Intermission: The spoils system

I have a couple of new Notes cooking in the oven at the moment, but until I get those out, I wanted to let all you fine folks know that I have a guest post over at The Racket News about President Andrew Jackson, the spoils system (a.k.a. political patronage), and the origin of the modern federal civil service system that Trump will be taking his driving iron to in a couple of months: To the victor go the spoils.

Despair not, because while Trump will be cosplaying his best version of the seventh President of the United States, he'll also be sowing the seeds for a renewed appetite among Americans for restoring a competent federal bureaucracy, with each late Social Security check, postal package delivered to the wrong address, Medicare snafu, and avoidable overseas screw ups.

(And I suspect that having lived with a mostly-competent federal gov't for most of their lives, modern Americans will have a larger appetite for restoring what was lost than the Nineteenth Century Americans who had to imagine and build the civil service system from scratch. Its on us - the institutionalists - to be ready with concrete plans for a Restoration once Americans are reminded why we did it this way in the first place.)

I hope you enjoy the piece, and thanks again to Jay Berman, Steve Berman, and David Thornton for another opportunity to contribute to their fine publication.