Patronage—the ancient art of rewarding loyalty over competence—has been America’s real hiring system since Andrew Jackson turned the federal government into a thank-you note dispenser for campaign volunteers, spawning nepotism (hire your relatives), cronyism (hire your golf buddies), and networking (hire your golf buddies but act sophisticated about it). The whole apparatus got so deranged it eventually produced a rejected job applicant who assassinated a president, which nudged Congress toward the radical notion that qualifications might matter, though not enough to actually kill the underlying system—just dress it in better clothes. The honest truth patronage has always known is that relationships are the real currency of employment, skills are merely the cover charge, and somewhere right now a guy who made three phone calls for the right campaign is getting onboarded for a job he cannot spell while your perfectly formatted résumé rots in an HR portal.

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