“If you have a job in your department that can’t be done by a Democrat, then abolish the job.”
—ANDREW JACKSON
“Patronage is the sword and cannon by which war may be made on the liberty of the human race.”
—JOHN TYLER
“There is no class of our population by whom I am annoyed so much, or for whom I entertain a more sovereign contempt, than for the professed office-seekers who have besieged me ever since I have been in the presidential office.”
—JAMES K. POLK
“The people of the United States have no idea of the extent to which the President’s time, which ought to be devoted to more important matters, is occupied by the voracious and often unprincipled persons who seek office.”
—JAMES K. POLK
“Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.”
—MILLARD FILLMORE
“All patronage is perilous to men of real ability or merit. It aids only those who lack other claims to public support.”
—RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
“This dreadful, damnable office-seeking hangs over me and surrounds me—and makes me feel like resigning.”
—GROVER CLEVELAND
“This office-seeking is a disease. It is even catching.”
—GROVER CLEVELAND
“Machine politics and the spoils system are as much an enemy of a proper and efficient government system of civil service as the boll weevil is of the cotton crop.”
—WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
“Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.”
—WOODROW WILSON
“A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
“Patronage is almost a wicked word. By itself it could well-nigh defeat democracy.”
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER