In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton often employs a simple yet profound rhetorical strategy in promoting and defending the unratified constitution. Detractors of the constitution argued against its provisions for unlimited powers in making war, levying taxes, and enacting all laws necessary and proper. Hamilton responded by wisely pointing out the futility of fully circumscribing a government intended to endure the unforeseen challenges of the future. A government without unlimited means to enact expedients cannot survive the ever changing and unpredictable tumult of human affairs. Yet even Hamilton in all his rhetorical acumen could not have foreseen the universality of scientific application in these affairs. Science in applied form---technology---is rapidly pervading all aspects of human affairs. The government, therefore, must competently assess and respond to science in order to promote the general welfare, industry, and commerce. In particular, the president of the United States cannot ably lead the nation without adequately understanding scientific issues. Therefore, an education in science would be an important asset for the president.
In American politics, science is displacing, replacing, or rephrasing traditional issues. Science not only illuminates philosophical and ethical issues but also creates its own. What once were only questions of human activity are now exposed to applications of technology by science. Technology replaces increasingly less and less menial elements of our lives. The farmer's craft is redefined by a battalion of machinery. Machines control our indoor climates. Vehicles transport us from place to place and from city to city with little inconvenience. Autonomous computers are found in almost every area of our lives. Innovations in manufacturing processes continually reduce the cost of technology while increasing its sophistication. A president without a sure comprehension of how technology affects the country cannot be considered competent in discharging his public service.
Science was once an isolated pursuit practiced in monasterial universities. Now those universities are the laboratories of industry and commerce. Alan Greenspan remarked recently that the country's GDP has become ``largely conceptual.'' Surely a university scientific education is the best source of conceptual capital. This capital may be thought of as both a knowledge of important scientific principles and the skill of critical thinking. Once learned, these principles are taken and infused into almost every area of industry and commerce. Because scientific knowledge at universities is being discovered at an inflationary rate, the rate of knowledge taken into the marketplace is also increasing. Thus the rate and breadth of technology for sale increases, and industry itself becomes susceptible to the inevitability of scientific discourse. The president is often influential in the legislature or directly responsible in setting policies, and must be able to understand new science in order to help guide its progress and inhibit its harmful effects.
Mediocrity is often met with success in life generally, but the president of the United States cannot afford to want any insight without hazarding the wellbeing of the whole country. President Bush may have been pursuing his vision for promoting the welfare of the country in his responses to generic terrorism and yet it was his prerogative to issue a flurry of presidential orders that amounted to uses of technology questionable in their faith to the Bill of Rights. The FBI alone breached the already clandestine FISA measures several thousand times with warrantless searches of property. Several million times they sifted unwarranted through phone conversations of American citizens. These are not uses of technology that are condoned by a Commander in Chief sensitive to the politics of science and technology. Science produces new contexts for technology to interface with humans. None of these contexts have any legal or political precedence. How dangerous it would be for them to be greeted with ignorance by authority so that malice may exploit them. The science of today is the technology of the future. A president needs to understand the larger Bill of Rights issues threatened by an unscrupulous government with access to technology and with means to exploit it. A president also must comprehend what patience is required for the science of today to come to fruition.
Certainly one of the most urgent needs for patience and support given to science a president needs to have pertains to earth stewardship. Technology may be a universal benefit to humankind but we have much to learn in order to make it more harmonious with the earth's natural processes and ecological needs. For whatever purpose, presidential politics has been famously associated with ecological stewardship. It is critical at this time that the president have a solid understanding of the new scientific information available on this topic. Many populous countries that once were typically technology poor thanks to advances in modern advances in science and technology are rapidly coming up to the same rate of energy and product wealth once only enjoyed by a fraction of the world's human inhabitants. In this manner, our careless industrial practices are multiplying the wreak of pollution, and the earth and our fellow nonhuman inhabitants will suffer for it. The president needs to understand these complex issues and select or create positive measures that will reduce the shock of human industry on our biological environment.
Finally, a scientific education helps the president in understanding how to use technology to benefit the poor. Not only does the president have great influence in setting national and global policies in ecology, but also can direct measures to help the destitute and the poor. Technology is the primary means by which poverty can be eliminated. What resources the world offers us are fixed, but one of the principal ideals of technology is efficiency. By fulfilling basic human needs with more efficient technology, people will better be equipped to help themselves out of poverty and to help each other, and that is the measure of goodness of any technology. Society in essence is ultimately progressive. It is exciting to reflect how that across time from dim prehistoric memory to the present, this progress in art, science, thought, philosophy has been gradually exponential, and yet it is in our age that science provides the means for this progress to achieve fantastic realities.
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