Technocratic Government

Some Biden aides believe those closest to the president have created a cocoon around him that initially seemed earnestly protective, but now appears potentially deceptive in the debate’s aftermath.

• • They particularly focus on Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini, the first lady’s top adviser Anthony Bernal, and longtime aide Ashley Williams, who joined the deputy chief of staff’s office when Tomasini ascended to the role earlier this year.
  • Those close aides have many duties. But officials recall instances of them helping Biden make up for mental lapses, including prompting him to remember people he has known for a long time.
  • Such moments could be dismissed as normal lapses. But many Biden aides now wonder whether they were signs of something deeper.
  • One former Biden aide told Axios: “Annie, Ashley and Anthony create a protective bubble around POTUS. He’s staffed so closely that he’s lost all independence. POTUS relies on staff to nudge him with reminders of who he’s meeting, including former staffers and advisers who Biden should easily remember without a reminder from Annie.”

Evidence is emerging that the “bubble” is doing more than covering for the president’s gaffes and senior moments.  A White House aide has leaked greater concerns to another left-leaning news site, Semafor, which published under the by-line of editor Ben Smith an article entitled A ‘scared’ Biden aide sounds an alarm.  An excerpt:

It’s unclear even to some inside the West Wing policy process which policy issues reach the president, and how. Major decisions go into an opaque circle that includes White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients (who talks to the president regularly) and return concluded. . . .

This pattern had already been a topic of discussion, and curiosity, among the high-powered aides who work in and around the White House. The rituals of paperflow are technical, but they say they’re surprised by the lack of briefings to the president, and of readouts from consultations with the president and worry about the possibility of decisions “being made without him.”. . .

“I’m super proud of the policies,” the person said. “I’m talking to you because I’m incredibly upset and scared for the country and I would like to do what I can.”

Actually, government by unelected professionals is a genuine option to democracy.  That term means government by the people.  Other systems include aristocracy, government by “the best”; plutocracy, government by the wealthy; and autocracy, government by a single “self.”  Then there is technocracy, government by “experts.”

In an article last month on UK politics in the progressive British publication New Statesman, John Gray gives a good explanation:

Rule by technocrats means bypassing politics by outsourcing key decisions to professional bodies that claim expert knowledge. Their superior sapience is often ideology clothed in pseudo-science they picked up at university a generation ago, and their recommendations a radical political programme disguised as pragmatic policymaking. Technocracy represents itself as delivering what everyone wants, but at bottom it is the imposition of values much of the population does not share. A backlash was inevitable.

The backlash Gray refers to is what he predicted would be a rout of the increasingly technocratic Conservative Party in the UK, a prediction that came true last week.

But there are also marks of technocratic government here in the United States.  Consider our government’s across-the-board response to COVID, constantly deferring to “the experts,” many of whose mandates have now been discredited; the uncritical adoption in the medical, educational, and government establishments of  transgender ideology, despite the scientific evidence against it; ambitious anti-climate change initiatives imposed even when their benefits do not seem to outweigh the hardships they impose on the public.

Now that America’s progressive movement as manifested in the Democratic Party has replaced its traditional working class base with elite, highly-educated professionals, it is little wonder that an often dominant strain of American politics is inclined towards technocracy.  These progressives consider themselves to be a class of experts who are entitled to set the policies for the unenlightened masses to follow.

As evidence for this mindset, notice the outrage on the part of so many Democrats at the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of the Chevron deference requiring courts to defer to the “experts” in government agencies in interpreting, applying, and adjudicating open-ended regulatory laws.  “The reversal,” lamented one critic, “means the opinions of scientists and technical experts at US federal agencies will no longer reign supreme when it comes to interpreting legal ambiguities.”  Exactly.  But the critic assumes that they should “reign supreme.”

This is technocracy, but not democracy, something the Democratic Party claims to champion against its threats.  Politics in a democracy secures the consent of the governed, something technocratic governments typically are not interested in, since they believe they know better.

Photo:  “Experts Only:  As Opposed to Pirates,” by Ross Mayfield via Flickr,  CC by NC 2.0