Deliberate or Deciderate?

One litmus test that is not being discussed by the pundits is a quality that I think is most important for a presidential candidate, that is, the capacity to deliberate with others over a shared enterprise, to have to reach consensus or compromise in the face of principled opposition.
For what we have seen in Bush II's person is the executive capacities of a monarch or latin American dictator: the "executive" in its unbridled capacities, deciderating for us what he thinks is good "for us" even against much principled popular opposition. And, because we have learned that this bossiness is offensive to our ideas of the principled use of executive power, we ought to look to candidates tempered by experience in Congress, and especially the Senate, for their ability to deliberate and use reasoned arguments to persuade others who hold principled positions contrary to theirs. In this way, the new President will implicitly understand that his first obligation is to subject decisions to the space of reasons and, if he is intellectually honest, will move his own position according to what emerges as the best reason--even if it should come from hostile or opposing corridors. This is nothing new to democratic politics, for it goes back to the practice of direct democracy in Athens in the fifth century b.c., wherein the rules of the Council required of citizens (councilmen) to be frank in their speech (parrhesia) in order that the best reasons would be given and the state would move accordingly upon them. What we don't want, I think, is a President holed up with his cabal of defense-contractor and oil buddies spinning us into further catastrophic wars intended to enrich the few at the expense of the citizens.

The new President, therefore, must show his bona fides in this regard. On the democratic aisle, virtually all comers have come from Congress and this is to be seen as a virtue. Clinton, Obama, Edwards--all have had Senatorial experience and this is a good thing. On the republican side, Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee have been governors of their state and have been habituated to the perquisites of executive power: their insolent, bossy tone comes through loud and clear. On the other hand, McCain, Thompson, and Paul have the requisite experience in Congress and it shows.

The question that the voter must ask himself is whether he wants an executive who reasons with them, who is open to what the public thinks is good reason, or whether he wants to be bossed around "for his own good" for the next four years?

Best Practices?

The article below appeared yesterday, 1/16/07 bringing to light the fact that the White House has effectively erased its e-mails prior to October 2003. In other words, they have violated the law requiring the preservation of federal and presidential records. Contrary to what the white house aide calls 'industry best practices', there is no plausible argument that faciliating the erasure of federal and presidential records is in accordance with 'industry best practices'. Somebody's got to do some serious jail time for this one. Might as well start at the top.

Title: "White House Copied Over E-Mail Tapes"

By Pete Yost January 16, 2008 07:05 PM EST (Huffington Post)
WASHINGTON — The White House acknowledges recycling backup computer tapes of e-mail, a practice that may have wiped out many electronic messages from the early years of the Bush administration, including some pertaining to the CIA leak case.
The disclosure about recycled backup tapes came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it previously had refused to provide.
Before October 2003, the White House recycled its backup tapes "consistent with industry best practices," according to a sworn statement by a White House aide. The White House started preserving backup tapes in October 2003, which would have been shortly after the start of the probe into who outed CIA operative Valerie Plame in July of that year.
The backup tapes, which also contain electronic documents in addition to e-mail, are the last line of defense for saving electronic records.

Separately, the White House says it is still unable to address the question of how many e-mails are missing from White House servers, or whether any are missing.
The White House "does not know if any e-mails were not properly preserved in the archiving process" from 2003 to 2005, said the statement by Theresa Payton, chief information officer for the White House Office of Administration. She said the White House continues its efforts to find out and that an assessment will be completed in the "near term."
Two years ago, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald first disclosed a White House e-mail problem, which the White House says it discovered in October 2005.
"What has the White House been doing for two years?" said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, one of two groups suing the White House over the e-mail issue. "The White House still doesn't seem to have a clue."
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that "as we have repeatedly stated, we do not know that there is actually a problem" with missing e-mail.
That drew immediate challenges from the other group suing the White House, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
CREW's lawsuit alleges that 5 million White House e-mails are missing and the group said recently that its sources now say the total is over 10 million. CREW's chief counsel, Anne Weismann, pointed to previous White House statements suggesting there was missing e-mail and to the fact that the White House is refusing to turn over numerous documents about the problem.
"Why have they retreated from their earlier acknowledgments that e-mails are, in fact, missing?" asked Weismann.
If e-mails were not saved on computer servers and copies were overwritten on backup tapes, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of documents that fall into the categories of federal records or presidential records.
Experience in the private sector has shown that "backup tapes are a treasure trove for investigators and when you recycle those tapes, you are disposing of e-mails," said Michele Lange, director, legal technologies, at Kroll Ontrack of Minneapolis, Minn. Lange's firm, among other specialities, recovers lost e-mail for companies and law firms. Lange's company has no connection to the White House e-mail controversy.
Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking Plame's identity.
"It appears that the White House has now destroyed the evidence of its misconduct," Weismann said.
Fratto, the White House spokesman, said that "there is no basis to say that the White House has destroyed any evidence or engaged in any misconduct."
Fratto said that despite the recycling, some tapes should contain e-mails from before October 2003.
"Of course the disaster recovery backup tapes were, at one time, recycled," said Fratto. "However, since October 2003, the Office of Administration has retained and preserved its disaster recovery tapes. The disaster recovery system is set up to regularly back up everything on the network for the Executive Office of the president at the time of each backup."
"If the backup tapes have been erased or taped over or recycled, it's hard to imagine where we will find copies of many lost e-mails," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive.
Weismann said that the White House declaration raises more questions than it answers, specifically the likelihood that for a very significant period of time _ March 2003 to October 2003 _ the White House recycled its backup tapes.
"As a result there may be no way to recover the missing e-mails from a period in which the U.S. decided to go to war with Iraq, White House officials leaked the identity of Valerie Plame and the Justice Department started a criminal investigation of the White House," said Weismann.
The sworn statement by Payton did not say how early in the Bush administration the recycling of backup computer tapes began.

As the saying goes, "those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it"

Below are three little excerpts worth considering from Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama (Knopf, 1989)

1. "The best estimates of the costs of the American alliance in both its surreptitious and openly military forms--from 1776 to 1783--come to 1.3 billion livres, exclusive of interest payments on the new debts incurred by the government as a result." (p. 62)

2. "If the causes of the French Revolution are complex, the cause of the downfall of the monarchy are not. The two phenomena are not identical, since the end of absolutism in France did not of itself entail a revolution of such transformative power as actually came to pass in France. But the end of the old regime was the necessary condition of the beginning of a new, and that was brought about, in the first instance, by a cash-flow crisis. It was the politicization of the money crisis that dictated the calling of the Estates-General." (p. 62)

3. "How grave was France's financial predicament after the American war? It had, it is true, run up an imposing debt, but one that was no worse that comparable debts incurred in fighting the other wars deemed equally essential to sustain the nation's position as a great power. Those quick to condemn the ministers of Louis XVI for their hopeless prodigality might pause to reflect that no state with imperial pretensions has, in fact, ever subordinated what it takes to be irreducible military interests to the considerations of a balanced budget. And like apologists for powerful military force in twentieth-century American and the Soviet Union, advocates of similiar "indispensable" resources in eighteenth-century France pointed to the country's vast demographic and economic reserves and a flouishing economy to sustain the burden." (pp. 63-4)