Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

aedens wrote: > Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change.

> http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/1 ... paign=8315

> Glennon’s critique sounds like an outsider’s take, even a radical
> one. In fact, he is the quintessential insider: He was legal
> counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant
> to various congressional committees, as well as to the State
> Department. “National Security and Double Government” comes
> favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department,
> State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he’s not a
> conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart,
> hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are
> responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful
> oversight to rein them in.

> How exactly has double government taken hold? And what can be done
> about it? Glennon spoke with Ideas from his office at Tufts’
> Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This interview has been
> condensed and edited.

> IDEAS: Where does the term “double government” come from?

> GLENNON:It comes from Walter Bagehot’s famous theory, unveiled in
> the 1860s. Bagehot was the scholar who presided over the birth of
> the Economist magazine—they still have a column named after
> him. Bagehot tried to explain in his book “The English
> Constitution” how the British government worked. He suggested that
> there are two sets of institutions. There are the “dignified
> institutions,” the monarchy and the House of Lords, which people
> erroneously believed ran the government. But he suggested that
> there was in reality a second set of institutions, which he
> referred to as the “efficient institutions,” that actually set
> governmental policy. And those were the House of Commons, the
> prime minister, and the British cabinet.

> IDEAS: What evidence exists for saying America has a double
> government?

> GLENNON:I was curious why a president such as Barack Obama would
> embrace the very same national security and counterterrorism
> policies that he campaigned eloquently against. Why would that
> president continue those same policies in case after case after
> case? I initially wrote it based on my own experience and personal
> knowledge and conversations with dozens of individuals in the
> military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies of our
> government, as well as, of course, officeholders on Capitol Hill
> and in the courts. And the documented evidence in the book is
> substantial—there are 800 footnotes in the book.

> IDEAS: Why would policy makers hand over the national-security
> keys to unelected officials?

> GLENNON: It hasn’t been a conscious decision....Members of
> Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the
> national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly
> concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong
> judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to
> experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend
> to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national
> security policy.