Jonathan Chait: “Trump has already done more to undermine the ideal of meritocracy than perhaps any presidential administration since the progressive era. He is waging war against the civil service system, which was established over a century ago to ensure that federal jobs go to qualified civil servants, rather than as rewards for party loyalists, as had been the case before. Trump, who believes that nonpartisan public servants constitute a “deep state” conspiracy against him, would rather lose their expertise than risk having them act in ways that thwart his personal ambitions.”
“He has gone even further in this direction by stacking his cabinet. Every president tends to populate such roles with supporters, but Trump has taken frankness to an almost comical extreme. Trump’s cabinet officials have not only supported him in elections, but must also endorse, or at least not contradict, his baseless claim of having won the 2020 election. The driving force behind many of his high-profile cabinet selections seems to be a desire to find people who will stand by the president if he flouts norms, laws, or basic decency.”
Avoiding the Favorites