American Democracy Depends on the 'Deep State' - Francis Fukuyama, WSJ essay

Yes, I know. WSJ, Fukiyama, but I think that many here will find it interesting.

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But American constitutional government depends on the existence of a professional, expert, nonpartisan civil service. Hard as it is to imagine in this moment of extreme partisan polarization, government cannot function without public servants whose primary loyalty is not to the political boss who appointed them but to the Constitution and to a higher sense of the public interest. Like all modern democracies, the U.S. needs a deep state, because it is crucial to fighting corruption and upholding the rule of law. Unlike almost every other modern liberal democracy, the U.S. has historically had trouble coming to terms with the need for a modern state. Among the Founding Fathers, it was chiefly Alexander Hamilton who argued vigorously for an energetic executive branch with background and expertise in government’s different functions. He was opposed by Thomas Jefferson, who argued that ordinary Americans should be able to govern themselves through their elected representatives.

The greatest tribune of the Jeffersonian tradition was our first populist president, Andrew Jackson, the poorly educated frontiersman and hero of the War of 1812 who defeated the Harvard-educated John Quincy Adams in the 1828 election. During the 1820s, the franchise was broadened from white males with property to all white males, bringing millions of new voters into the political system. But how to mobilize these masses? Jackson pulled it off by bribing them with bottles of bourbon, Christmas turkeys and (most important) government jobs—a technique now emulated, with local variations, in dozens of other young democracies, from Brazil to India. President Jackson declared that he got to decide who served in the bureaucracy and that government work was something that any ordinary American could do.

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By contrast, Britain, France, Germany and several other European countries reformed their governments by creating permanent, professional bureaucracies in the first half of the 19th century. The U.S. was late in making this shift—largely due to a political culture that is intensely suspicious of government itself. The modern American state was initiated only with the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, which established a Civil Service Commission that would hire workers on the basis of merit rather than political connections. The Pendleton Act could be passed only as a result of the 1881 assassination of the newly elected President James Garfield, who was shot by a disappointed office-seeker.

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One of the worst consequences of today’s bitter political divide is the further politicization of the federal bureaucracy. The U.S. government continues to maintain nonpartisan centers of excellence: Think of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the uniformed military and the Federal Reserve. All are staffed by nonpartisan professionals chosen for their training and expertise. This administration has denigrated the career professionals working at the State Department, the Fed and even NOAA, whose hurricane predictions didn’t seem to satisfy the president. What professional will want to work for the government in the future under such conditions?

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Suppose that a future president were to lose an election but refuse to leave office, claiming to be the victim of massive voter fraud. If such a president were to order the military to protect him or her (as has happened in countless developing countries), individual officers would have to decide where their loyalties lay. The rule of law, Americans should remember during such a crisis, is not a physical barrier but a set of normative beliefs in the minds of those who exercise power. Under such circumstances, only a deep state would preserve the possibility of continued constitutional government in the United States.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-democracy-depends-on-the-deep-state-11576855549 (paid subscription)