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Regarding the latest executive order re: independent agencies, I'm struggling to understand why conservatives might think this is a good idea long term. Is the plan to just never lose/hold an election again? It seems like trump is massively expanding the scope of executive power versus judicial/legislative power to the point where any president with more than 41 votes in the senate can do essentially whatever they want, with the sole exception of raising non-tariff taxes. Given that its easier to
create than to destroy[edit: this was a type, I meant "easier to destroy than to create"], that's of course a benefit for anti-welfare conservatives... but direct presidential command over regulation combined with the stance that the president is beholden to nothing but the supreme court seems like a perfect recipe for vindictive actions against corporations and industries that the president doesn't like. And considering the next democratic president is probably going to look much more like the bernie wing of the party than the obama/biden wing of the party, that's a recipe for economic disaster.Necessary disclaimer: I'm a trump-hating neoliberal.
In Austria, we used to have political hiring very far down the chain. This worked fine because every government was a coalition of the two major parties, so we didnt constantly turn them over. It changed eventually, but more so due to the bad optics of patronage and limited meritocracy. Today of course, we do actually change our government - though theres also a good chance well settle into something again in the medium term, and maybe that bit of chaos now would be worth it.
I dont think this flipping is viable long-term. It was fine in the days of Jackson, but today the civil service is much more of a career, and thats not compatible with flipping a coin every 4 years whether youll have a job. It would sooner lead to actually obedient bureaucrats.
But I also dont think the wilder swings in governing ideology are viable. The government just does too much for that. Spending is a third of GDP (plus more effectively commandeered by regulations), redirecting even just a good portion of that every 4-8 years is very destructive, and besides, theres no value in a border closed half the time, or a pension paying out half the time. Ive said this before in the context of election fraud or electoral college discussions, but if a 2% effect can make your government not just different, but really different and unacceptably bad, then you should reconsider whether the one without that small deviation is really legitimate.
So I think this scenario youre describing will be avoided, one way or another. Boringly, by continuation of the status quo pre-Trump. Or interestingly, by a stable orthodoxy that encompasses much more than bureaucrats.
Quite a regional thing, in Switzerland there are essentially permanent coalitions that last for decades until the vote changes so much that things need to be renegotiated, which the parties do amongst themselves, then the new permanent government is established. The longest one was from 1959 to 2004.
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