Who a President Hires Tells You Who a President Is

Merit, Service, and the Hiring Philosophy of This Administration

Campaign Briefing: Structural Reforms for Trustworthy Governance

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

April 9, 2026

I. The Question Nobody Asks Until It's Too Late

When a new administration takes office, the public watches the Cabinet announcements.

They read the biographies. They form impressions. And then, over the next several months, four thousand more people quietly fill positions throughout the federal government — deputy secretaries, administrators, regional directors, chiefs of staff, policy advisors — and most of those names never appear in a headline.

Those people run the government. They make the day-to-day decisions that determine whether agencies function. They set the tone for whether career staff feel protected or persecuted, whether programs serve the public or serve the administration, whether the mission holds or drifts.

Who a president hires tells you who a president is. This briefing describes who this administration will hire, how, and why.

II. The Standard Is Simple

Merit. Demonstrated through a career of public service, professional accomplishment, and institutional knowledge. Not celebrity. Not loyalty. Not the size of a campaign contribution or the proximity of a family relationship.

Every appointment below Cabinet level in this administration will go through a structured, merit-based process. An inventory of all presidential appointment positions will be compiled before inauguration — every deputy, undersecretary, administrator, commissioner, and director across the federal government — and each will be analyzed to determine whether presidential appointment is required by statute or whether it is simply habit. Positions not required by law to be political appointments will be converted to career service tracks, filled by people who have spent their lives mastering the work.

For positions that remain politically appointed, three qualified candidates will be presented through a structured process. Selection will be based on documented qualification, not on access or allegiance.

III. Building the Pipeline

This reform is not only about who gets appointed today. It is about who is available to be appointed — and promoted — tomorrow.

Too many federal employees feel trapped. They enter public service with genuine commitment, develop real expertise over years of difficult and consequential work, and then watch political appointees arrive above them, learn the job on their time, and depart before anything gets finished. The institutional knowledge that employee spent a decade building is treated as a resource to be consumed, not an asset to be developed.

This administration will change that. Career pipelines within each department will be strengthened, formalized, and made transparent. A GS-5 entering federal service today should be able to see, clearly, how a career of demonstrated performance could lead to senior executive leadership. Advancement will depend on merit alone. Promotion boards will exist to verify competence — not to reward loyalty.

The people who run the government's programs should be the people who know those programs best. That is not a novel idea. It is simply the one we stopped applying.

IV. What This Means for the People Being Served

The veteran whose benefits application moves through an agency staffed by professionals who have been doing the work for years gets a different experience than the veteran whose application goes through an agency that has been reorganized three times in four years around the priorities of successive political appointees.

The family applying for housing assistance, the small business seeking a regulatory determination, the community navigating a federal grant process — all of them are directly affected by whether the people on the other side of that interaction know what they are doing and are going to be there long enough to see it through.

Public service is not a transition stop between more prestigious private sector roles. It is a calling. This administration will staff accordingly — and will build the structures that make public service a career worth committing to.

The presidency will set policy. 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. 

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN