Democracy, Now
“Generally, when the commander in chief walks in and says, ‘Done deal,’ (the Joint Chiefs of Staff) say, ‘Yes sir, Mr. President’.”
-- George W. Bush; conversation with Bob Woodward
“The general thrust of the Kennedy military policy was to assert a political domination of the military leadership, which is hostile to the traditions and practices of American government. John F. Kennedy was telling the Joint Chiefs that they must accept his judgment of military matters. The Presidential dictum was of course contrary to law and should have been disregarded by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If the military leader is willing to submit the professional integrity, morale, and effectiveness of his service or services to the adverse judgments of inexperienced politicians, he is not fit to hold office.”
-- Major General Thomas Lane; The Leadership of President Kennedy
In my opinion, a modern President of the United States has more power to do “bad” (damage to our Constitutional Democracy) than “good.” I base my opinion largely upon what has happened in my “modern” lifetime, which has spanned 11 presidents -- six republicans, and five Democrats. I would also speculate that I read more than the average citizen, including from my personal library that contains hundreds of books both by and about those 11 and many other presidents; my library also contains hundreds of other books on Senators, Representatives, the Supreme Court and other federal courts, and a wide range of other social-political issues.
For sake of discussion, let’s say that a good and sincere person is elected to the White House. She/he faces numerous problems from the giddy-up: the policies of the last President; international and domestic issues; and a whole host of difficulties that are not even part of the constitutional system that aims to balance power between the three branches of the federal government with systematic tensions.
Even within the executive branch, a President inherits a huge number of entrenched, non-elected bureaucrats, who may not share the new President’s vision or goals. It would be impossible for any human being to exercise a wholesome control over all of these groups and individuals. Even when we consider one of our nation’s worst bureaucrats -- who was very “high profile” -- we see how a J. Edgar Hoover held the presidency in contempt: the occupants of the Oval Office come and go, Hoover told his closest associates, but the Director of the FBI remains.
Next, as highlighted in the above quote from General Lane, there are those in the military who -- not unlike Hoover -- view the President as a temporary occupant of an office that is fully dependent upon the military. If one were to search hard enough, I’m confident that they could find some evidence that suggests that “war” has been a common feature in America’s way of life for a significant amount of the 11 most recent presidencies. More, a more intensive study could find evidence of an undemocratic, even unconstitutional amount of friction between the heads of the military and a few recent US Presidents.
Likewise, there has been similar tensions between Presidents and intelligence agencies. That is not to imply that the relationship between the Executive Offices and intelligence agencies is always defined by tension; indeed, I recall that as vice president, Bush the Elder got along rather well with intelligence agencies and military men like that noble patriot Oliver North.
In fact, President Reagan had VP Bush and Patriot North update the plans first created during Ike’s presidency, for a way to continue government leadership in times of dire national emergency. Bush and North’s updated plan, however, took all power away from two branches of the federal government -- at least temporarily -- and placed them in the hands of an expanded version of the executive branch. This expansion included placing some of the heads of the largest industries in power in this curious, unelected executive cell. And as Senator Robert Byrd’s powerful 2004 book “Losing America” documents, on 9-11-2001, VP Cheney -- and not President George W. Bush -- put this “shadow government” in control. At the time he wrote the book, Senator Byrd noted that Cheney’s order had not been rescinded.
Corporations do not always do everything they can to support a president -- or any other politician -- unless they are convinced that politician will at least go to bat for them. This is not to imply that any US President has failed to go to bat for corporate interests in recent times. One might have to go back to JFK versus the steel companies for a solid example.
And these days, especially thanks to that honorable hero Dick Cheney, corporations play a very large role in running the military and intelligence groups that secure our homeland. In fact, there are many para-military and intelligence groups now operating for private corporations -- though entirely at the tax-payers expense. And the Cheneyites were even thoughtful enough to remove most government oversight of these intensely patriotic entities.
I’m not writing this to support or oppose Barack Obama. Instead, I hope that it serves to illustrate why even the most decent , sincere, and talented president cannot, by him- or herself, breath new life into the decaying corpse of America’s Constitutional Democracy. The only hope is that the citizens of this country begin to think, to act, and to live in the manner prescribed by the Founding Fathers (despite their very real faults) and the other great leaders (both in and out of government ).
Fight the Good Fight!
H2O Man
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