Back when he was at the Boston Globe, Charlie Savage did some crack investigative reporting on how the Bush-era political appointees dismantled the safeguards against politicized hiring–something no previous administration had done.
The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.
In an acknowledgment of the department’s special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants — not political appointees.
Ah, but what does “civil rights experience” mean?
Hires with traditional civil rights backgrounds — either civil rights litigators or members of civil rights groups — have plunged. Only 19 of the 45 lawyers hired since 2003 in those three sections were experienced in civil rights law, and of those, nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.
No wonder former Voting Section Chief John Tanner remarked that prior to the Bush administration, you had to be a “civil rights person” to get hired in the division. Afterwards, it helped to be an anti-civil rights person.
It’s worth noting that the safeguards against politicized hiring were reinstalled by a Republican, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, following the departure of his disgraced predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.
