Blame the Agency, not the Figurehead

Recently, I pointed to an article contrasting the position of John Ashcroft and John Kerry on civil liberties issues. Surprisingly, Ashcroft has better credibility than Kerry on many civil liberties issues. As the Attorney General on 9-11, it's easy to understand how Ashcroft's position on these issues may have changed. Kerry's primary motivation for stumping about civil liberties (despite his lousy record) is the election: the Bush administration is vulnerable on civil liberties, and so Kerry must attack on those grounds. That the Democratic party nominated someone with so little depth on this core issue is a serious tactical error, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I think the juxtaposition of Ashcroft and Kerry reveals something interesting about politics. Not so much about Kerry's position, but more about Ashcroft's. That shift in opinion on civil rights leads me to believe that there may be something more going on... something as simple and obvious as serving as the head of a federal agency.

When Ashcroft was responsible for opposing the privacy invasions of the FBI and the Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration, he was an elected member of Congress. His political opponents were in power. They wanted more power for the government, so naturally he opposed it, and did so on civil liberties grounds.

But when his party is in power, and his agency is requesting legal authorization for many of those same things, Ashcroft's response has changed. All of a sudden he's on the other side of the issue, pressuring Congress to pass empowering legislation to support his agency's agenda. In a way, that's his job -- but it's revealing that someone who previously resisted such efforts could be turned around so completely.

It almost leads me to question who is setting the agenda. Is it Ashcroft, or is it the career DOJ employees?

Although the political appointees theoretically have the power to set policy, it is the career employees who actually know in depth what the job entails. Those employees are the people with the real interest in expanding the power of their agency; they set their own policies, with regard to what they tell and ask the political appointees who are nominally in charge. Unless the appointee is unusually experienced or competent, the supposedly-subordinate employees will have the ability to control what the appointee learns about "his" agency, and manipulate that information in order to push for their own policies.

In other words, the politicians take the blame, while the agency itself sets the agenda. The invisible man in government policy discussions is the government itself -- advocating to a captive audience for increased funding, increased authority, and increased prestige. And it's a not so insignificant factor that those increases will also benefit the appointee's career.

It's time America realized that the Presidential election is a relative sideshow. The greatest advocate for increasing the size and power of government is government itself. Party based opposition is naive; we must recognize and oppose the real opponent, regardless of the figurehead at the top.