Americans tend to think they have the best system of government in the world. Yet from the outside, one aspect of it seems insane. Most functioning democracies have a permanent civil service that is legally obliged to be politically neutral. It takes orders from elected politicians but is protected from subversion by protocols of parliamentary accountability and the difficulty of firing its members. In the US, there is of course a vast permanent public service of two million employees. But the top layers of each department and institution are made up of four thousand presidential appointees. Not only is there no continuity of management, but chaos is easy to create. All an incoming president needs to do is appoint people to these agencies who should not be allowed anywhere near them—or indeed appoint no one at all. There is in the US system an opportunity to abuse power by simply declining to use it.