It appears that the Clinton administration is going to attempt to defy the label. Clearly, the duck isn t nearly lame enough. On the brighter side, during the transition hundreds of thousands of politically appointed government workers are losing their job and their power to intimidate and push people around. The lifetime bureaucrats are free to openly despise their politically appointed masters. Once their palatial offices are vacated, the lifetimers can even desecrate the appointees pictures.
Many political appointees attempt to convert their political jobs to permanent jobs.
The incoming political appointees, thousands of them, are not yet wholly corrupted. When it is a Republican regime, there are even a few young idealists among them. Some may bring their copies of Mises s Human Action with them to remind them of the core principles of a free society. It turns out that some of the money goes to non-profit organizations in DC, which helps explain why so many are so slavish to the party in power. The dependency relationship between government and the intellectual classes in Washington begins very early-even before the inauguration.