Here’s an issue of Politico’s “West Wing Playbook†that illustrates my problems with technocracy, journalism, lawyers or maybe all three. Here’s how they introduce their resource, Mark Zaid:
To answer that, we called up MARK ZAID, a prominent national security attorney who has extensive experience dealing with claims around mishandling classified information.
But here are some of his responses:
Had you been in the White House on Nov. 2, the day the first batch of documents was discovered, what steps would you have taken?
I would not have revealed it at the time out of concern of influencing, unfairly and unduly, the elections.
and
Do we really care about the quality of the room? Isn’t the bigger question: What’s in the documents?
I’m not concerned about any of these blunders with respect to legal liability. The blunder pertains to public perception and undermining your credibility.
The problem I have with his answer is that he’s not answer the questions as a “national security attorney” but providing answers as a political operative or an advocate. They hypothetical “had you been…” gives him some cover but in this instance he has no client so answering as an advocate is improper. Attorneys are officers of the court and IMO he should have answered the questions accordingly.
Any ward heeler is equipped to answer the political questions. His intro confuses the issue.
“Technocracy” is supposed to be rule by experts. Being an expert in subject A does not automatically confer authority in subject B. That’s my problem with technocracy. In practice it’s not actually rule by experts but rule by specious authority.
As journalists, given their introduction, they should have limited their questions to those about national security rather than so many about politics.
And lawyers need to decide whether they’re officers of the court, experts, advocates, or political operatives. Pretty clearly they can’t be all of the above at the same time.
