News analysis
Russ Vought, President Donald Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director, had a plan, but too little time left in 2020 to restore the bureaucracy as a neutral tool for ensuring that federal officials do what American voters want done by their government.
But Vought will be ready from the get-go when, he hopes, the next Republican Chief Executive enters the Oval Office in January 2025. If he succeeds, Vought will accomplish something that has eluded presidents of both parties since before World War I, when Woodrow Wilson turned federal civil servants from neutral implementers into unaccountable policy-making “experts.”
Wilson upended the neutral federal workforce concept established by the Templeton Act of 1888, which replaced the former “to-the-winner-goes-the-spoils” system that had been in force for a century.
Wilson wanted policy experts…
