hirings and firings accompany each election. The concept of merit is destroyed, not enhanced, as politically-favored civil servants are promoted into positions for which they are unsuited and competent civil servants are fired because of their political allegiance. Once destroyed, the professional apolitical orientation of the civil service is difficult to restore. The leadership will oppose it, the corporate history and tradition will be gone, and the existing bureaucracy will work to see that it fails. As the struggling developing democracies in the world show us, building or rebuilding an apolitical civil service is a matter of decades.

The dangers are clear. Even in the US, the increased politicization of agencies is inevitably accompanied by a degradation in function. The scandals of the FBI, from J Edgar Hoover's blackmail to the dirty tricks of Nixon to the more recent questions at the FBI laboratory are examples, as is the diversion of resources at the CDC and FDA from traditional health issues to gun control and other advocacy politics. This is bad, but how much worse would it be if not only the chiefs, but every employee down the line was a political appointee and owed that job to the whim of a political boss?

That is what the civil service protections guard against. It is troubling to me, as a conservative, to see these protections torn away from the one area of government that needs it the most - that of the internal security apparatus. We are setting up an agency devoted to domestic spying, national policing, and internal control for the first time in the history of the United States. We have decided to make this most dangerous agency one doomed to be utilized for political purposes.

The Republican leadership knows this, and has no answer. In a recent news interview, Trent Lott was asked about the potential for Clintonesque abuse in the absence traditional civil service protections. His only reply was that George Bush wouldn't do something like that. No, perhaps not. But the next President will. Or the one after that. The Republican leadership says they are just extending the powers the President already has in some areas, but they ignore that these are the areas that suffer the most from politicization. Yes, Clinton had the ability to fire all the US attorneys hired under Republican administrations. And he fired them as an exercise in raw political power and patronage. I am amazed that conservatives want to use that as the model for the US internal security apparatus.

It is a matter of faith among conservatives that the federal bureaucracy is a bad thing. Demonizing unions is a sacrament. Conservatives can make good arguments that the government should be smaller, that its mandate has become too intrusive, and that it is prone to inefficiency. The answer, however, is not to remove a basic safeguard against abuse and transform the internal security apparatus into an aggressive political enforcement engine at the service of the Chief Executive. Unfortunately this, in the name of union-busting, is exactly what the Republican leadership has set out to do.