Your Humble Blogger is glad that Condoleezza Rice will testify, in public and under oath, before the Commission on whatever the Commission is on about. Our Only President and his cronies seem to be obsessed with secrecy, and they should be reminded that in a democratic republic, the government should be as transparent as possible. Dr. Rice, in my opinion, should respond publicly and under oath to the charges she has made against Mr. Clarke, and to Mr. Clarke’s charge that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has undermined the ‘War on Terror’ rather than furthering it. She, and the administration, made public representations of the place of that invasion in the ‘War on Terror’, and she should be questioned about those, in my opinion.
So much for specifics. In general, though, there is, in fact, an issue, which I am ambivalent about. What level of oversight should the legislature have over national security policy, and in specific, what sort of oversight should the legislature have over the executive’s advisors? Yes, I know this panel is not, as such, a legislative panel but a panel under the combined aegis of the legislative and executive branches; I’m not particularly talking about this specific instance. In general, though, should a legislative committee or subcommittee be able to subpoena the President’s advisors on policy matters? This is not, at present, either a criminal investigation or an impeachment hearing; I have no idea what the brief of the commission is, but it appears to be some combination of policy and execution. Again, to get away from the specifics, what if it were a policy inquiry, looking into how policy was formed and what it was, rather than how (or if) it was executed?
I’m inclined to grant the legislature lots and lots of oversight powers. Garry Wills at one point said that the idea that the three branches are somehow equal is preposterous, as the legislature can remove members of the executive or judiciary at will, can set the entire laws (within the bounds of the constitution, which neither the executive nor the judiciary can act to amend), can open or close the purse strings, etc., etc. The Executive and the Judiciary have no (procedural) influence over who sits in the Congress, but the Senate has confirmation powers over every high-ranking member of the Executive and the Judiciary except the President and Vice-President, whom they can impeach. Of course, neither the Executive nor the Judiciary can act to impeach anybody. On the other hand, both the immense political power of the Executive and the customary power of the Executive and the Judiciary can influence the Legislature. They do have a variety of procedural checks against the power of Congress. I think Mr. Wills was exaggerating, but he does have a point. The legislature is, in the Constitution, not an equal branch, but the true heart of government.
So, does the President have the right to get confidential advice, to which the Congress never will be privy? When I say ‘the right’, I mean should we grant that right, as a matter of procedure, of courtesy, and of convenience. On one hand, the obvious answer is yes; the President will get better and more varied advice, if the advisor can be sure of confidentiality. The knowledge that at any point your department can be called up in front of Congress for political purposes creates both a culture of risk-avoidance, and a use of resources in ass-covering that could be profitably spent elsewhere. The President has a tough job, and should be given, perhaps, some slack, some moments when the conversation isn’t recorded, some shielded time to kick policy around, to be wrong, to be ignorant, to be dangerous, before acting.
On the other hand, there’s transparency. Perhaps we don’t want to give the President the chance to be wrong in private. Some Presidents will use that opportunity to work through the possible paths, and some will use that opportunity to prevent argument. A bad President, with a bad administration can clearly do more damage in eight years or even four years (in foreign affairs, anyway) than we can blithely afford to let slide. Congress can oversee that bad President, and can check the actions of the administration if they know what’s going on.
So, it’s a pretty serious tool for Congress to have, and one whose very existence, used or not, would affect the way Presidents work. It’s not costless to say ‘let Congress have this power, but only use it in extreme circumstances’. But in extreme circumstances, it’s a good tool to have. Does it outweigh the costs? I honestly don’t feel I have an opinion; I can see the arguments of both sides, without coming to a conclusion.
What do you think?
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
I have a strong opinion about executive transparency, but I may be overly distracted by specifics these days.
(sore point keywords: California energy market manipulation “crisis”; Enron; Dick Cheney’s secret energy meetings; Enron again; “Governor Schwarzenegger”)
My naive thought is that I don’t care all that much who the President meets with, or what he says to the people he meets with; I care what he does.
I see where you’re coming from, irilyth, but the problem with that is that Presidents don’t generally _do_ all that much. (Which as a libertarian I assume you support 🙂 That is to say, if someone comes to Bush and says “What did you do about terrorism before 9/11?” his answer is likely to be “well, I told so-and-so to have his people do X, and had the secretary of such-and-such make Y a priority in her department” and so forth. His “actions” are actually meeting with people and saying things to them, rather than actually issuing executive orders or military commands. Or so I have the sense.
Also, might we not want to know later that the reason the President took no action on X is that he thought it would create instability in Y (or whatever) rather than because he didn’t think of it?
A maxim: any time a government is pursuing policies that could be benefitted by secret proceedings, those policies present a risk to a free republic.
Sometimes a free republic is put at risk by circumstances over which it has no control and its chief executive/commander-in-chief must keep matters secret from the citizens of the republic in order to keep those matters secret from external enemies as well. But in no other matter is secrecy justifiable, and even this limited exception is dangerous to a republic over the long term.
The general public accountability of a representative government is the principle at stake here, not legislative oversight of the executive. The President is probably, in this case, not answerable to Congress for his actions or inactions in the matter of his response to the terrorism threat, but it is perfectly appropriate for Congress to attempt to determine the truth of what happened as a service to the citizens they represent.