William Marcy of New York. The senator’s boast became a platitude and provided a label for the politics of the era: the spoils system. The spoils system propagated like a pernicious weed.

Trump wants the federal government to be more immediately responsive to his political aims, and there have been comparisons to the spoils system put in place by his presidential hero, Andrew Jackson.

Those of us who are history-minded have immediately thought of this as threatening a return to the “spoils system” of the 19th century, which was more or less ended by enactment of the ...

During that era, nearly every commander in chiefs’ administration was committed to the preservation of the spoils system — the tradition of sweeping political patronage. The cronyism of the ...

In many ways, Trump is seeking to return the country to the spoils system that existed in the 19th century. Pioneered by President Andrew Jackson, that system awarded tens of thousands of civil ...