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The people we elect aren’t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University’s Michael Glennon. Others at SN have also voiced similar opinions so I thought this might be an interesting read for our members.
The voters who put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor.
But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America’s nuclear weapons.
Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.
Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.
[Related]: ‘National Security and Double Government’
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21 2014, @08:28PM
It is worse than that.
The parties are controlled by the party leaders.
An unfortunately good way to describe it is the movie the distinguished gentleman staring Eddie Murphy.
The party leaders decide who gets the cushy jobs. Who gets the cushy panels and who gets the crap ones or none at all. Look to the Majority/minority leaders and these are the 4 people who run our senate and congress. They get their marching orders from their parties boards.
Money keeps the 'rank and file' in line. Sure would be a shame if your opponent had 40 million in their re-election campaign fund and you had nothing. Sure would be a shame if where the money came from for you current election came to light.
If none of this was true would you see such stark party line votes? That just simply is not possible in a group of 500+ people. If it followed like real elections you would see the 20-30% hard core vote my way or the hit the highway and then the people who swing back and forth. Instead it is almost always party line. That just is not possible without some gross manipulation going on.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday October 21 2014, @09:34PM
This is why I vote a straight Neither-GOP-Nor-DNC ticket. Even if some politician who was Ghandi-Jesus-SantaClaus all rolled into one was on the ballot, the very fact that he is part of either major party means he will be corrupted. The very fact of joining one of those parties is step one toward that inevitable corruption. So I only vote for 3d Parties (any available or for my cat when none is available).