I would say not. It seems the military/surveillance arm of the Executive has become a truly autonomous entity, with no one who takes the big seat willing to come down on it or do anything other than to listen to its [from our uninformed perspective] FUD, and follow its whims. I might guess, for example, that for the same reason Obama expanded surveillance, Bush went to war. There is no representative democracy here, at least where "national security" is concerned.