Comission me, baby!
Monday, December 4th, 2006TCS Daily - How About a Commission to End Commissions?
Washington is eagerly awaiting the report from the Iraq Study Group, headed by former Bush 41 Secretary of State James Baker and Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, to point the way out of the war in Iraq. Sure, there are tens of thousands of years of professional military experience at the Pentagon with every incentive in the world to get things right. But what do they know compared to a bipartisan commission led by such distinguished gentlemen?
Any solution that Baker, Hamilton, and their colleagues could agree to was destined to be so watered down as to be meaningless. Get more international cooperation! Make the Iraqi leadership take responsibility! Make a more concerted effort to solve the Palestinian crisis! Because nobody currently in office ever thought of those things?
This is playing out as these things usually do. We elect leaders to decide important public policy issues. In turn, those leaders pass the buck to blue ribbon panels when there are no easy solutions. This simultaneously allows postponing action until the report comes back and provides political cover for voting for whatever the commission decides.
The 9/11 commission was a classic example of this. After nearly two years of hearings, and almost three years after the terrorist attacks themselves, we got a watered down document that told us what we had long known and essentially advised that we continue doing what we were already doing but with more unity, cooperation, and spirit of togetherness. And, of course, the creation of an additional bureaucracy, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, to help alleviate the problems caused by too much bureaucracy in our intelligence community.
Amen, I couldn’t have said it better than Mr. Joyner has. I will point to this as yet another reason for term limits. Having term limits in place will make it so “that holding power should not be more important to politicians and parties than actually putting one’s policy preferences into effect”. If you’re not going to be in office long anyway, you won’t have to do stupid things to stay in office.
