What Democrats can learn from Bush

I've argued before that the Netroots should spearhead an effort to put together a list of dozens of Bush appointees (cronies, sons and daughters and spouses of cronies, etc.) so ill-suited for their jobs that the re-emergence of a functioning bureaucracy is actually predicated upon their removal. That list should be presented to the Democratic nominee next year, and the nominee should face massive pressure to, if elected, fire those people as an early order of business if. But is this legal? Is it, like the attorney firings, massively shady? Cass Sunstein explores the question:

Under President Reagan, the executive branch argued, with real vigor, on behalf of a strongly unitary executive. The Supreme Court has rejected those arguments. But many issues remain open. We do not know, for example, exactly what kind of power the president may exercise over the independent agencies. (Suppose that President Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani wants to get rid of Bush appointees to the NLRB, the FCC, the FTC, and the SEC; can she or he do so? What if Clinton and Giuliani think that the policy judgments of the Bush appointees are not merely bad but terrible?) In approaching the open questions, recent presidents have tended to continue to argue that the executive is strongly unitary.

I realize this can be dangerous territory, but continue to think this is a good idea if it is really, truly a one-off project. And if recent history is any indication, even a strongly adverse Congress is pretty much no match for the unitary executive theory. If the Congress stays Democratic--and all indications are that it will--I don't think you'll hear a peep from them about the firings.

Comments

[JimPortlandOR]

A purge of the Bushies is more than justified. The hard parts are the 'civil servants' that have been snuck in by the Bush/Cheney/Rove political appointees. The cure for that is reassignment to harmless duty in awful places, not termination (except for cause) - which would be illegal. Alaska is great in the winter, and Guam is great year round. Or, just make them do what's required by really really close supervision until they get insubordinate.

In the independent agencies, most of them are split by law between the two parties, with the presidential party getting to choose the majority side - 3 to 2 or 5 to 4.

One thing the Congress can do is mandate a reduction of the number of political appointees in the EOP and cabinet agencies. There are too damn many asst, deputy, duputy asst, associate duputies, etc. The Brits have a better take on this, where the professional civil service goes higher up the management chain.

But some degree of ruthlessness is going to be required, including in the upper ranks of the military which have been Rumsfeldized substantially.

Example: William Jefferson Clinton was punked by the upper strata of the military services on non-descriminatory service by gays and lesbians. He should have fired or transferred some general officer asses until the message was received. Harry Truman showed the way on african-american service in the military - he told them to just do it (or get out of the way)!

[MikeJ]

Jim is as usual, on the right track. The legality of firing the bushies is irrelevant. Politically it just doesn't make much sense to do it when there are so many easy ways to get rid of them (in spite of what people will tell you about the difficulty of getting rid of civil servants).