{"id":80755,"date":"2015-11-29T15:48:11","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T23:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=80755"},"modified":"2015-11-29T15:48:11","modified_gmt":"2015-11-29T23:48:11","slug":"boston-globe-vote-all-you-want-the-secret-government-wont-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=80755","title":{"rendered":"Boston Globe: Vote all you want. The secret government won\u2019t change."},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re talking about the Deep State<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Democracy, to a large extent, is a sham. <\/p>\n

Link<\/a>: <\/p>\n

The people we elect aren\u2019t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University\u2019s Michael Glennon<\/p>\n

THE VOTERS WHO put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t have changed policies much even if he tried.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s 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, \u201cNational Security and Double Government,\u201d 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 \u201cdouble government\u201d: There\u2019s the one we elect, and then there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Glennon cites the example of Obama and his team being shocked and angry to discover upon taking office that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan: The United States could add more troops, or the United States could add a lot more troops. Hemmed in, Obama added 30,000 more troops.<\/p>\n

Glennon\u2019s critique sounds like an outsider\u2019s take, even a radical one. In fact, he is the quintessential insider: He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. \u201cNational Security and Double Government\u201d comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he\u2019s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of \u201csmart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives\u201d\u2014without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.<\/p>\n

How exactly has double government taken hold? And what can be done about it? Glennon spoke with Ideas from his office at Tufts\u2019 Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This interview has been condensed and edited.<\/p>\n

IDEAS: Where does the term \u201cdouble government\u201d come from?<\/p>\n

GLENNON:It comes from Walter Bagehot\u2019s famous theory, unveiled in the 1860s. Bagehot was the scholar who presided over the birth of the Economist magazine\u2014they still have a column named after him. Bagehot tried to explain in his book \u201cThe English Constitution\u201d how the British government worked. He suggested that there are two sets of institutions. There are the \u201cdignified institutions,\u201d the monarchy and the House of Lords, which people erroneously believed ran the government. But he suggested that there was in reality a second set of institutions, which he referred to as the \u201cefficient institutions,\u201d that actually set governmental policy. And those were the House of Commons, the prime minister, and the British cabinet.<\/p>\n

IDEAS: What evidence exists for saying America has a double government?<\/p>\n

GLENNON:I was curious why a president such as Barack Obama would embrace the very same national security and counterterrorism policies that he campaigned eloquently against. Why would that president continue those same policies in case after case after case? I initially wrote it based on my own experience and personal knowledge and conversations with dozens of individuals in the military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies of our government, as well as, of course, officeholders on Capitol Hill and in the courts. And the documented evidence in the book is substantial\u2014there are 800 footnotes in the book.<\/p>\n

IDEAS: Why would policy makers hand over the national-security keys to unelected officials?<\/p>\n

GLENNON: It hasn\u2019t been a conscious decision….Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re talking about the Deep State. Democracy, to a large extent, is a sham. Link: The people we elect aren\u2019t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University\u2019s Michael Glennon THE VOTERS WHO put Barack Obama in office expected some … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791,42718,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-democracy","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t