Jack of Harts

One of the more fascinating arguments I’ve heard during the recent Impeachment is over who decides our foreign policy. And as a reader and writer of science fiction, I have a deep interest in this kind of thing.

On the one hand, there are those who argue that foreign policy is decided upon by our elected leaders. They argue that the elected officials should conduct it in their role as representing the public who put them into position. In the United States of America, that power is granted to the President.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that foreign policy is decided upon by the professionals in the career bureaucracy. They argue that career officials who have had years and decades to study foreign countries can make much better decisions than some elected flunky who can’t stick a finger on Iran if given a world map. In the United States of America, the State Department performs this function.

The debate in this case of course concerns whether or not we should Impeach a President who is described to have conducted a side foreign policy in contravention of the official foreign policy decided upon by the career bureaucracy in the State Department. And numerous State Department bureaucrats have been called forward to testify on this.

As I prefaced on this, I have read a lot of science fiction, and there is an entire genre of sci-fi that deals with something like this. Vast numbers of dystopic fiction deals with places where the elected officials are little more than figureheads for the career bureaucracies that truly decide…everything. The laws people live under. The punishments they get if they violate those laws. The people sent to enforce the laws. The trope of the “vast bureaucracy” is actually inherent enough in fiction that a certain website has a rather appropriately vast page dedicated to it. Go there at your own risk.

The point I’m going to make is simple. It is often very interesting to read stories about people struggling in a world where the career bureaucracy dictates everything. I do not wish to live in such a world though. I like a world where the people I elect to represent me have a say in what the government does, or more preferably, does NOT do.