Decision making in government and blogs

I just read the essay "Regime Change and its Limits" in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs and I was pissed off that it didn't have a rebuttal from the Bush Administration. I've gotten so used to blogs and the comments below a blog entry that I just expect it in other situations. The article I mentioned was an excellent argument for using something other than force to get your way, without the stupid arguments that war is morally wrong. It was very critical of the Bush Administration but since there was no rebuttal I can't get a reading on why Bush does what he does. The lack of rebuttal means that I can't tell if he has a really good reason for using force without much provocation or that's he's just really stupid and was too lazy and decided to play GameCube instead of reading this morning's security briefing and/or the Foreign Affairs article I mentioned. If these very serious matters became an popular academic debate in the style of The Federalist where ideas were debated every day in the newspaper then I think the citizens of the United States would become much more engaged and smarted with respect to Internation Relations and I think better ideas on how to deal with these issues would come up.

It's in these situtation that I begin to think that our democracy has major faults built in. Presidents don't want to look stupid during their first term so they don't talk openly about issues so they can make sure they are reelected. And they don't talk openly about issues during their second term so they don't look stupid in the history books. What can we do about this? Maybe a 6 year one term max? And make sure to publish only crappy accounts of the presidents so they all look stupid? Arrrrg.