El Comandante used his Machiavellian bag of tricks to fuel a spoils system and political juggernaut that Venezuelans worshiped.
Its revocation left those and all branches of the civil service to be the prey of the spoils system.
Since then every administration has succumbed, in whole or in part, to the spoils system.
For seventy or eighty years these various positions had been under what is commonly called the "spoils system."
If Jackson did not inaugurate the spoils system, he at least gave it a mission.
He regarded the measure as a part of the "spoils system" which marked Jackson's departure from the policy of his predecessors.
It is often said that Jefferson established the “spoils system” by his changes in the civil service.
The spoils system had become habitual and traditional in American public life by sixty years of practice.
For the first time since the establishment of the spoils system a new party came into control of the government.
The vicious aspects of the spoils system did not appear for a generation.
The practice of appointing applicants to public offices as a reward for their loyalty to the political party in power. The term comes from a statement by a senator in the 1830s: “To the victor belong the spoils.” Reform of the system commenced in the 1880s with the introduction of merit as the basis of appointment to office. (See James A. Garfield, machine politics, and patronage.)
