🧵 Trump’s plan to take over USPS prompts me to stress again how his actions are emphatically not a return to the 19th-c. spoils system. It’s far worse. It’s the same in one way: Both brought incompetence and corruption into government. But 19th-c. spoils were part of an integrated party system. 1/9 - ThreadSky

tj-stiles.bsky.social • 7 days ago

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Trump’s plan to take over USPS prompts me to stress again how his actions are emphatically not a return to the 19th-c. spoils system. It’s far worse.

It’s the same in one way: Both brought incompetence and corruption into government. But 19th-c. spoils were part of an integrated party system.
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tj-stiles.bsky.social•7 days ago

First, control of jobs (patronage) was in part a tree. The president nominally named all federal employees, but really he delegated that power to cabinet secretaries, chosen to support party factions. But secretaries let senators and representatives pick appointees in their states & districts.
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tj-stiles.bsky.social•7 days ago

Thus the spoils system was seen as a congressional prerogative. Congressmen picked supporters of their reelection and their own factions (often called machines). In turn, officeholders paid assessments on their salaries to the party—a percentage—that was the main funder of parties.
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tj-stiles.bsky.social•7 days ago

Newspapers were key to spoils. Papers were not only partisan, they aligned with particular factions. Newspaper editors shaped party policies. But most newspapers lost money. You know what often got them through? Jobs as local postmasters.

So spoils was a *system* that arose over time.
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tj-stiles.bsky.social•7 days ago

Funny thing: Tariffs were central to the spoils system.

Customhouses, where they were collected, offered the best federal jobs, for legit fees and fraud, not to mention control of lower level jobs. Most late 19th-c. Federal revenue came from the New York customhouse. It employed 1,000 people.
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tj-stiles.bsky.social•7 days ago

Theodore Roosevelt built his career as a fighter for a nonpartisan merit system of federal hiring. Except for the presidency, the job he held the longest was U.S. Civil Service Commissioner. The (gradually introduced) merit system sharply reduced corruption & built administrative capacity.
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tj-stiles.bsky.social•7 days ago

Competence mattered more and more, because already the federal government was doing more technical stuff. And that was long before air-traffic control or nuclear weapons.

That’s one reason it won out. Also presidents hated congressional control of jobs & corporate money replaced assessments.
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