Democracy or Bureaucracy?
Hyperboliclink. On The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, a former CIA analyst named Ray McGovern argued that because, in his opinion, the policies of the Bush Administration "are not the America [he] pledged to serve," CIA officials had a moral obligation to leak classified information to the press and to do everything in their power to oppose administration policy. Take a moment to think about the implications of that position.

If CIA employees disagree with the policies set by the President in consultation with the Congress, they have to right to undermine said policy. That's an extraordinary statement and, coming from someone who used to "serve" in the CIA, a profoundly frightening one. Tell me, who exactly elected Ray McGovern and Mary McCarthy to decide the best interests of the American people? Which article of the sacred Constitution gave the ultimate power of governance to the civil servants of the Central Intelligence Agency and not to the President of the United States, the United States Senate, and the United States House of Representatives? What about the bureaucrats of the Department of Agriculture? If they disagree with farm policy as set by the Congress, do they have the right to implement a contrary policy? Can the agents and special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATFE, formerly the ATF) decide what is and is not illegal, regardless of what the courts say? Should the military alone decide what missions the military undertakes and to hell with the civilian leadership?

Ray McGovern was not arguing for the end of civilian control of the military, but that is the logical conclusion of his advocacy of allowing CIA agents to pick and choose which presidential policy directives they will or won't follow. Bog knows our democracy is not perfect, and attentive readers will recall that in this very blog I have only half-jokingly (meaning I was halfway serious) called for the repeal of Article I of the Constitution, otherwise known as the Congress. The Constitution places checks and balances on all three official branches of the federal government: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. What sends a chill up my spine is McGovern's suggestion that the bureaucracy should have the power to determine for itself when and how to check and balance the power of the elected branches. Those powers not specifically delegated to the President and his cabinet, the Congress, and the courts by the Constitution are reserved to the several states and the people themselves. (You know, a "government of the people, by the people, for the people" in Honest Abe's phrase.)

Many of you may not like President Bush's policies and you may lament the harmony that has existed between the executive and legislative branches due to the Republican control of the Senate and the House, but that fact remains that George W. Bush was, in accordance with the laws of the United States, elected to the Presidency in 2000 and reelected in 2004. And the Republican Party, for all its glaring flaws, has managed to gain and defend a majority of the seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives through six congressional elections. In this country, if you wish to influence the direction of governmental policy, you do it through the democratic process. In a democracy, bureaucracy must be a means of governance, not a form of governance; there would be no more sinister a dictatorship than a government of the bureaucrats.