There are two aspects of public life; politics and policy. Politics is what you do to get the office. Policy is what you do once you are there. We have a system designed to select 536 elected officials in Washington who are masters at politics, but know absolutely nothing about policy. To the extent that there is policy, it is only as an extension of politics.
You were spot in singling out foreign affairs. International relations and diplomacy is all about policy and not about politics. Just look how Putin is running rings around the political hack/community organizer and his monkey-boy secretary of state. Who could possibly believe that these two have any experience necessary to hold their jobs and make policy?
But they are politicians, and that's how they got the jobs.
/echo
All very true concerning politics v. policies. But the structural problems in the US that promote glad handing, empty suit, politicians to Congress.......apparently for life, and megalomaniac buffoons to the White Hut are so profound and entrenched that nothing short of a national crises will ever result in something like a fix.
My thought this a.m. is that as much as we admire and love the vision and governmental system of the founders of the US, we may be forced to admit that the system, designed for an 18th century agrarian society is simply inadequate for a 21st Century Technocracy. Of course, we’ll never know because as the system works today, its not much representative of the founders original vision of “limited” government. In the 18th/19th century, service in Congress was...........service and not for profit and usually meant a great deal of personal sacrifice. As I see it, the way the system was set up, the President/Executive Branch was largely toothless and limited to matters of defense. The “Administrative” body, responsible for setting and outlining policy was the Senate which wasn’t elected by popular vote.
Since WWI, all of that was turned on its head; the Senate is toothless, the Executive Branch is near Imperial and the House of Representin’ does near nothing. That could have been somewhat “fadable” if it weren’t for the fact that the “parties” no longer function as genuine political parties.