Politics: The Spoils System- Its Meaning, History, and Importance Today

Hopefully at some point in history class, you learn about the spoils system regarding politics. It is based on the phrase “to the victory belong the spoils.” It is one of the worst ways to run an office of any political kind as you can run into issues with quid pro quo this way. Supposedly, it is not done anymore, at least legally. But I should explain it to you nonetheless. I don’t think that it has gone away entirely so I might as well talk about it.

What the spoils system means is basically that if you help get someone elected, they would then give you a job because of this. This could happen with any number of jobs and any way that you want to work towards the future in office. All you have to do is get someone elected and then it seems like they owe you if they take part in the spoils system.

The history of it started officially when we had one of the most polarizing presidents in US history: Andrew Jackson. He gave a lot of friends jobs and other people benefited from him being president that wouldn’t have benefitted if he hadn’t gotten elected. William Henry Harrison sought to end it, but wound up dead within a month of taking office. It was ultimately when it came to the presidency of James Garfield that we got to more of the issues with it. A man by the name of Charles Guitau thought that he helped Garfield get elected. When Charles was refused a job in the new administration, he suddenly changed and wound up killing Garfield. This was the catalyst that lead to such a thing being undone, or so we hoped, at least.

What makes more sense instead of what the spoils system does is instead have a merit based system where people who earned their way to the top actually get there. Only people who get what they should from hard work and merit should get their way there, not people who simply helped whoever won the election.

It is still a problem today, only now it is called the political machine. You help the right person, they help you. Only it isn’t based on hard work. It is based on just banking the right person and hoping that they bank you back.

The importance today with the Trump administration is why I’m doing this blog post. You see, there have been people in his administration who are or were there at some point all based on the fact that they helped get him where he is. Betsy Devos, who had spent a lot of money on helping the Trump campaign and has little education experience, got to be the Secretary of Education. The former senator who endorsed Trump first whose name I don’t recall got to be the attorney general. And now we have a huge Trump supporter with conflicts of interest against the Postal Service as Postmaster General. This man, Louis DeJoy, has actively worked in order to sabotage the very place he works at simply due to the spoils system.

In conclusion, this system of government sucks and clearly doesn’t work that well for the rest of the country, although it certainly works well for those who benefit from the spoils. It should not take place at all and should be a part of this country’s horrible past. But it isn’t right now as we are left with the horrible affects of the ineffective people who got where they are simply by being the supporter of the person who won office.