Sunday, December 8, 2024

Send in the Rookies!

Much has been said about Trump selecting people with insufficient experience, especially from those who have buckets of experience (I'm looking at you, John Bolton).  However, look at what we are getting for our hyper-experienced government employees: disaster.  I am reminded of a quote from William F Buckley: 

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory, than by the Harvard University faculty.

Experience in government is bad.  The longer people are in government, the more corrupt they will be.  It is not by accident that people with 6-figure salary soon have an 8-figure net worth.  When trillions of dollars are sloshing around, it is very hard to resist appropriating some.  Shrinking government would be a great first step, but only noobs can do that.  After a few years, only the most ethical of people can avoid being corrupted.  Ron Paul managed to stay true to his limited government principles even after 20 years in the House.

During his first term, President Trump tinkered with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which gave us bureaucrats outside the purview of the president.  The spoils system - which saw the president sweep all the offices and give them to supporters - was in poor regard.  Yeah, that's hardly a surprise.  The Pendleton Act took most offices out of the president's hands, effectively making them unresponsive to executive control.  Spoils was bad, but this has proven worse.

Maybe Javier Milei's chainsaw is available.  We have vastly more deadwood to trim than Argentina.

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