Checks and Balances, the vaunted US system of distribution of power between the three branches of government, is fundamentally, at its heart, about oversight and about accountability.
The entire system is based on a simple theory: Men in position of power without effective oversight will abuse that power. That understanding may be couched in different terms or spun in different directions, but it comes down to two lines: Men with power sans accountability are likely to abuse their power, and accountability is the best remedy for such abuses, in order to limit the damage of the abuses, if not to prevent such abuses by the threat of effective oversight.
So we built a system with three branches, each with, you guessed it, oversight capabilities. And we built a Federal and State system with similar accountability and limitation on power features.
I wonder what those guys were trying to do? It all just seems so…haphazard, don’t you think?
Now we may say that human nature is good, or that it is bad, but this fundamental understanding of human nature is clear: Social environments have consequences, and environments filled with accountability are less oppressive and less unjust, because powerful figures are kept in check.
George W. Bush doesn’t believe in law, and he doesn’t believe in accountability for his friends. We all know about he and Cheney together, locked together by their common ideological flag, ushered in a period of utter lawlessness. This is why they will be punished, in the fullness of time, and it is why so many are viscerally angry about the crimes of that administration.
But, looking forward, what of the Obama Administration?
President Barrack Obama arrived in Shanghai just after an unusually-severe cold front descended upon the city. The entire week was bone-numbingly cold a good six weeks before anyone expected to see such temperatures.
The Administration fought for access to a group of people, and that’s good, I think, in that we are engaging at a high level directly with a wide audience, both at micro level within the echelons of government and the macro level through mass media.
But there is one thing that confuses me. You see, Obama apparently said this in Shanghai on a cold, rainy day in November:
I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can then hold their own governments accountable.
Because I thought the official policy of the Obama Administration was that the past is the past and accountability no longer matters.