Under the old “spoils system” that predated the establishment of a job-protected civil service, any bureaucrat could be fired by the president, and everyone understood that the president was therefore responsible for what the bureaucracy did.

Making the system responsive to electoral turnover also ensured political diversity. Today, the federal workforce is a deep-blue monoculture, and people like Marn’i Washington fit right in. 

But a federal workforce that turned over regularly would end up with roughly equal representation for the parties, so shenanigans like hers would be much less likely. Especially if federal employees were easier to fire.