Unelected but Not Unaccountable: Civil Servants and the Architecture of Trust

2028 Presidential Campaign of

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

March 19, 2026

There is a word that gets used as an insult in contemporary political discourse: bureaucrat. It is meant to conjure an image of someone who pushes paper, avoids responsibility, and obstructs the legitimate work of elected officials. It is meant to suggest that the permanent workforce of the federal government is the problem rather than the instrument through which our work, as a self-governing people, actually gets done.

This campaign rejects that framing entirely. Not because the federal bureaucracy is beyond criticism — it is not — but because the criticism, as it is usually deployed, is factually wrong and, if we are honest with ourselves, strategically destructive to the very reforms we say we want.

I. Who Actually Does the Work

The federal civilian workforce numbers approximately 2.2 million people. They are air traffic controllers and food safety inspectors. They are the researchers at the National Institutes of Health working on treatments for diseases that will one day reach every family among us. They are the Veterans Service Representatives who help a former Marine navigate a disability claim. They are the border agents, the park rangers, the forensic accountants at the IRS who catch fraud, and the Foreign Service officers who negotiate the agreements that keep our businesses competitive in global markets.

These people did not run for office. They applied for jobs. They were hired through a competitive process established by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 — a law passed in the aftermath of President Garfield's assassination by a disgruntled office-seeker, specifically to end the spoils system under which government jobs were handed out as political rewards. That law was our first collective decision, as a republic, that what you know should matter more than who you know when the public's work is at stake.

The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 updated and extended those protections, replacing the original Civil Service Commission with the Office of Personnel Management, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Those three bodies now govern the professional standards, due-process rights, and collective bargaining framework of the workforce we all depend on, whether we think about it or not.

"The career civil servant is the person who is still there when the political appointees have left. She is the continuity of the republic — the institutional memory, the operational expertise, and the professional conscience of a government that must function regardless of which party won the last election."

II. The Accountability That Actually Exists

Here is what the critics get wrong: career civil servants are accountable. They operate under the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Office of Special Counsel, the Inspector General network present in every major federal agency, and the oversight authority of Congress. They can be disciplined. They can be removed for cause. Their performance is reviewed. Their agencies are audited.

What they cannot be — by statute — is removed simply because the new administration disagrees with their policy views or their work under a prior administration. That protection is codified in Title 5 of the United States Code. It is not a privilege. It is the legal architecture that keeps our government from being rebuilt from scratch every four years based on who won the last election — which is to say, it is the architecture that keeps the government functioning for all of us, not just for whoever is currently in power.

When that protection is eroded — when career professionals are removed or sidelined for political reasons — the institutional knowledge goes with them. The programs they managed begin to fail, not because the mission was wrong, but because the people who understood how to execute it are gone. We pay for that loss in delayed benefits, failed emergency responses, and agencies that spend the first two years of every new administration relearning what the last administration already knew.

III. The Difference Between Reform and Decapitation

We are committed to reforming the federal workforce. There are positions currently held by political appointees that should be held by career professionals — our Cabinet Consolidation briefing addresses that directly. Performance standards should be clearer and enforcement more consistent. The civil service system needs modernization, particularly in how it handles documented poor performance and how it builds succession pipelines for specialized expertise.

What we do not believe — and what the evidence does not support — is that the way to improve a workforce is to delegitimize it. When political leaders describe career civil servants as a conspiratorial force working against the will of elected officials, they are not holding government accountable. They are burning down the institutional capacity we will all need the moment the next crisis arrives.

A federal employee who believes she will be punished for doing her job correctly is not an effective employee. An agency whose staff has been purged of its most experienced people is not an effective agency. The rhetoric of bureaucratic conspiracy has real costs — in morale, in retention, in the quality of the daily work that holds this country together. We are the ones who pay those costs. All of us.

"We cannot demand accountability from a workforce we have spent years telling ourselves to distrust. Reform requires understanding what you are reforming — and respect for the people doing the work — before the first change is made."

IV. What We Owe Each Other

We are going to ask a great deal of each other in the years ahead. We are going to ask for patience with reforms that will take time to show results. We are going to ask for trust in institutions that have, in many cases, given us real reasons to be skeptical. That is a hard ask, and we know it.

What we owe in return is honesty. Not a defense of every failure. Not an excuse for every inefficiency. An honest account of what these institutions actually do, how they work, who staffs them, and what we lose when we treat the people inside them as the enemy.

The career civil servant is not the problem we are running against. She is part of the solution we are trying to build together. We owe her that recognition — in our language, in our policies, and in how we conduct ourselves as an administration. Not as a management strategy. As a matter of basic civic respect, one public servant to another.

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

2028 Presidential Campaign of

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

Sources

Primary Sources

U.S. Office of Personnel Management, FedScope Workforce Analytics, Federal Civilian Employment Data (Office of Personnel Management, updated quarterly). Available at: https://www.fedscope.opm.gov

U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Federal Register Final Rule: 'Upholding Civil Service Protections and Merit System Principles,' 89 Fed. Reg. 24982 (April 9, 2024). Available at: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/09/2024-06815/upholding-civil-service-protections-and-merit-system-principles

Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, Pub. L. 47-27, 22 Stat. 403 (January 16, 1883). National Archives Milestone Document. Available at: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pendleton-act

Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Pub. L. 95-454, 92 Stat. 1111 (October 13, 1978). Codified at 5 U.S.C. §§ 2301-2302 (Merit System Principles) and 5 U.S.C. § 7513 (Actions Against Employees).

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 'Overview of the Merit System Principles,' 5 U.S.C. § 2301(b) (Civil Service Reform Act of 1978). Available at: https://www.mspb.gov

Secondary Sources

Congressional Research Service, 'Federal Workforce Statistics Sources: OPM and OMB,' Report R43590 (Congressional Research Service, updated September 29, 2023). Available at: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R43590

Congressional Research Service, 'Current Federal Civilian Employment by State and Congressional District,' Report R47716 (Congressional Research Service, 2024). Available at: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47716

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 'Pendleton Act (1883),' Milestone Documents in the National Archives. Available at: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pendleton-act