People are human. Even the courts are influenced by politics. The point is to try your best to not let political considerations influence you. The voters do their part by reacting negatively to obvious politicizing of basic government functions.
That’s true, but I was referring to the President’s core job of carrying out the laws passed by Congress. The President is given some legislative power, through the veto, and also recommending laws for Congress to pass. However, the government should be non-political.
If the government’s basic functions are to be politicized, is this not an argument against activist government?
That is like saying that cats should be non-feline.
Or for it, depending on whether you like the results.
Most arguments I’ve seen for activist government are technocratic in nature(“We’ll have experts run things!”). Milton Friedman on the other hand was the one who argued that since government functions are always politicized, it can’t be trusted to allocate resources either efficiently or fairly.
Isn’t the Executive in the US invested in the person of the President? It seems quite difficult for anybody to be nonpolitical in half their job and not the other.
Nevertheless, he is expected to be nonpolitical when it comes to say, collection of taxes, or enforcement of federal criminal law, or preventing terrorist attacks. And many other things.
There is that, but then that’s not really an issue of debate in politics (that of fair treatment), as it’s essentially administration. It’s the level of taxes, what constitutes a crime and how severely the punishment should be, and what rights should be restrained to better combat terrorism, which is politics.
And those are all things decided by the legislative branch. The President is political in the sense that he recommends legislation that he thinks is best to help him achieve his goals, but the enforcement of the law must be nonpolitical, and as we are seeing now, Presidents get into hot water when these functions are politicized.
But that side of matters is run by the Civil Service, is it not? Here in the UK, it’s meant to be strictly apolitical, and this is achieved by means of an impartial appointments system. Very, very few official positions are referred to Parliament for approval, and the Executive avoids interfering on the whole.