How a Fatal Kidney Disease Made a U.S. President an Unlikely Reformer

In 1883, President Chester Arthur signed the most important government reform bill into law (Pendleton Act). The law changed the “spoils” system, whereby victorious presidents fired federal workers, replaced them with supporters, and extracted “assessments” from their pay for more politicking.

Arthur was as unlikely to support these reforms as President Trump is likely to approve Robert Mueller’s investigation. Arthur had worked the spoils system to near perfection.

Here is the explanation from— of all people, urology researchers, Daniel Canter, Hailey Silverii Canter and Stephen Carriere. I quote hereafter.

The radical transformation of President Chester Alan Arthur, from a political to civil service reformer could be linked to his fatal diagnosis of Bright’s disease (chronic kidney disease) early on in his presidency.

 President Arthur became the 21st President of the United States in 1881 after James Garfield succumbed to an assassin’s bullet. Before being chosen as Garfield’s vice-president, Arthur was known as the consummate political insider during an era that was marked by political patronage or the spoils system. Thus, when Garfield died and Arthur assumed the presidential mantle, many considered him to have little interest in political reform. The etiology of Arthur’s transformation from insider to reformer is unclear, however, early on in his administration, Arthur learned that he had Bright’s disease, a progressive and, at that time, uniformly fatal form of renal parenchymal disease.

While Arthur’s role as a political reformer could be ascribed to his impending mortality, the extent of Arthur’s uremia, which resulted from progression of his Bright’s disease, may have moderated his temperament, softened deliberations, and hastened his signing of the Pendleton Act into law.

President Arthur’s motivation in signing The Pendleton Act remains unclear given his early history, but it is conceivable that the diagnosis and/or the effects of Bright’s disease contributed to his uncharacteristic action of signing into law such landmark legislation.