In Washington DC, you get used to the notion that people are transitory. If you move here, it takes a good two to five years to really make friends, because at first when people meet you they expect you to be gone.  That is, after all, something of a way of life here.  People come here to do some work for the government, and then go back to wherever they are from, back to the places they call home.

In the end, George Bush is yet another one of those workers, here for a season, and gone again as fast. What distinguishes him really is the extent to which he and his cronies, advisors, and puppeteers completely upended the way government in Washington works.

There are the obvious things, of course.  The naked power grab represented by the prosecution of a needless war in Iraq.  The dismantling of basic rights with warrantless wiretapping.  The wholesale chucking of the Geneva Convention ideals with respect to torture.  In the past eight years, we have watched horrified as our government did things in the name of our country that were so anathema to what America stands for it is a wonder that we didn’t riot in the streets on a more regular basis.

But perhaps the most far-reaching, and ultimately horrifying change that the Bushies brought with them to Washington was the politicization of the civil service.  A little history here might be appropriate.  Back when our country was first starting to create itself, partisanship was considered dishonorable.  In fact, to call a politician a “partisan” was to have delivered the worst kind of insult to a man’s honor.  Those who filled positions in the government were supposed to put the needs of the country before the needs of party.  To fail to do so would elicit the worst kind of criticism.

In the modern age, where everything is done via statute or regulation, the unacceptable  nature of partisanship among civil servants was codified.  Title 5 of the United States Code, section 2302 (b) prohibits discrimination for or against any employee or prospective employee on the basis of political affiliation, and prohibits “coercion” of political activity.  Technically, in the United States, our civil servants are to be hired on the basis of competence to perform their duties, not their willingness to perform those duties in accord with a certain political dogma.

And yet, the Bushies slowly went about the business of making nearly every position in the federal government a matter of personal loyalty to the partisan agenda of the Bush Administration.  It started with forcing the EPA to forego its well-grounded scientific findings to make room for partisan junk science on global warming.  It continued as the traditional emergency response functions of FEMA were gutted to make way for anti-terrorist mania that served little purpose but to foster an atmosphere of fear.  They filled the Justice Department with partisan hacks from third-tier law schools because they had the only credential that this Administration was really interested in:  a willingness to do anything to further partisan goals.

With the advent of the Obama administration, there are high hopes that many of the more dastardly deeds of the Bushies will be undone.  There is already talk that Obama will close the prison at Guantanamo.  He has already confirmed that he will be rescinding a number of the most objectionable of Bush’s Executive Orders. But what do you do about hundreds, perhaps thousands of federal employees who were selected by Bush appointees with the aim of filling the civil service with loyal conservative partisans?

Indeed, what has been the most damaging aspect of this sub rosa attempt to transform the nature of civil service in this country is the fact that bureaucracy in this country has far more power than it would seem.  We accept that the top tier of any government agency is appointed by the President and reflects his views, and that those people should make and execute policies in accord with what the President desires. A politicized middle management in a government agency, however, offers the opportunity for mischief of the highest order.  A hundred different decisions that get made at that level now come with a veneer of partisanship.

The EPA employee reviewing an Environmental Impact Statement can overlook a thousand important environmental issues because he doesn’t believe they outweigh the need for development.  An Assistant State’s Attorney exercises prosecutorial discretion, and may pursue a corruption case against a Democrat while ignoring the same evidence against a Republican.  An analyst in the State Department parses through and analyzes information, offering up her individual and biased viewpoint.  In a thousand different ways, every single day, federal employees make decisions that, when executed with a certain bias, can change the course of a nation.

Sure, every employee comes to the federal government with a personal viewpoint, and no one is free from the lens of their beliefs when they look at a problem. Ideally, an employee is enough of a professional, is knowledgeable enough about his or her job to balance personal political belief against what is needed to serve the American people.  The problem with overlooking baseline competence in favor of partisan loyalty in hiring is that commitment to the American people that so many civil servants (like my husband) possess, is compromised.  It’s not that the partisan hacks that have invaded our civil service don’t want to serve the American people.  They just don’t know how to do so in the professional manner the American people deserve.

This was particularly true in agencies that had significant attrition during the Bush years – the EPA and the Justice Department all but hemorrhaged good career personnel who became frustrated as the Bushies took control and began implementing their agenda.  The Department of Homeland Security was created out of whole cloth and shuffled its org chart the way Paris Hilton shuffles purse-sized dogs.  There were plenty of opportunities over the past eight years for several key agencies to hire new personnel, and as was seen with the Justice Department scandal, very often those doing the hiring had other criteria on their minds than competence.

It is a relatively easy and run of the mill thing to replace the political appointees in any given agency.  That takes place almost under its own steam.  The Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, and others who fall under the heading of “political appointee” are already looking for what’s next for themselves and will vacate their offices as soon as they can to make way for the Obama appointees.  But it’s the people one and two tiers beneath them that will become the long-lasting legacy of the Bushies’ experiment with politicization of the civil service.  These folks have jobs that not only wield influence, but they have a job security that in this new economy most folks only dream of.  Just try to get fired from a federal government job when you’ve been in for more than the customary year-long probationary period.  You’d have had an easier time getting John McCain kicked out of Annapolis for his many demerits.

On January 19, 2009, George W. Bush and Laura will board some kind of aircraft, wave to the cameras, and exit the political stage, joining the long list of ex-Presidents who now must struggle to find meaning for themselves having just finished the most meaningful job in public life that one could ever aspire to.  But they will leave behind a bureaucracy that has been badly manipulated, and whose power to execute any new agenda from Obama may be hindered by both questionable competence and partisanship. Policies come and go, but employees are forever in the federal government, a disturbing and subcutaneous legacy that may take 20 years or more to remedy. Unlike a law, such a thing cannot be repealed.  Unlike a signing statement, it can’t be rescinded.  Of all the things George has left behind, it is by far the most insidious.

Many thanks to Bob Eckstein for the use of the artwork.