Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
I believe in the idea of a Republic not a true democracy. Foreign policy should not be run on democratic principles. Like they say you cant have 435 secretarys of state. I think our military and the department of state are full of educated and capable people. Our general and admirals are some of the most educated and talented people in the world. When it comes to foreign policy I think the bueracracy is much more in charge than the President. I think most of our Presidents defer to these people because they realize they know what they are doing.
Of course there are exception. Johnson in Vietnam with regard to amount of troops, Kennedy with the bay of pig and the need for aircover and Rumsfield when he told the army that we could do what we wanted with a much smaller army.
The President job is just to sell their decisions to the public. Sometimes they have to distort the truth for strategic reasons. But the public can't know what is really going on because if the public knows the enemy knows.
I think the proof of the pudding was when Clinton ran for President he critisized every foreigh policy operaion Bush was in . He critisized Hait, Somali, Chinas MFN status, NAFTA etc. And then he followed the exact same policy when he got in.
To get elected the candidate must critisize everything the incumbant does. NO matter what. That is just politics. Like Kennedy accusing Eisenhauer of allowing a missile gap when he knew there wasn't one. Eisenhauer couldn't fight back to do so would hurt National Security. In these situations the incumbants just have to suck it up.
In foreign policy if the President isnt' deceiving me or lying to me he is giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
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There is a difference between selling and deceiving. In business, that's the difference between good marketing and fraud. We ought to be able to expect the same from our leaders, because their actions have legitimacy only because they derive their authority from our consent. We are a democracy, even if we have a republican form of government.
I fundamentally disagree that a President's job is to sell decisions which have already been made to the public. A President's job is to lead, and you can't lead for very long if you aren't straight with people. If your brand of leadership is based on misleading people, those chickens come home to roost.
