” A few months ago Mr. Rove compared his boss to Andrew Jackson. As some of us noted at the time, one of Jackson’s key legacies was the “spoils system,” under which federal jobs were reserved for political supporters. The federal civil service, with its careful protection of workers from political pressure, was created specifically to bring the spoils system to an end; but now the administration has found a way around those constraints.
We don’t have to speculate about what will follow, because Jeb Bush has already blazed the trail. Florida’s governor has been an aggressive privatizer, and as The Miami Herald put it after a careful study of state records, “his bold experiment has been a success
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