In Praise of PatronageThe executive branch needs more of it, not less.

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On its merits, though, it's hard to justify the mixed system that has evolved since the Pendleton Act's passage. The vast majority of federal employees, from the lowliest clerk to very senior managers, are civil service appointments. The president names only a handful of executive branch policymakers and senior managers directly, with or without Senate confirmation. The oft-cited figure of 7,000 is misleading and includes purely nominal positions, such as the 55 members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, nearly 100 U.S. marshals appointed in "consultation" with senators, and dozens of ambassadors who will, by nearly inviolate custom, be members of the career Foreign Service. Many other positions will be filled from a pool of career senior civil-service executives. The structure of the executive branch personnel system, in other words, militates against rapid and fundamental change.

In a democracy, however, sometimes rapid and fundamental change is both necessary and sustained by the popular will. (Think of the New Deal—or the Reagan Revolution, if you prefer.) If the president can't make such changes directly in the agencies, then he will attempt to go outside the system by making the White House staff responsible for policy management. Having members of the White House staff, who are remote from the departments and entirely dependent on the president's favor for their influence, in charge of operations is the worst of all possible worlds. But given the inflexibility of civil service rules and the difficulty of navigating the Senate confirmation process, it's no surprise that presidents often resort to the creation of yet another "czar"—or the legal-because-we-say-it-is "recess appointment"—to fill government ranks.

Making more positions open to political appointees (and a greater proportion of those to positions that wouldn't require Senate confirmation) would place greater responsibility on the president and his agency heads. Short of shrinking the government and its responsibilities, there is no alternative if the link between voters' choice of president and the president's management of the government is to be preserved.

Many academics seem to yearn for a British-style impartial civil service. But that would be incompatible with American traditions and, as viewers of Yes, Minister know, the impartiality of the senior British civil servant is a bit of a myth. And were we to follow the technocratic idea to its ultimate end, relying too heavily on experience would argue for the abolishment of presidential appointments for all but the most senior government officials. At the same time, Obama's decision to keep Robert Gates as secretary of defense shows that presidents know the value of experience.

Of course, there is next to no chance that either Congress would allow, or the administration would argue for, more political appointees in the executive branch. Opening up the bureaucracy to outsiders would be a threat to Congress' prerogatives and, more important, to key constituencies that have established relationships with bureaucrats. And no administration really wants to have greater flexibility in installing "inexperienced" officials who, although potentially more skillful than the civil servants they would lead, might also fail—and thereby present the administration's critics with an easy target.

Too bad. The "hope" and "change" that Barack Obama promised for the 21^st century may have to be delivered by a 19^th-century institution.

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