The reason you want people who aren't party loyalists in every position in the civil service is that you want people who are good at the tasks assigned to them and that crosses partisan boundaries.
So why did BHO fire and replace people appointed to the same positions by GWB?
Look at the wiki list I posted. Trump kept fewer cross party appointments than Obama did.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
ajax18 wrote: So why did BHO fire and replace people appointed to the same positions by GWB?
You haven't really specified what you are talking about yet because you seem to have confused ambassadors with cabinet level positions even though the role and scope of each position is quite different.
Ambassador appointments are notorious for being one of the remnants of the spoils system where important supporters/donors get vanity positions. Obama was better than recent history in this regard, but still subject to it. To the extent he participated in it, that's bad. Even when donors get those positions, you hope that they have relatively competent state dept. people underneath them successfully advancing US interests.
The short answer to your question is that he didn't sweep GWB's civil service clean. Yovanovitch herself was twice appointed as an ambassador by GWB.
There are reasons why you want partisan appointments within executive administrations in order to carry out leadership goals. We need to distinguish between a question that tries to differentiate between when you want partisan appointments and not and why you don't want the entire civil service to be party loyalists or, worse, loyalists to the President.
So if you agree with the new agenda, getting rid of career civil service employees is reasonable and good, but if you don't agree with the incoming president's agenda, clearing positions of political foes should be illegal and the people in these positions should do everything in their power to stop the new presidents agenda.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
ajax18 wrote:What did he expect them to do, help him further his agenda?
ajax, since you took the time to create this thread, I'm assuming that you're willing to explore questions raised from it. So I have a couple for you:
1. Why would your first or most important qualifying question asked to determine the skill or fitness of a candidate for an administrative or international diplomatic position be, "Who did you vote for, for President?"
2. Which elements within Trump's 'agenda' would not be able to be promoted by a dedicated and competent civil servant who voted for either the Republican or Democratic candidate?
ajax, I'm especially interested on your thoughts about the second question. But I'll be happy to see a response to both.
ajax18 wrote:getting rid of career civil service employees is reasonable and good, but if you don't agree with the incoming president's agenda, clearing positions of political foes should be illegal.
I don't think it's good or reasonable to purge our government departments whenever there is an election. But I also don't think it should be illegal.
Common sense and good practice has long recognized institutional knowledge has inherent value that prevents the first.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Early diplomatic career Yovanovitch joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1986. Her first foreign assignment, in Ottawa, was followed by overseas assignments including Moscow, London, and Mogadishu. From May 1998 to May 2000 she served as the Deputy Director of the Russian Desk in the U.S. Department of State.[7]
From August 2001 to June 2004, as a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, she was the Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine.[8] From August 2004 to May 2005 she was the senior advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.[9] Yovanovitch also served as International Advisor and Deputy Commandant at the National Defense University's Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy and as dean of the School of Language Studies within the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute.[9]
U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and Armenia and subsequent service Yovanovitch is "well known in diplomatic circles for her measured demeanor and diligence in representing both Republican and Democratic administrations."[10] Yovanovitch was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan on November 20, 2004; she presented her credentials on February 4, 2005, and remained in this post until February 4, 2008.[1][11] Her nomination as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan was confirmed by the Senate on a voice vote.[12]
Yovanovitch was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Armenia on August 4, 2008; she presented her credentials on September 22, 2008, and remained in this post until June 9, 2011.[11] Her nomination as ambassador to Armenia was again confirmed by the Senate on a voice vote.[13] During confirmation hearings, Yovanovitch acknowledged that Turks had committed mass killings, rapes, and expulsions of Armenians between 1915 and 1923, calling this "one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century," but, in line with U.S. policy, declined to use the phrase Armenian Genocide, saying that the use of this politically sensitive phrase was a policy decision that could be made only by the highest-ranking U.S. officials, namely President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.[14]
While in Armenia, Yovanovitch pushed Armenian authorities to give fair treatment to Armenians arrested in post-election protests in 2008.[10] Yovanovitch received the Secretary's Diplomacy in Human Rights Award,[9] a department award honoring ambassadors who demonstrate "extraordinary commitment to defending human rights."[10]
After returning to Washington in 2012 and 2013, Yovanovitch served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs.[4] In that position, Yovanovitch was a key State Department headquarters contact for U.S. diplomats in Europe, working with, among others, U.S. Ambassador to Poland Lee Feinstein, regarding issues such as U.S. missile defense in Poland.[10] Yovanovitch received the department's Senior Foreign Service Performance Award six times and the Superior Honor Award five times.[9] She was promoted to the rank of Career Minister in 2016.[15]
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch was announced as the nominee for U.S. ambassador to Ukraine on May 18, 2016, to replace Geoff Pyatt;[16] the nomination was sent to the Senate the next day, and confirmed by voice vote of the Senate on July 14, 2016.[17] Yovanovitch was sworn in on August 12, 2016, and presented her credentials on August 29, 2016.[1] Anti-corruption work and other activities
Yovanovitch was respected within the national security community for her efforts to encourage Ukraine to tackle corruption,[18] and during her tenure had sought to strengthen the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which had been created to bolster efforts to fight corruption in Ukraine; these efforts earned Yovanovitch some enemies within the country.[19] In a March 2019 speech to the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, Yovanovitch said that the Ukrainian government was not making sufficient progress to combat corruption, saying: "It is increasingly clear that Ukraine's once-in-a-generation opportunity for change has not yet resulted in the anti-corruption or rule of law reforms that Ukrainians expect or deserve."[20]
Her career began under Reagan. Her first appointment as an ambassador was under George W. Bush. There is no reason to imagine she was trying to operate against Trump in a political manner.
AJAX!!! Explain what she was doing that meets the claim in your OP that she used her position to, "launch an attack and attempt to undo the results of the election".
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Ajax, I don’t think anyone has suggested that “purging” civil servants on the basis of party affiliation is a good idea. What you are suggesting begs for government corruption on the scale of third world countries. This is exactly why the founders worried about political parties. Country before party, Ajax.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
EAllusion wrote: US diplomatic interests don't drastically change every 2,4, or 6 years such that you continuously need new people to carry them out.....
yet ambassadors get appointed and released with every administration...funny how, once again, reality disagrees with your armchair proclamations. Point being, people either get in line with an administration or they get out...and given party platforms its no surprise to see such changes when executive branch flips. But you keep making stuff up to retrofit whatever theory you knee jerked.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
subgenius wrote: yet ambassadors get appointed and released with every administration...funny how, once again, reality disagrees with your armchair proclamations.
You are responding to a sentence I wrote talking about people underneath the ambassador level hopefully being relatively competent careerists.
"Even when donors get those positions [ambassadorships], you hope that they have relatively competent state dept. people underneath them successfully advancing US interests."
Funny, how once again, you can't read. And even then, ambassador turnover is far from absolute.
Point being, people either get in line with an administration or they get out...and given party platforms its no surprise to see such changes when executive branch flips. But you keep making stuff up to retrofit whatever theory you knee jerked.
Haughty condescension mixed with abject ignorance. You know, you could change it up once and a while.
You have jobs staffed by trained civil service people to get the work done. If everything was staffed by partisan political hacks the work would not get done and the office would be in chaos.
Get two Trump's in the same room and they would continually scream at each other until they got tired and left for a cheeseburger at the country club before tee time.
Gunnar wrote:And ajax probably still doesn't understand how badly he has humiliated himself by starting this thread.
I hope he doesn’t feel humiliated. I don’t think he should. I think he asked a sincere question that revealed something of himself. I hope he thinks something like “these guys don’t see politics as a zero-sum all out war. I hope he looks at the wiki entry and thinks “presidents have had political appointees from the other party for decades.” And I hope he is curious enough to wonder “why do I think about politics the way I do?”
Perhaps saying that he has humiliated himself is going a bit too far, but it is still true that he has revealed about himself, as you said, that:
You’ve lost your way, my friend. You’ve forgotten what it means to be a citizen. Sold your patriotism for a bowl full of cheap Trump souvenirs.
, and put himself in a very unfavorable light.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison