Impeachment Hearings: Swamp versus Deep State

As we all know, Donald Trump ran on a promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C.  He and his supporters regularly blame his troubles on the "deep state."  So the question is, are the deep state and the swamp the same thing?

What got me thinking about this was the impeachment hearings.  At the impeachment hearings, Gordon Sondland stood out, not just because he was not a note taker and therefore dependent on notes taken by the others, or because he was the only witness who had actually talked to Trump.  He was also the only witness who was not a career federal employee.*  Instead, he was a hotelier who had gotten his appointment by making a million dollar donation to Trump's inauguration.

"Deep state," so far as I can tell, means all career federal employees.  It presumably does not mean foot soldiers signed up for a single term of enlistment because they are not careerists, but it does include the military brass, as evidenced by Trump's denunciation of military brass as "deep state" when they tried a Navy SEAL for war crimes.  There is room for some doubt whether the "deep state" includes rank and file career federal employees (military or civilian), especially ones who support Trump.  But certainly any career federal employee far enough up the hierarchy to have any real authority or discretion would be "deep state."  That would include all the impeachment witnesses except Sondland.

So, Sondland was the only impeachment witness who was not part of the deep state.  But is he also the only one who is not part of the swamp?

I have yet to hear anyone rigorously define the "swamp."  I did follow Kevin Drum's Swamp Watch,  keeping track of which members of the original Trump cabinet were members of the swamp.  (Answer: most).  By his definition, all Washington insiders were swamp.  This included career federal employees and anyone who in the present or past held any federal office, elective or appointive, military or civilian.  It would presumably also include lobbyists, but they proved too toxic to handle.  (And probably didn't want to give up their lucrative gigs to slum it in government). 

Drum also defined state governors as part of the swamp, but not state Attorney Generals.  I can't say I follow his logic there.

He did not classify business and industry leaders as part of the swamp because they were not part of DC politics, but made an exception for Wall Street, presumably because Trump implausibly ran against it.  He also included Rex Tillerson, not because the Exxon CEO is part of the swamp, but because he got the job on the recommendation of Robert Gates and Condolezza Rice, former office holders now working as consultants:

So Tillerson pays Gates and Rice for “consulting,” whatever that means, and they in turn recommend him to Trump for the State Department. Welcome to the swamp, ladies and gentlemen.

Much the same goes for Sondland.  He is clearly not part of the "swamp" in the sense of being part of DC politics, but he got his appointment by making a million dollar contribution to the Trump inauguration, a perfectly legal and longstanding, bipartisan form of corruption that is almost a standard way of doing business.  That's not part of the deep state, but it sure sounds swampy to me.

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*Some of the others were retirees who had gone back to work for the government, but all the others had made a career at it.