The spoils system and its use of unbridled patronage may have officially ended with the assassination of President James A. Garfield and the subsequent passage of the Pendelton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883, but the federal government remains bloated with far too many political appointees after all these years.
A president today has the ability to make 4,000 political appointments, including about 1,200 that require Senate confirmation. This is dramatically more than any other Western democracy, and is a significant contributing cause of the failure of our government to keep up with the increasingly complex and dangerous world around us.
Many federal departments and agencies have become calcified, with layer upon layer of appointees in the chain of command. The problem is compounded by the entourage of appointees without line responsibility who surround nearly every senior leader. This has created bottlenecks, caused delays in decision-making and made it difficult for critical information to reach the ultimate decision-makers, even when, as is typically the case, the individual appointees are of a very high caliber.
