Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Bureaucracy and Politics. On USS Clueless you'll find this essay, on the relationship between the White House and State.  It's well written, but suffers from a couple of fatal flaws.  Den Beste makes the argument that the State Dept is responsible for implementing policy that comes down from the President and his staff.  That's true.  But he takes it to an extreme: He says that the State Dept shouldn't be executing any form of independent thought, that they should be implementing policy no matter what.  This is simply patently false.  There is a balance of power between a bureaucracy and a political entity, such as the White House.  It is imperative that this balance of power exist.  The collective experience of the State Dept must not be lost, but it must not be allowed to simply do what it wants. The basic mechanism is the resignation.  If there are men and women of good character in the State who disagree sufficiently with the administration, they will resign rather than do what they know or feel to be wrong.  The White House isn't going to want to take too many actions that will cause resignations of staff at State.  It seems that the current tension that exists between State and the White House is normal and in fact very healthy.  There are those within the State that feel that the current policy is wrong-headed and other paths should be followed.  To silence these honestly held views is foolish beyond belief. Why Den Beste is advocating some sort of blind allegiance is beyond me, unless we are looking at it from the standpoint of partisan power demands.  It then becomes quite understandable; you don't want those nasty, professional disagreements to make their way into public view. 11:46:16 PM     | comment [] | trackback []