[F]ree advice isn’t the only advantage to having a big foreign-policy team. One expert said the system helped ensure loyalty for Clinton by creating “the illusion of inclusion.”
“Even though you’re one of hundreds, you feel like you’re part of the team,” said one prominent think tank scholar.
It’s the type of dynamic that can make an outside expert think twice before tweeting a snarky reaction to a Clinton gaffe or offering a less-than-flattering quote to a reporter.
From: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Massive Foreign-Policy Brain Trust | Foreign Policy
This is what is wrong with the modern foreign policy process in a nutshell. A massive paper churning bureaucracy with good idea fairies sprinkling their pixie dust over everything. Producing stuff that is mostly useless, as the final products are an overcooked stew of consensus, and mostly ignored anyway by the people actually making decisions – unless they want to cherrypick items that support their own priors.
Funny how Clinton has created something very resembling the official political-diplomatic-military structure when she’s out of power, but frequently used unofficial fly by night back channels when she was in power.Report
What you say makes a lot of sense, both points, but I especially love the “illusion of inclusion”: The concept extends very far, and well beyond HRC, though she is doomed to embody it just as she’s doomed to embody so much else that’s typical of our political culture, for good and nowadays especially ill, as we were just discussing on another thread.Report