Public Adminstrator's Role

Arianna Huffington has written a post about why Biden should resign if Obama does not follow his advice. This view of the role of a public adminstrator - i.e. someone serving an elected official - is oversimplified and makes me think she has never served in that role.

The fact is that the role of public administrators, or civil servants, is to give the best counsel to the elected officials or political appointees they serve. And once they give that advice, their role is to implement the final decision to the best of their ability. Resignation should only occur if the decision is so egregious that the public administrator cannot bring themselves to carry out the orders.

Huffington's tone suggests that one should resign anytime they disagree with the decision of an elected official or appointee, which if everyone followed that advice there would be no civil servants.

To be fair, maybe she is not suggesting that one should resign so easily. But she does not do enough in her post to tell us why a decision to remain in Afghanistan is so wrong-headed that it would be worth resigning over. She does what many far left liberals do, which is wonder why people in government are not as irrational as they are. When you work in government, you are bound to disagree with some of their decisions. The question is, do you disagree enough that you cannot work with them, and that you are willing to significantly weaken the person you are working for.

In addition to her logic about resigning being oversimplified and definitely not objective (I wonder how she would feel if someone resigned in protest of a policy she supported), her arguments against troop increases in Afghanistan are cherry-picked. She quotes pieces of Richard Haas' arguments, but conveniently leaves off parts that do not support his argument. Haas does say Afghanistan is not a war of necessity, but she does not bother talking about wars of choice and when you do or do not commit to a war of choice.

As much as I disagree with her post, I can take some comfort in the fact that Biden is unlikely to resign. If Obama disagrees with Biden, and Biden does not change his mind that it is the wrong decision, he is likely to stay on board anyway because I don't think he, or any other rational person think that staying in Afghanistan is as bad a decision as Vietnam or even Iraq. In other words, I can sleep well knowing Biden is not going to be listening to Huffington.

To Rebel?

There was an article in the NY Times yesterday where a reporter was sitting in on debates between officers in the US Army. The debates were about the Iraq War and whether generals should have said more in the lead-up to the war about troop levels. The main argument in the debate seems to fall around when you are supposed to follow orders and when you should speak out in hopes of changing policy. I have been thinking about their arguments recently, because it both is meaningful in terms of having civilian control of the military but also because it applies to my work as a public administrator.

For many liberals, this issue doesn't seem hard at first. The generals should have spoken out and prevented the war from happening (or calling for many more troops, which would have had the same effect). One of the officers in the article though mentioned that if the military prevented any policy it disagreed with by fighting it in the press, the civilian leaders would no longer be in control of the military. Imagine a different scenario where a president wants to get involved to end a genocide but his or her military leadership drums up opposition to prevent it. This is unfathomable; Colin Powell was opposed to intervening in Bosnia.

This issue plays itself out in settings outside the military as well. I was trained in public administration, and one of the issues we talked about was when you are supposed to go along with an administration you don't agree with, and when you should resist or resign / quit. As civil servants, this is a big issue. Of course in class we watched a video about the Japanese Ambassador to Germany who signed papers allowing many Jews to leave Germany. This is a grand example, and although it was tremendously brave, doesn't help with the less obvious examples. Many of us might think Iraq is an obvious example, but we can think about working for EPA for example under President Bush. Liberals working there might want to fight his policies that are ruining our environment, but if everyone followed that lead, president's would be powerless and civil servants would run government. At some point, people have to be willing to work for a leader even if they don't agree with him or her.

The point of this rambling post is that we need to be careful what we wish for. A more outspoken military leadership might prevent meaningful interventions (or otherwise stand in the way of good policy).