The spoils system has been around as long as government. You scratch my back, and I’ll give you a posh government post.

It even played a part in the assassination of President James Garfield, when a delusional man sought revenge on the president when he refused to grant the man an ambassadorship in exchange for help getting him elected.

So this story would hardly even be worth mentioning, save for the soaring hopey changey “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” rhetoric of President Feckless…

Even with his pledges to change government, Obama is following the tradition of his predecessors by offering some ambassadorships to top campaign backers, including four of the 12 nominations this week. The president acknowledged in a news conference in January that donors might get plum postings.

“The practice of rewarding donors is a remnant of the spoils system that we abolished in the civil service,” said career diplomat Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former ambassador to Afghanistan. “It is a dismal testimony to the importance of money in our electoral system.”

The whole thing makes me feel sorry for Rod Blagojevich. Selling a Senate seat is illegal, but selling an ambassadorship is just business as usual? How’s a good civil servant supposed to keep up with the rules? It’s all so confusing.