The Economist UK - 07.09.2019

36 United States The EconomistSeptember 7th 2019

2 Stier, the federal it workforce has five

times as many people over the age of 60 as

under 30, and most of the $95bn spent on

federal itgoes to patching and maintain-

ing ancient systems. And while low and

mid-level government workers earn sala-

ries comparable to or better than what they

could make in the private sector, senior of-

ficials earn far less. Government workers

must also endure hiring freezes, furloughs

and government shutdowns.

Until fairly recently federal workers did

at least receive non-monetary compensa-

tion, such as reputational boosts, or the

satisfaction of contributing to the com-

mon good. Teresa Gerton, who heads the

National Academy of Public Administra-

tion, says this bargain has started to fray.

“We saw it during the shutdown last year.

The impact that had on the morale of the

current and future public workforce was

devastating.” Nor does serving for the most

divisive president in modern history pro-

vide the same social compensation as serv-

ing a Reagan or a Clinton.

Morale in the intelligence community

and State Department—both frequent tar-

gets of Mr Trump’s ire—is lower than the

Badwater Basin. Intelligence officers usu-

ally battle to get their work included in the

president’s daily brief. Today, says a source

familiar with American intelligence, they

fight to stay off it, lest their analysis set the

president off because it clashes with his

fixed beliefs. Former foreign-service offi-

cers (fsos) complain about a lack of direc-

tion and months of painstaking work being

nullified by a presidential tweet. In recent

weeks two ex-fsos have written op-eds in

newspapers explaining why they could no

longer serve this White House. That is rare-

ly done: fsos understand they will serve

administrations whose policies they may

dislike, but they represent something

greater than themselves, and few slam the

door on the way out. Often the people leav-

ing have good offers in the private sector

and are the sort of people that a govern-

ment should want to retain.

Nor is the problem limited to departing

personnel. Mr Trump’s penchant for in-

stalling people on an acting basis rather

than formally nominating them, the

unusually high number of unfilled posi-

tions, the headspinning rate of turnover

among senior staff and the number of

nominees he has had to withdraw—65,

compared with 34 for Mr Obama at this

point in his presidency—render govern-

ment unstable. Agencies’ attention turns

toward senior-staff turnover rather than

their missions; recruits do not know who

they will work for in six months.

Of course, not everyone in government

is running for the exits. Mr Trump has

plenty of fans among immigration police,

whose former acting head praised the pres-

ident for “taking the handcuffs off”. Mo-

rale, measured in annual surveys, is also

comparatively high at the departments of

Transportation and Health and Human

Services, agencies that Mr Trump has ei-

ther boosted or ignored.

If the Trump administration is upset

about the hollowing out of American gov-

ernment, it does not show. The Agriculture

Department is losing researchers after Son-

ny Perdue, the secretary, announced that

two research agencies would move to Kan-

sas City, not an unreasonable request in it-

self, but one which some see as a way to

sideline inconvenient personnel. Mick

Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of

staff, celebrated their departure at a Repub-

lican fundraiser, calling it “a wonderful

way to streamline government”. But there

is a difference between streamlining gov-

ernment and just not governing, which is

what seems to be happening in swathes of

America’s single-largest organisation. 7

T

he mid-termelections in 2018 filled

quietly and without notable controver-

sy nearly all of the 435 seats in the House of

Representatives. The election in North Car-

olina’s ninth congressional district was an

exception. In the ten months since last No-

vember’s contest the district has been the

focus of several trials for election fraud, a

restructuring of the state election supervi-

sory board and the departure of a discredit-

ed would-be congressman. After Septem-

ber 10th, if all goes according to plan,

residents of the ninth district will at last

have a representative in Congress. The race

is close. In a district that has sent Republi-

cans to Washington in every election since

1963, that alone is remarkable.

The 2018 election in nc-9, which

stretches from suburban Charlotte

through the backwoods of the Tar Heel

State, was invalidated in February 2019

after campaign operatives for the Republi-

can candidate, Mark Harris, were accused

of falsifying absentee votes. Leslie McRae

Dowless, a low-level campaign organiser

and the mastermind of the operation, has

since been indicted for obstruction of jus-

tice, conspiracy to obstruct justice and un-

lawful possession of absentee ballots. Mr

Dowless allegedly ran a similar scheme in

the 2016 general election and the 2018

primary, in which Mr Harris defeated the

incumbent Republican, Robert Pittenger.

Mr Pittenger, who now works to educate

parliamentarians in allied countries about

surveillance, counterterrorism and intelli-

gence-sharing, blames Mr Dowless for his

loss in last year’s primary. “It was all fraud,”

he says. Yet although he misses represent-

ing his fellow Carolinians in Washing-

ton—“I loved the job”—he did not seek the

Republican nomination for next week’s

special election. Instead the party picked

Dan Bishop, a Republican state senator, to

run for the seat.

In more normal times Mr Bishop ought

to be a shoo-in. Yet with every election

seemingly a referendum on President Do-

nald Trump, these are not those times. The

tightness of the race is not only a Trump

phenomenon, though. nc-9—which was

once as friendly to Republicans as a church

picnic on the lawn of a country club to cele-

brate Barry Goldwater’s birthday—has been

becoming steadily more competitive for a

decade as its fields and trees have been re-

placed by suburbs and parking lots. In 2006

voters in the district gave the Republican

candidate a vote share that was 20 points

higher than the nationwide Republican

tally. In 2018 the district was leaning to the

right by just 2 percentage points (see chart).

Mr Harris defeated his 2018 Democratic

challenger Dan McCready, an ex-marine, by

a mere 900 votes last year (and that in-

cludes the cheating).

In light of the seat’s newfound compet-

itiveness, money has flooded in. According

to number-crunching by the Centre for Re-

sponsive Politics, a non-partisan research

group, Mr McCready has raised $4.7m,

whereas Mr Bishop has raised $1.9m. Ac-

cording to political polling, the race re-

mains close. One survey from Harper Poll-

ing found Mr McCready beating Mr Bishop

by four percentage points—within the

margin of error—while another survey

from the Democratic firm algResearch

found the two candidates tied on 46%

each. McCready appears to have a slight

edge, but the election could go either way.

With luck, this time nobody will stuff the

ballot boxes. 7

WASHINGTON, DC

There is more to the special election

than presidential approval ratings

North Carolina’s election

First in flight

North heads south

Source: The MIT Election and Data Science Lab

United States, Republican vote share in

North Carolina’s 9th congressional district

relative to national vote share, percentage points

0

5

10

15

20

25

1990 94 98 2002 06 10 14 18