Resolved: Condoleezza Rice was democratically elected as United States Secretary of State.
Please defend this proposition.
Aziz, CTL, I’m looking at you. And anyone else who’d care to join battle.
(This apropos of this discussion. I really want to see you guys defend the proposition that Secretary Rice was democratically elected. Go!)
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I’m game to defend that proposition as an intellectual exercise.
Secretary Rice was placed in her position by the people’s elected representatives. She may not have been directly elected by popular vote, but neither has any President of the United States, and nobody goes around saying that Presidents aren’t democratically elected (not unless they’re alleging election fraud).
Rice was a well-known part of the Bush administration, and the Bush administration was democratically re-elected in 2004. The 2004 Presidential election elected not only Bush, but also all of his expected political appointees.
Rice’s appointment was ratified by the Senate. The Senate is democratically elected, and their advice-and-consent function is well understood and is a perennial election issue. If the people did not consent to Rice’s ascention to Secretary of State, then their Senators would have heard about it and would have been punished come re-election time if they ignored the voice of the people.
Dean,
would you have any qualms about the statement that Rice was democratically appointed? Â Is it just a semantics issue?
She was not democratically elected. She was appointed by a president chosen by electors which were chosen according to the popular vote in each individual state. She was then approved by the Senate which is made up of democratically elected members.
                            People
    Senate                                    Electors
                               President
             Â
               Rice
I can’t see how one could argue that she was democratically elected. She was appointed and approved by people elected by the process spelled out by the laws and procedures of our Republic, but she was not elected democratically.
At best, she is democratically elected, twice removed (or something like that)…
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would you have any qualms about the statement that Rice was democratically appointed?
I agree – this is basically what I said, only much shorter…
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Dean:
If you subscribe to the notion that the US Government is "Democaratically Elected" then you have to include Cabinet members, judges and government appointees in that category.
If you don’t agree that Cabinet members, judges and government appointees are fundamentally "elected" then you can’t really describe this country as a Democracy.
Part of it is semantics, but part of it is philosophical. When you elect a President, you elect an entire Executive branch of Government. People know that when they vote, so it is fair to say that they are "electing" a cabinet and judges and appointees.
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Why would I want to defend an incorrect statement? At any rate the analogy is poor because Rice is an executive branch appointee, so she doesnt govern, but merely acts to execute the orders of the Executive. Democracy is about putting the people who wield power under the accountability of the public. Rice only wields what power she is given by the president, no more – and it can be taken away far more easily than it is granted (there are no exit-interview confirmation hearings when you’re fired from the Cabinet).
Eric laid out the basic argument.
The short version is that we democratically elected the people who, using the powers that we elected them to have, gave her the job. So, we (indirectly) democratically elected her.
I’m really curious: of the other major forms of government which exist or have existed in this world, do you think that Rice got the job by hereditary birth right, being named by someone with hereditary power, or by military coup?
If you lift a stack of books, you’re lifting the top book even though your hands are only on the bottom book.
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