Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings

[Dill]

(09-04-2018, 06:38 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: It comes down to a lack of understanding of how the bureaucracy works. Policy gets made up and down the ladder on a constant basis. That is what allows us to carry out the policies enacted by the elected officials, because they require more detail than they account for (or can write) in their laws.

There is an important sense in which policy is "made up and down the ladder."  But policy is still DIRECTED from the top. That is why it matters who wins the presidency and then starts appointing cabinet positions with deputies and undersecretaries. Aside from his gatekeeper role as clerk,  Kavanaugh was later also a political appointee, selected to help craft Bush policies.  He was never a simple, tenured civil servant ready to work for whoever is president.

Especially in the Bush presidency, there was a great deal of pressure to bend rules and norms, not to mention facts, to get desired policy.  People were chosen to do that. E.g., the work of dressing up torture as "enhanced interrogation" was tasked to people like John Woo. That's why I would very much like to know if Kavanaugh had anything to do with crafting Bush policies on terrorism .

So the leaders direct and their appointees create the substance and rationale for the policy.  They (the appointees) are not just neutrally sorting the mail, though people at lower levels might be. They are not "directing" policy, but they may influence or even control its final shape.