What Good Are Policy Specialists, Any Way? Posted by David Shorr

I take Ezra Klein's point that major policy moves need the backing of elected leaders, rather than a bunch of wonks, no matter how serious or with how much good faith. But to focus only on the steps that require the votes of senators is to have a pretty narrow view of the process of change.

Apart from legislation or treaty ratification, there also need to be shifts in the terms of debate, and I think specialists of good faith have something to offer here. If a set of duly credentialed conservatives can join in a statement calling on the U.S. to put the terrorist threat in perspective, stop overreacting to it, and place much higher priority on economic development and extreme poverty, I think that's at least reflective of a shift in the political center of gravity.

My own essay on the UN for the Stanley Foundation's Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide project was coauthored with Mark Lagon, a Bush Administration official and former aide to Sen. Jesse Helms. I think the ideas we present are quite different from far-right views that have been so prevalent for so long. I think the remaining differences between myself and someone like Mark offer the basis for a healthier debate and can only help marginalize those who use the world body as a scapegoat and punching bag. Likewise, when Steve Biegun -- another top former Helms staffer, whose coauthor was Jon Wolfsthal of CSIS -- endorses the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, even the Senate headcount is bound to be different from a decade ago. [You'll have to buy the book to read this one, sorry.]

Ezra isn't completely off the mark to note the difference between wonks and politicians (and their televised proxies). Funnily enough, the 'Bridging' project was motivated in part by frustration over how the debate at the political level was disconnected from (and misrepresenting) the views of many of us specialists. 

Comments

[Mike M.]

David, I think you're absolutely right that the specialists who give advice to political leaders, who teach future political leaders and consultants and who are given the pulpit to explain foreign policy to us amateurs do have a role to play.

But I still don't see anyone struggling to find a role for us amateurs. Who's out there trying to design a foreign policy that the American people want, rather than the one that they think we should want or should learn to want?

It's the same problem that was in that paper you put up here a week ago. Great stuff and a definite step forward in terms of putting terrorism in perspective. But the whole paper stopped too short. You didn't call for an end to domestic spying, for example. Maybe you say that's too far afield, that it isn't foreign policy.

But that's kind of my point. The non-specialist American who is interested in this stuff probably doesn't make the kind of distinctions that the experts do. Security policy, foreign policy anjd fiscal policy are all intertwined.

The frustration is that too many trade offs are made without anyone in government or in policy circles stopping to ask if they're the trade offs that most Americans want. It's why I get frustrated when people say "We have to do something about Darfur." They never answer the big questions: does "Something" mean putting American soldiers in danger? Does it mean spending American money? If so, where will that money come from? Will we borrow it? Or not do something else because we use it in Darfur. This is just a rambling hypothetical but here's my point: you and Ezra might want to debate about whether politicians or policy wonks will drive policy and you'll both be right. But the problem is that the people at large should be setting the goals and priorities. Right now, we're not.

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As Clinton 1992 learned, and Obama 2009 will learn should he becomes President, even when you think you got a deal, you don't because bipartisanship requires both sides operate in good faith. The other side understands that it is while we think at some magic point with the right Democrat or some other magical thinking- this will change. The chief issue by the way with Obama's approach to politics is this magical thinking rather than understanding it as hardnosed focus on interest. The private sector fully understands this when negotiating business deals. It's only the public sector which engages in the fantastical mode of thinking. Cooperation in business is understood for the purpose of achieving one's own end, not as a good in itself. Only in politics are we suppose to believe its a good in itself.