In Praise of Neutral Competence

I teach the exciting course known as Public Administration. My research record includes studies of bureaucrats. I am a fan of those who carry out policy with expertise, excellent effort and little public acclaim. In the last century, the bureaucracy at every level government was put under the dominance of the merit system. We made the choice that policy implementation was too important to become just another tool to advance the cause of whatever party held the executive elected position.

George W. Bush's presidency has attempted to overturn those decisions and we are re-learning why it is a bad idea. The firing of 8 of his own appointees as US attorneys is exposing the effort within the Justice Department to make the prosecution of the law as a tool of the Republican cause. The conviction of a member of the Wisconsin Democratic governor's administration who was charged during the campaign is likely the kind of behavior the 8 fired US attorneys failed to pursue. See cbsnews.com for a run down on it all including the overturning of the conviction for lack of evidence. Andrew Cohen of the Washington Post has more in his "Bench Conference" which includes this observation on the Boston Globe's reporting and the Dept. of Justice:

"Savage's piece simply reinforces what many Washington legal insiders and historians have been telling me for the past few months. There is no longer a meritocracy in place at the Justice Department when it comes to hiring decisions. Where the Department once was staffed by some of the best and brightest lawyers in the nation, now it has become a repository for the Monica Goodlings of the world. If you were a dedicated federal prosecutor, a Bush appointee, would you want some younger lawyer from some fourth-rate law school determining your future? You wouldn't. And yet that's precisely what happened here to our Gang of Eight. They weren't judged by the best and the brightest and the most seasoned and respected attorneys in the nation; they were judged by Monica Goodling, a legal disciple of Pat Robertson."

The hiring of "career" posts are now in the control of political appointees in the Justice Dept. and elsewhere who can screen for the appropriate level of "loyalty" to W's policy positions without ever asking for an applicant's partisanship. How else did over 150 Regent University grads get hired in the last 6 years?

In Bushworld this is fine unless you can absolutely without any doubt prove that some terribly important law was violated. Why should we care that Bush is piling up his lackeys everywhere he can claim the need for personnel "flexibility" in the federal bureaucracy? The answer is the desire for neutral competence.

Do you want federal prosecutors who only prosecute when the law calls for it not when it could turn an election? Do you want government regulators to interpret and enforce the law to meet the intent of the law as passed by Congress? Do you want bureaucrats who can honestly state when policy is failing or succeeding based upon the evidence not what fits the current party in power's positions? Do you want intelligence analysts who inform the president of actual threats not just find threats to fit his/her current desires?

If you are still unsure, then picture your least favorite president or potential president. Do you want that person to determine which laws are followed and which are not without any hindrance?

Neutral competence is not simply an ideal students of public administration must learn. It is how we can keep our government from following into the endless foolishness and failures that currently infect the federal executive.

Bureaucrats can't do this on their own. They need the backing of courts, Congress and the public demanding that policies their implementers not become mere tools for partisan politics.

Neutral competence and the merit system enshrined in the civil service protects all of us not just the employees who make up the permanent bureaucracy.