Why Presidents Cannot Just Say No

 

Why Presidents Cannot Just Say No

Peter Schultz

 

                  Nothing should be more suspect than action.

 

                  “When [the] country … enters the … world of covert operations, it creates a national Frankenstein … [so] that major factions within the Government do not know how something happened, who authorized it, and why it was done. The system begins to run itself from the moment of data input…. From the agents’ first bit of information … everything [happens] out of response-mechanisms to the [threat]. Therefore, the system must do something…. Nowhere [is] there anything built in to say ‘Stop’.” [The Secret Team, Prouty, 209-210]

 

                  JFK, in the runup to the Bay of Pigs invasion, abandoned the National Security Council [NSC] and “He allowed himself and his principal advisers to be made captives of the proponents of the plan.” Secrecy made deliberations “within the … NSC system” impossible – which is what the CIA and plan’s proponents were counting on.

 

                  And this is what “the single vision” finds desirable and is reflected by Hamilton’s praise for “energy in the executive” as the leading character of good government. Action, not deliberation, is thought to be the key to good government. And secrecy serves action while sacrificing deliberation or by sacrificing deliberation. “In the area of covert operations it is especially important to have someone of high authority in the position to say ‘No…’” The presidency, which was built for action, for “energy,” is not such an authority.

 

                  Left up to presidents, final decisions will rarely be “No.” Presidents should, it is commonly thought, be strong, should act with “secrecy and dispatch,” as Hamilton put in the Federalist. And, so, Trump’s Venezuelan war is unsurprising, as was Obama’s Afghan war, as was Bush’s Iraq war, as were Nixon’s, LBJ’s, and JFK’s Vietnam wars. Presidents rarely “Just Say No.” [Possible exceptions: JFK’s actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis and his call for introspection and reflection in his American University address.]