It also shifts the balance towards career bureaucrats. And maybe that works. Two sides of experienced people, both with expertise in the domain, arguing it out

It also shifts the balance towards career bureaucrats. And maybe that works. Two sides of experienced people, both with expertise in the domain, arguing it out. The final decision gets made by a person who doesn't have a vested interest in either one. Maintaining the balance is, of course, hard-to-impossible. The US bureaucracy has long been accused of being a "deep state" with its own motivations. They relied on continuity to maintain an interest in the public's interest, but they are not part of the hiring process for the department heads. In the past, those department heads did not disrupt that continuity, but that no longer holds. So any merit that there might have been in the civil service's neutrality, that is going or gone.