Where there's fire ... there's fire

For most of the 19th century, federal employment was based on the spoils system. But when a disillusioned federal office seeker, Charles Guiteau, shot and mortally wounded President James Garfield in 1881, the tide turned in favor of civil service reform.

In 1883, President Chester Arthur signed the Pendleton Act into law. At the time of its enactment, the federal workforce was 132,000. Today it's 2.7 million, not including the military. The question is whether, after 130 years, it continues to serve the nation well. The evidence says no.

There is no doubt that storm clouds hang over President Barack Obama and his administration. They are increasingly obsessed with damage control concerning the emerging scandals respecting Benghazi, the IRS, and the Justice Department's secret subpoena for the phone records of Associated Press reporters and a secret search warrant to obtain private emails from Fox News reporter James Rosen, branding him as a co-conspirator under the 1917 Espionage Act.

How's it going to end? Will the president, whose political career thus far has been blessed with extraordinary luck, escape unblemished? Will the revelations to come emasculate his ability to govern? Will he be driven from office?

It's too early to tell, but I do know this: The problems that beset the executive branch of the federal government and the military are systemic, growing worse and go far beyond what lurks in the Benghazi, IRS and DOJ scandals.

The truth is that the government is so big, so complex and so insulated that its managers, from the president down, have lost control of the enterprise. Instead of managing, they careen from crisis to crisis in the hope that you and I won't realize how desperate the situation has become. Yet, between 2008-2011, the senior executives awarded each other bonuses totaling $340 million! Sound like a new spoils system?

Here's the tip of this chilling iceberg. We know the full truth about Benghazi remains obscure. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is widely admired for being a tireless and indefatigable workhorse. We know she traveled to 112 nations and logged more than a million miles in the air. But when did burning record amounts of jet fuel become the standard for diplomatic accomplishment?

Yet, uncharacteristically and cleverly, she was too tired to appear on the Sunday talk shows and answer questions about the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi. Instead, Susan Rice foolishly volunteered to be the patsy and took the hit.

We know that the tick-tock among the CIA, the State Department and the White House on her talking points memo had more to do with bureaucratic infighting and damage control just before a presidential election than it did with what did and did not happen in Benghazi. We also know that the conclusion of the Accountability Review Board, established to investigate the Benghazi incident and led by former ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Adm. Mike Mullen, focused responsibility on underlings at State and never interviewed Clinton.

We know that the IRS has targeted conservative-leaning groups in respect of their application for 501(c)(4) tax status. We know that commissioners of the IRS were aware of the practice, as were the secretary of the Treasury and senior staffers in the White House.

We know that Lois Lerner, former head of the targeting unit at the IRS, has refused to testify before Congress, and that former IRS commissioners Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller have testified that they broke no law and have not apologized. We don't yet know who ordered this abusive and intrusive practice and who else may have known about it. We know that the DOJ has been relentless in its pursuit of national security leaks and that it believes that justifies its assault on the First Amendment protection of free speech and a free press in the AP and Rosen cases.

But there is much more. What about the escapades of the president's Secret Service advance team with prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia? What about the one- to two-year backlog in approving disability claims for wounded American servicemen because of a turf battle between the Army and the VA over the needed computer system to process the claims?

What about the feds working at the Dover Mortuary who disposed of deceased American servicemen's remains in landfills? What about the thousands of unmarked and mismarked gravesites at Arlington National Cemetery and other military cemeteries around the nation?

What about the General Services Administration supervisors and staff who partied at public expense in Vegas? What about turning the job of IRS implementation of Obamacare over to a person known to have been involved in the IRS' targeting of conservative groups?

What about the military's role in spiriting Major Nidal Hasan from Washington to Fort Hood in Texas where he is now charged with the murder of 13 individuals? What about the decision to try him for workplace violence rather than as a terrorist?

And what about the meteoric rise in sexual assaults in the military, including by those who are charged with preventing such assaults?

All of this demonstrates that the civilian and military chains of command are broken. Good order and discipline have been replaced with disorder and chaos. Even more disconcerting is what we don't know because the media and whistle-blowers have yet to reveal it.

Americans can no longer trust the executive branch or the military. The safeguards put in place long ago to ensure that trust no longer work adequately. We need a new Pendleton Act.

The Shadow's distributing whistles in Washington, but Goldman can be reached at: EmailMe