Bryson Crash Reveals Threat of Headless Government 308
Hugh Pickens writes "According to Business Week, the traffic accident that left U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson unconscious and alone in his bashed-up Lexus on June 9 raises questions about why the 10th official in line to succeed the president was left so vulnerable. It also highlights potential gaps in security for senior U.S. government officials, who receive varying levels of protection. 'They lost track of him,' says James Carafano, a terrorism scholar at the Heritage Foundation. 'Post 9/11, that's a bit of a head scratcher.' Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who are high in the line of succession and have national-security responsibilities, are provided protection 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but other federal officials, even in cabinet-level positions or other top posts, often travel without the security details that even a big-city mayor or state governor would be provided. Threats to cabinet-level officials aren't overblown, says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who has urged that the government revamp its succession plans and says a nuclear bomb hidden in a suitcase detonated in Washington could leave a headless government. 'The lack of interest in continuity may stem from the same reasons some smart people refuse to create wills, even though failure to do so leaves behind horrific messes for their loved ones,' writes Ornstein. 'Yet the threat is real. Our leaders' failure to establish plans to ensure that our Constitution survives is irresponsible.'"
Why would anyone care? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would a psychopath or narcissist care about someone who will have his power when he is dead?
Really 10th in line? (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly we narrowly escaped what would have been a disaster for our entire nation. Hyperbole much? Gee wiz
wth? (Score:2, Insightful)
Where do you draw the line? The president and VP are protected, and normally not in the same location. I dont think we are concerned with the 9th+ people in line for presidency in the event that someone manages to pick off all of the others.
I think the concerns are unfounded.
Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
If a suitcase nuke goes off in Washington, "Government continuity" at that high a level is about #273 on our priority list.
Paranoid? (Score:4, Insightful)
Threats to cabinet-level officials aren't overblown... a nuclear bomb hidden in a suitcase detonated in Washington could leave a headless government.
No, not overblown in the slightest.
This to ensure survival of the Constitution? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the Constitution will survive a nuclear holocaust in D.C. just fine. It's a set of intangible ideas. What might not survive it is the One Percent's hold on government by proxy. Which makes me wonder about Ornstein's pedigree given that he would make such a misdirected statement.
Re:lose track of all of them (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress already lacks brains, ears, eyes, hearts, guts, and balls.
I don't see how being headless would change much.
Re:lose track of all of them (Score:5, Insightful)
civilized nation that doesn't kill people for difference of political opinion
lol
Problem isn't that the Secretary of Transportation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really 10th in line? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is the trick it is a representative democracy. you can kill them all (nuke DC during the state of the union address) the states can then hold elections to repopulate the federal government.
Which is how it was done the first time around.
The people generally don't need the federal government. it is symbolic but isn't necessary. The police, fire , even national guard are all funded from STATE coffers. As long as every state government doesn't collapse too it wouldn't take more than a year to completely rebuild the federal government.
Re:Reminds me of "Debt of Honour" (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's because they don't actually have to govern or anything.
Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet the threat is real. Our leaders' failure to establish plans to ensure that our Constitution survives is irresponsible.'
The majority of those leaders are a bigger threat to the survival of the Constitution where they are than if they are gone.
Re:Reminds me of "Debt of Honour" (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends. Early Jack Ryan, or crazy-nutso hardline-conservative Jack Ryan, from when Clancy went off his meds?
I used to be a big Clancy reader, but I haven't really kept up. I read the newest one a few months ago, and I was shocked at how much he'd turned it into his own political fantasy. He (or his ghostwriters) pack it with strawmen and the "good guys" are just *loved* by *everyone* who isn't one of those strawmen.
Let's just look at the story. Spoiler alerts, obviously.
A terrorist leader who is /totally/ not Bin Laden gets captured by an illegal, unofficial special forces group (which is a whole rant in itself) and basically dropped off in front of a US jail, Batman-style. The astoundingly stupid President makes a big show out of giving him a trial; his defense attorney is an ACLU hippie woman (whose breasts Clancy devotes a few too many sentences to), and even then this entire subplot is being orchestrated by an ex-Soviet still-Communist media mogul. Jack Ryan, running to be the second president to serve non-consecutive terms, makes it a major campaign issue that he will not give not-Laden an open trial, getting a standing ovation after declaring in a debate that his first act as President would be to ship him off to Gitmo for a secret military trial.
Meanwhile, Ryan's son is off being part of the aforementioned spec-ops group, which operates not just beyond international law, but actually completely without the knowledge or even authorization of the current US government. Let me say that again - a secret group of heavily-armed people who operate completely alone, their only connection to any sort of authority being the bank safe full of blank (but signed) presidential pardons, who fund themselves by tapping into the CIANSA data link and using the data for insider trading, and whose goals are to kill any terrorist threat to America, again, without *any* sort of oversight.
Anyways, Junior's subplot is mainly about a rogue Pakistani general's plot to steal his own country's nuclear weapons and give them to Islamic terrorists in Unpronouncablistan - and *their* plan is to mount them on hijacked space rockets to launch at Moscow. Junior, and his fellow assassins, do this by eventually *invading* Pakistan, with running gun battles through the streets that fit Call of Duty better than Rainbow Six. Oh, and Rainbow does show up again, only to be completely incompetent because international bureaucracy fucks EVERYTHING up. That's almost an exact quote, by the way.
The C-plot is something about Clark tracking down who's behind the A-plot (spoiler: the filthy commie goes to jail too), with the obligatory East Germany/Soviet Russia backstory. Not really anything to it.
There are random asides about irrelevant-to-the-story-but-political-hot-topics like health care (apparently socialized health care is *terrible*, and without CAPITALISM to drive them, doctors just don't give a shit and get drunk during surgeries). That's not even relevant to some D-plot, that's just random pages of POLITICS crammed in there for no good reason.
So yeah. The only good thing I can say is that the actual prose is as good as it ever was - the details of the story are great, the action scenes are actiony, the dialog is good, but the Rand-esque political monologues and overall plot are pretty grating.
I'm not sure if I just didn't really pay much attention to it when I read his books earlier, or if Clancy (or, again, his co-authors) are just nuts.
Re:Reminds me of "Debt of Honour" (Score:4, Insightful)
I find that the politics of authors can be determined soley by their glasses. Clancy has big 80s-style aviators - a sure sign that he leans rightward. Authors with comically tiny John Lennon glasses tip toward the left.
no no no (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why would anyone care? (Score:5, Insightful)
On behalf of the American people, if our congressmen are stupid enough to get us into a conflict whereby it would be necessary to swear in someone a dozen people down from the President, then they deserve to burn. Why? Because any conflict that large will have the majority of the US population dead or near death, and Americans don't believe in protecting / rewarding politicians who get us killed.
Putting the instigators in special bunkers, while the innocent have to fend for themselves against nuclear / biological / chemical weapons...it kind of sends the wrong message.
Re:Why would anyone care? (Score:4, Insightful)
In a republic, the death of individual "leaders" should be unimportant. The strength and continuity of the nation, rests with the people, not the individuals that serve. Elected officials are no different than any other servant of the nation. They are expendable in a very general sense. To dedicate extraordinary efforts to their security seems unbalanced when they are so easily replaced.
Re:Why would anyone care? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a false meme to start with. Citation is from the Heritage Foundation, which might as well be the softer branch of the John Birch Society. It's a way to pronounce additional fear, embarrass the Obama Administration farther than it already is, and anchor more false paranoia.
Summary: bad question, designed to be politically subversive to the current administration with propagandized memes.
Re:Really 10th in line? (Score:5, Insightful)
the lines that the Republicans tow?
That would be toe, as in lining up the ends of your feet with a chosen line.
He is coining a new figure of speech - we imagine legions of Republicans faithfully towing weighty barges of ideology.
Quote apt, really.
I PROMISE NOT TO PARDON NIXON, REALLY (Score:4, Insightful)
You should be far more worried about the people who are quite likely to become president (e.g. imagine if Dick Cheney has become president) then people who will only become president if a total 1 in a million catastrophe occurs.
Nobody needs protection. (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the great things about a democracy is it's impossible to decapitate. You kill the top guy, or even the top 20 guys, and we'll just promote their subordinates for a few months, hold a special election, and we're back in business. It's a self-repairing system. There is no need to protect *anybody* in power: they're all expendable. As a practical matter, it's nice to have a secret service to protect the president, but that's just because replacing him every time he gets killed would be inconvenient.
The paranoid hyper-protectivism pushed by the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation reflects the fact that they don't actually believe in democracy. They believe that the man running the country is more important than the ideas he was elected to represent -- in short, they're fascists. They're such fascists, that they believe this even when they guy running the country is someone they hate. And one of the many, many problems with fascism is that fascists are really easy to terrorize. Just threaten the Supreme Leader, and they're in the palm of your hand.
In contrast, a true democracy is difficult to terrorize. You can threaten individual citizens, but there is no one person, no symbol or place of power, that you can destroy to bring it to its knees.
Re:Why would anyone care? (Score:5, Insightful)
You defend the Heritage Foundation, yet don't know who the Commerce Secretary was.
This is your cognitive dissonance lesson for today.
The legitimacy of the Heritage Foundation is rooted in its founder's ideals, and one of his admirers were specific Birchers. Birchers are very scary people.
The foundation for the post is a political meme that is false and cloying, forwarded and advanced by an organization whose intents are well-defined.
Oh stfu (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh shut the fuck up no one cares about your FUD mindless fear mongering doomsday scenarios. Extra bodyguards on mindless government drone #10 wouldn't prevent that anyway.
Just a suggestion though, if you are going to base your population control on the Machiavellian ideals of fear and an iron fist, biological attacks are far more likely, realistic and effective. They are virtually impossible to prevent or control (FUD++) and could do a lot more damage than just killing off your useless overfed government. If you are going to make up bullshit to keep folks in line at least have some imagination ffs.