[August]

From the article I reference above:

The most pernicious embryonic myth is that the Framers handed down a system of checks and balances that is self-correcting. That myth is perhaps the most dangerous one of all. The system is not self-correcting. The myth that it is self-correcting probably derives from the familiar intention of the Framers to set ambition against ambition so as to preclude the rise of autocratic power. That was of course their purpose, but it’s only half of the picture. The other half involves the need for civic virtue, at two different stages. The Framers believed, first, that citizens themselves must be engaged and informed, so as to be able to participate meaningfully. Decision-makers cannot be held accountable unless citizens have enough knowledge and intelligence to do that. The Framers also believed, however, that people must select officials who are committed to advancing the public interest, rather than their own private, personal interest. People have to be wise enough not only to reject another Caesar, but to reject another Crassus. Absent civic virtue at both levels, they believed that the equilibrium of power would collapse, and democracy would not survive. Like the rest of the Framers, Madison had no doubts in this regard. He said: “I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us?
If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”14 Nonetheless that seems to be just the myth that some educated Americans are now beginning to embrace—the illusion that our government is a machine that runs of itself, whatever the level of virtue among the people.There is a corollary myth that has emerged alongside the myth that the political system is self-correcting. The corollary is that the security bureaucracy is an appropriate check on elected officials—that its managers are wise, all-seeing guard-ians charged with commandeering the ship of state when some unsteady captain or crew sails it into the shallows. This myth is of course welcomed by some security managers them-selves, who have coveted bureaucratic autonomy for years but have never been willing to stand up and claim it outright. Of course we can appropriately check elected officials, some now think—why any longer be coy about it? A number of former prominent officials have very candidly stated their hope or expectation that their successors will do just that. Michael Mor-rell, a former acting head of the CIA, worried openly that “the president’s advisers have not been able to properly ‘manage’ the president.”15 Listen to the recent words of Phillip Mudd, a former top official in both the CIA and FBI:So, the FBI people—I’m going to tell you—are ticked, and they’re going to be saying, I guarantee it, you think you could push us off this because you can try to intimidate the director, you’d better think again, Mr. President. You’ve been around for 13 months; we’ve been around since 1908. I know how this game is going to be played, and we’re going to win.16