As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Should the president and cabinet be required to qualify for their security clearances?
Calica
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm not even sure if this is worth a thread, but it doesn't fit anywhere else, so.
On one hand, doing so would instantly politicize the process. You'd have people working overtime to dig up (or create) any dirt on their opponent not just to sway voters, but in hopes of putting a hard stop on their election. High-level background checks can take years and would only be complicated by ongoing campaigns. Also, people can fail a background check for reasons that they can't control, like being related to the wrong person.
On the other hand, every other job that requires clearance also requires applicants to prove they can be trusted with sensitive information... and then there's Trump.
Thoughts?
On one hand, doing so would instantly politicize the process. You'd have people working overtime to dig up (or create) any dirt on their opponent not just to sway voters, but in hopes of putting a hard stop on their election. High-level background checks can take years and would only be complicated by ongoing campaigns. Also, people can fail a background check for reasons that they can't control, like being related to the wrong person.
On the other hand, every other job that requires clearance also requires applicants to prove they can be trusted with sensitive information... and then there's Trump.
Thoughts?
0
Posts
Can they still do their job?
Even if the process doesn't get politicized, it seems like a good way to enable institutions like DoD or NSA to lock out elected officials who they don't like, further undermining those officials' ability to effect change. Seems bad for democracy as a whole.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Worse than electing someone who's compromised to hell and back? (And, in Trump's case, is a senile narcissist with no concept of consequences; but let's assume hope Trump is an outlier.)
It might well be worse! Just, right now, I'm not sure.
The idea of performing a cursory background check...something like a confidential or secret clearance...for candidates and making the decision (but not the inputs) to that decision part of the public record may make some amount of sense on its face.
The primary issue would be trusting that the officials involved would be non-partisan in what is sure to be a very politically sensitive decision. I don’t think it works on that issue alone.
The foreign contacts piece you can work around, you simply revise the criteria or scope it such that foreign business contacts or contacts of contacts from other political positions are fine, but that extremely potentially compromising contacts can still be an issue. But primarily you want to run a criminal history, financial history, general truthfulness history, and look for specifically erratic or compromising behavior.
Most or at least many politicians who are in a position to run would, I think, pass.
I think we all know clearly that certain individuals would not.
The solution to me would be to vet people for high office the same way for a security clearance and make the results public.
This isn’t a fool proof solution, as the past couple years demonstrate, but a lot of politicians wouldn’t necessarily qualify for a clearance, never mind the myriad of different compartmented programs that ban people based on background.
I don’t like that elected officials automatically get a clearance but the alternative seems too easily taken advantage of by a single bad actor.
And like others said, giving DoD an effective veto over who is allowed to hold office is an awful idea.
At the same time why shouldn’t the CiC have to pass the same scope of background check I had to pass to carry a radio?
Edit: or at least submit to it, and have the outcome known.
Because supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from the IC or DoD or whatever the fuck.
No offense, but this idea is Terrible, because you're setting up a system where some unaccountable body is determining your political leadership
If no level of civilian government is above the idea of state secrets then in a very real way you're placing your intelligence apparatus as the highest authority in the country.
Or when the opposition party manages to take both the senate and house in a midterm election and pass changes to clearance requirements that specifically affect the president. We already have mechanisms to deal with an elected official that becomes a danger to their own country, gating just being able to run for office behind something as nebulous as security clearance would be chilling.
None of that is disqualifying.
Hiding it is.
I agree that a formal clearance requirement, legally, it would be a nonstarter. I think the idea of requiring candidates to submit to the investigation, at the primary stage, is interesting. Failure to be cleared wouldn’t be a bar, it’d just be...something to be noted.
I do agree that this probably causes more problems than it solves.
Just like not releasing your tax returns is supposed to be disqualifying, right?
This is what it ultimately boils down to. We have a mechanism to remove an official who proves to be compromised. It requires the electorate to demand it.
If a sufficient portion of the electorate doesn’t care? So it goes. If a sufficient portion of the electorate prefers to elect a crook or fascist or madman? So it goes. You can try and ensure the electorate is informed. You can try to shift social and political norms to make such things unacceptable. But ultimately if enough of us are terrible, we get terrible outcomes. That’s just how it works.
And as I said, while I find some aspects of this idea interesting, ultimately any implementation is gonna cause more problems then it solves.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I think it avoids the ethical issues though I have my doubts about efficacy.
That does seem more reasonable than giving the intelligence apparatus a hard veto.
If nothing else, maybe the mainstream media would be more willing to signal boost an official report.
Asking opaque politically motivated agencies to publicly cast judgment on candidates opens up a whole different can of worms.
The less your spies have to do with your elections the better.
Background investigators aren’t spies? Background checks are generally done by OPM though I’ve seen law enforcement for FBI and NCIS do them too. They don’t cast judgement either. They just interview and document available information about a person’s background, then provide it to whoever asked for it.
It’s something I’d honestly be fine with elected officials getting a top secret clearance being subjected to, though preferably non binding.
Yeah. Do the check, make that info public, but don't make it mean the person can't run.
I'm playing fast and loose with "spy" there but I think the same reasoning applies to cops. They don't pass judgement when they're interviewing some random guy to be a data analyst. Why would they? There's no incentive.
When they're interviewing a presidential candidate do you really trust the FBI to absolutely not act in accordance with the relevant individuals' political beliefs or under pressure from others? Do you think you could act with absolutely no political prejudice if your subject was, say, Presidential Candidate Tom Cotton?
There are plenty of problems with the idea, but this is not one of them. If you can override a veto on partisan grounds then you can impeach
It already happens for cabinet positions etc. The senate gets the report and then either consents or does not.
Or more relevant given what happened with Comey and Clinton?
Yes? When you're tasked with solely obtaining information and not providing any interpretation it's actually remarkably easy. I've done it before. Thousands of people do it regularly.
As nice as it would be for journalists to solely do it, they lack the resources, authority, and sometimes even the motivation to do so.
You're not wrong, but our news media is hopelessly broken right now. Just like everything else.
Thinking that getting the FBI involved in electoral politicking will make things better is an astoundingly ahistorical take.
A background investigation is not electoral politicking. I'm genuinely not sure what you think could be done to achieve such a result.
It is when its done on the highest profile candidates in our democracy and then the results are made public knowledge. The reasonable question isn't "why do we think they've be biased" but "why would we think they can't be?" Especially as we're currently living through the results of an FBI office acting with an overtly political agenda.
What are you talking about?
Past drug use or infidelity will not prevent an applicant from getting a clearance. That’s what I am saying. It is not a hard disqualifier. So plenty of people who have that in their past can still get clearances. If we had a clearance requirement for high office, Democrats and people who, like, went to college would still get in.
I do, however, agree this is a nonstarter. I’ll repeat: I do not think a clearance requirement make sense for elected office. One more time: I do not think requiring candidates pass a clearance investigation would work.
That said, I find the idea of performing the process, and releasing the decision, interesting. The people would still be free to elect somebody who fails a clearance process in this hypothetical system. The same way they were free to elect a grifter who refused to release his tax returns (as you note). It would simply be one more piece of information to go into the campaign machines and get spun and worked to whatever advantage it might create.
But of course finding it interesting doesn’t mean I think it would work. Or is worth the drawbacks. Just...interesting. But probably never going to be politically feasible even if it’s legally possible...which it may not be.
You aren't really providing any reason to think it would.
Are you also against proposals for the IRS to release the tax returns of candidates?
Tax returns are evaluations of fitness. They're not findings, they're just a financial record.
I also trust the IRS to be accurate in their data far, far more than I trust law enforcement.
So are background checks. They ask a series of questions that are then verify them against available data. That's it. They can't be altered any more than someone at the IRS could alter a tax return.