Abraham Lincoln Quotes
Not one man recommended by me has yet been appointed to any thing, little or big, except a few who had no opposition.
Complaining about his lack of influence over patronage jobs:
Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (Republican, IL), May 1849
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2nd Baronet Peel. He was then the Chief Secretary of Ireland and only 26 years of age. Patronage jobs, cronyism, and corruption was then extreme in Irish politics.
Upon learning that his son, John Quincy Adams, had been chosen President of the United States, the former President remarked:
For "Politics makes strange bedfellows," see Charles Dudley Warner
The George W. Bush administration, violated the Civil Service Law and the traditions of the Justice Department by making hiring and assignment decisions on the basis of political ideology and participation. Making the situation worse, the political people who were put in senior positions of authority were often not very well qualified and far less so than the people they ended up supervising and outranking. The inspector general of the Justice Department, after being stonewalled, finally uncovered the mess and Monica Goodling, one of the worst offenders, was barred from ever working for the Justice Department again.
We shall have a system where When Roosevelt became Police Commissioner, virtually every appointment, promotion, and disciplinary action was controlled politically. Nothing could be more shocking to the police and the politicians than Roosevelt’s statement. But he implemented that policy and the result developed into the finest urban police department in the country. The political influence however returned a few decades later.
Greeley, one of the most powerful and influential newspaper Editors of his day was always bitter that he did not get a patronage job. Newspapers did not make much money then and patronage and cronyism was even more rife than in modern times.
He was joking. No government position was ever offered to him.
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
