I agree with you most of the way, with two caveats.
First, I put the president in a different category than members of Congress. The latter, certainly in their collective decisionmaking, do indeed have the right to make the decisions, but in practice most of the individual people involved do not, in fact, consider the overall national interest when deciding stuff, but rather their much smaller personal and local interests. And, of course, our current system of campaign finance means that they will inevitably hear certain voices particularly clearly. So I respect Congress as an institution, but tend not to respect its individual members unless they show me they deserve it.
Second, the moral of the Eliot Cohen book should not be seen as, "political leaders should ignore the experts," but rather, "political leaders should be informed enough about serious subjects to exercise responsible oversight and if necessary to interfere." As Clausewitz said, war has its own grammar but not its own logic (the logic comes from politics). Yes, the latter trumps the former. But only a fool or a knave would interfere without bothering to learn first what the grammatical rules are and why they're there.
tb@doctorsRus.com |
