Audit Framework for Conversion Candidates — Evaluating Roles for Professionalization

Campaign Briefing: Appointment Reform and Depoliticization of Governance

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

October 14, 2025

Introduction

The federal appointment process has long been a source of frustration for citizens. Too many roles in our government—roles that carry extraordinary responsibility for daily operations—have become rewards for political loyalty rather than assignments for proven professionals. The result has been instability, inefficiency, and at times outright incompetence at the very heart of executive operations. The campaign’s position is straightforward: political appointments must be reduced to the smallest number possible.

Wherever law does not mandate a presidential appointment, those roles will be filled by career professionals who have demonstrated their capacity to serve with competence, impartiality, and dedication to the mission of their agency.

This is not a retreat from presidential authority, but a re-centering of that authority on policy and national direction. Presidents should set policy, define priorities, and be accountable for results. Civil servants should carry out those priorities with the skill and institutional knowledge they have developed over their careers. By clarifying this division of labor, the presidency is strengthened, not weakened, and the public gains an executive branch run by professionals rather than partisans.

Understanding the Categories of Federal Service

At the highest level, federal leadership roles fall into three broad categories.

1. Presidential Appointment with Senate Confirmation (PAS).

   These are the positions that, by statute, require presidential nomination and Senate consent. Cabinet Secretaries, federal judges, ambassadors, and certain agency heads fall in this category. These roles are explicitly political in nature because they are meant to reflect the policy direction of an elected administration while still being subject to legislative oversight.

   
   

2. Presidential Appointment without Senate Confirmation (PA).

   These positions exist because of presidential discretion, not legal requirement. They include advisory and operational roles that have often been used to place loyalists or political allies into positions of influence. The public rarely sees or even hears about these appointees, yet they number in the hundreds, and they wield real power over the machinery of government.

   
   

3. Career Civil Service, including the Senior Executive Service (SES).

   These roles represent the professional backbone of government. The SES consists of the most senior career executives, trained and selected for their capacity to lead complex organizations. Below them are the General Schedule (GS) grades, spanning from entry-level employees to GS-15, many of whom have decades of specialized experience. These are the individuals who know the systems, understand the technical requirements, and ensure continuity across administrations.

The campaign’s philosophy is to leave PAS positions in place because they are legally required, but to transform the landscape of PA appointments. Those positions will be inventoried, analyzed, and—unless statute explicitly requires presidential appointment—reclassified into SES or other civil service tracks. In this way, operational leadership will be exercised by people who have spent their lives mastering their fields, not by those who have simply mastered the politics of patronage.

The Inventory Process: Knowing What Exists

The first step in reform is knowledge. Before taking office, the candidate will direct the compilation of a complete inventory of all presidential appointment roles. This will include not only the well-known cabinet posts but also every deputy, undersecretary, administrator, commissioner, and director across the federal government. Each position will be analyzed to determine whether its appointment by the president is required by statute or whether it is merely tradition or practice.

This inventory is not intended as a bureaucratic exercise but as the foundation of reform. It will show, in black and white, where the president is obligated by law to nominate and where discretion exists. From there, decisions can be made about reclassification, reallocation, and professionalization. The inventory is essentially a map of where political influence has crept into places it was never meant to be.

Reclassification: Converting Appointments into Career Roles

Once the inventory identifies discretionary appointments, the reclassification process begins. Every PA position not required by law will be shifted into a career track. This does not mean stripping the position of importance or responsibility. Quite the opposite: it means that those roles will now be filled by individuals who have demonstrated their merit in a professional pathway.

Reclassification will require updated position descriptions, qualifications, and hiring standards. A former presidential appointee slot may become an SES position, open to competition among existing senior executives or qualified external candidates who meet professional criteria. For technical or scientific posts, outside subject-matter experts may be considered, but they will enter through the same merit-based process as career employees.

The guiding principle is this: the people who hold operational authority in government must be there because they are the best at what they do, not because they are politically convenient.

Promotion Pipelines: Building a Culture of Merit

For this vision to succeed, promotion pipelines must be strengthened across the government. Today, too many employees feel trapped in mid-level roles with little hope of reaching higher levels unless they leave for political appointments or private sector connections. That culture must change.

The new system will make clear that a federal employee who begins at the bottom rungs of the General Schedule has a pathway—through education, experience, and performance—to rise to the top of their agency. A GS-5 field analyst should know that, through merit alone, they could one day become a senior executive or even lead their agency.

Each department will maintain its own advancement pipeline, but all will be bound by common principles: transparent criteria, structured evaluation, and protections against favoritism. Promotion boards may be used, but their purpose will be to verify competence, not to reward loyalty. The candidate is clear: advancement must never depend on patronage.

It must depend only on merit.

Senate’s Role: Preserving Accountability

While many appointments will be reclassified into career service, PAS positions remain. For these, the candidate proposes reforms that bring merit and transparency into what has often been a closed, partisan process.

For each PAS vacancy, three qualified candidates will be presented to the Senate. Senators will have the responsibility to review their records, hold open hearings, and rank them according to qualifications. Private, off-the-record dealmaking will be prohibited. Citizens will see, in public, the reasons each candidate is advanced or rejected. This ensures that even where politics cannot be removed, professionalism and accountability can still prevail.

Why This Matters

This reform is not merely a procedural adjustment. It is a profound shift in how the executive branch operates. By reducing political appointments to the statutory minimum, government becomes more stable. Citizens gain continuity, expertise, and professionalism in the people who oversee their daily lives. Presidents are freed from the burden of filling hundreds of patronage slots and can instead focus on policy direction.

The public has grown weary of seeing critical agencies led by political loyalists with little knowledge of their mission. They deserve professionals who know the work, respect the institution, and understand the lives that depend on their success.

Conclusion

This campaign’s position is simple but transformative: if the law does not require a presidential appointment, then the role will belong to a professional civil servant. The presidency will set policy, but professionals will run operations. The result will be a federal government that is more competent, less partisan, and more accountable to the people it serves.

By building promotion pipelines, reclassifying unnecessary appointments, and ensuring that only merit determines advancement, this reform restores faith in government service. It declares that careers in public service are not dead ends, but ladders to the highest responsibility. It affirms that the people’s business must be carried out by those who know it best. And it promises citizens a government that rewards expertise, not politics.