With the election behind us, and inauguration day looming, it’s now hiring and firing season in DC. We’ve certainly seen the news of Presidential Appointments, but there’s so much more below the surface. Transition season essentially amounts to a massive, district-wide game of musical chairs as elected and appointed officials shuffle around, in and out of government, across branches and agencies. What you don’t see, though, is the large cadre of staffers shifting around beneath them.
A job on the Hill as a staffer suffers from the classic paradox of needing Hill experience in order to get a job on the Hill to earn experience. This means that the principal pipeline for staffer jobs is by joining as an intern early on and moving up.
What I didn’t know is just how partisan this whole process is. Once you’ve worked on the staff of one party, you’re pretty much locked in. I’ve been told that switching parties as a staffer is rare and often career-ending, which alarms me because staffers usually arrive right out of college. I’d be pretty disappointed if I were held to my college-era political ideology for the rest of my career… (shout out to the Albion College Libertarians!).
The result is a system that rewards loyalty since career advancement can only happen within the tribal party structure. That’s not to say that staffers aren’t promoted based on merit, but loyalty is an essential discriminator—meaning we only want good ideas from “our team.”
Contrast that with the State Department, where civil servants focus on implementing policies effectively, no matter who is in charge. Or the judiciary, where law clerks routinely work for justices with opposing ideologies, knowing that rigorous debate sharpens everyone’s thinking. I believe these institutions are successful because they prioritize professionalism and intellectual diversity over tribal loyalty.
This contrast between partisanship and professionalism isn’t just a Washington issue. Vermont’s political culture has long valued independence, and no figure embodies that better than Senator Bernie Sanders. While his ideology may not align with every Vermonter, his ability to remain authentic and operate outside traditional party structures has earned him broad respect. Yet even someone as independent as Sanders has had to push against the current of partisanship, highlighting just how deeply entrenched these systems are.
I certainly don’t have all the answers, but it seems evident to me that the more time we spend fighting each other, the less time we’re spending solving problems. If we let that tribalism get baked into the core of our institutions, we’re destined for a lot of missed opportunities.