A clue comes from the speech invited by the New America Foundation: “we need a system of checks and balances and institutional fabric that can withstand anybody, or at least nearly so.”

It seems that Wall Street and the private sector generally are taking issue with key foreign policy decisions.

He was on the inside while they slimed Joe Wilson, and Richard Clarke, and said nothing. Screw him.

He makes the point that the cold war helped to make policy important above just arms production.

If you assume that the purpose of the military-industrial complex is to sell defense products and services, the end of the cold war was a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge to keep sales high and the opportunity was less “adult supervision” from the fear of conflict with the USSR.

The NSC staff has been a pretty small in-bred group over the years with a tension between DOD and State. A former DOD Secretary as VP was a two-fer for the defense people.

The bottom line is that despite the wasted money and lives, there hasn’t been anything to replace the “cold war fear” that gave power to policy makers instead of arms makers.

The bad news is that this means things have to get a lot worse before they would get better.

Look at how much has been ruined in just five years of the current presidency. You can’t count on genius

But that’s roughly 50 years of presidency. It seems to me as if America’s been run by a genius roughly one year in four, which doesn’t seem like a bad average.

Making the point you’re opposed to. You listed 8 people (“You can perhaps count them on 2 hands and make persuasive arguments for the additions”) over a period of 2 centuries. That other countries have a similar shortage of brilliance reinforces the point.

If by “brilliant” you mean that they read Wittgenstein at night, then not very often.

But George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and (maybe) JFK surely don’t compare too unfavorably to a similar list put forward by any other country over a comparable period.

Well, no. Yes, it created a hell of a lot of ill will. Particularly when Albright went on national TV and said that it was “worth it.” But the Bush II war has sent the cart of Muslim opinion about US foreign policy hurtling downward ever faster and deeper. I think we’re in Dante’s lowest territories now.

Also, though I do think the expression is very angry and sometimes a bit too emphatic for my taste, it is not incoherent. But I used to be a State Department flack so I got very used to hearing careerist grumbling about political machinations of appointees and high level officials (though not in public, and not this vociferous).

Cool. Madeleine Albright and State killed half a million Iraqi women and children with the sanctions.

(Probably between zero and 20,000, but that’s not the Muslim world’s perception. Their cleverness created more ill will than the actual war. At least outside the US and Europe.)

I can’t help but look a little bit askance at his thesis that it’s dangerous to our democracy when the elected head of government makes policy decisions instead of deferring to the career bureaucracy.

Oh, I can, and not just because of Yes, Minister. He basically invokes Bryce’s thesis that the American political system makes it easier for mediocre individuals to be elected president than those who have talent and experience; and that to some extent, the system was built that way, so that individual capability would never slide into demagoguery. (Although the US and the role of the presidency has changed drastically since Bryce’s time, his observations remain pretty relevant.) Anyway, as Wilkerson says:

I don’t think even his critics would have argued that FDR wasn’t a brilliant politician and a brilliant leader. But let’s think about it for a moment. If you’re one of the framers. How often does America get brilliant leaders? Put them down on paper. I can count them myself on one hand.

You can perhaps count them on 2 hands and make persuasive arguments for the additions. I prefer one hand. So we need a system of checks and balances and institutional fabric that can withstand anybody, or at least nearly so. You laugh, but I’m not trying to solicit your laughter.

In that context, I suppose Wilkerson’s chief complaint is that Cheney really revolutionised an office (and a staff) that, both constitutionally and historically, isn’t meant to be worth a bucket of spit, and thus short-circuited both the intentions of the 1947 Act and the notion that the other branches would take up the slack.