Political patronage is a mixed bag. On the one hand, folks expect that those in democratically-elected power get to call at least some of the tune. Certain elements of the White House staff are, universally, considered open field for the new incumbant to fill however seen fit. And while cabinet appointments, for example, require the “advice and consent” of the Senate, it’s rare that anything more than political grandstanding by the opposition party occurs when the president indicates “I want Person X to be my Secretary of Y.” And, frankly, that’s probably a good thing.
On the other hand, there are bounds put around excesses on such things. The whole point of civil service, as much as it is sometimes pooh-poohed as entrenching the bureaucracy, is to keep the new president (and down the line) from filling up all the staff positions in Washington with cronies and relatives and folks from back home. That’s a good thing, too, since it retains a skill base and institutional knowledge, as well as leaving the majority of federal workers free from what would be intolerable political pressure.
And then there are various other grey areas, where politics could intrude, but into which it probably shouldn’t.
The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission [CITEL] meets three times a year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum regulations. But for this week’s meeting in Guatemala City, politics has barged onto the agenda. At least four of the two dozen or so U.S. delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped by the White House because they supported John Kerry’s 2004 campaign.
The list of US delegates is put together by the State Dept. The White House defended the blackballing:
“We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and — call us nutty — it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that,” says White House spokesman Trent Duffy.
Okay, you’re nutty.
Now, to be sure, the CITEL self-description is:
CITEL, an entity of the Organization of American States, is the main forum in the hemisphere in which the governments and the private sector meet to coordinate regional efforts to develop the Global Information Society according to the mandates of the General Assembly of the Organization and the mandates entrusted to it by Heads of State and Government at the Summits of the Americas.
So, in reality, these folks are actually attending as representatives of the US government — which government is currently headed by the Bush Administration. Thus, the representatives could be selected on whatever basis that Administration sees fit (so long as it is not blocked by law from doing so). While Kottke might rail that “It’s the fucking **US** government, not the Republican government or Bush government. So! Angry!” the fact is that that the US government is currently led by the president and, by extension his party.
That all said, this seems an unwarranted intrusion of politics into a broad forum on international communications technology policy. Unless the folks who have been bumped have explicitly rejected some key Bush policy in that area, who they may have supported for president last November doesn’t seem terribly germane to their ability to contribute to the discussions — especially those present as part of that “private sector” that the mission statement refers to. Though it may well be that those private sector representatives would come as Associate members, not as formal US governmental delegates.
I’m not nearly so angry as Kottke, but it’s certainly another nail in the coffin of the “uniter, not divider” concept.
Granted, I’m a little further to the left, but that “uniter not a divider” coffin must be looking a bit like a porcupine by now.
I was trying to be civilly facetious. The Bush adminstration’s way of being a “uniter” is to combine center-right populism with a stead diet of very large bones thrown to the social conservatives. Political disloyalty and dissent, in that context, is broadly interpreted, and decisively punished.