Lakoff: Bush is not incompetent
George Lakoff has co-written a great piece at The Rockridge Institute (reposted at HuffPo) which states flat-out that “Bush Is Not Incompetent.” The authors point out that “Bush's disasters -- Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit -- are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy.” After listing his “accomplishments”—from “centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree” to “Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment,” the article notes that
the Bush administration has been overwhelmingly competent in advancing its conservative vision. It has been all too effective in achieving its goals by determinedly pursuing a conservative philosophy.It's not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it's the conservative agenda.
Among its main tenets are: expanding market fundamentalism, impugning social programs and regulatory agencies, trying to spread democracy via advanced weaponry, and the “unitary executive” theory of the Decider-in-Chief. In none of these areas has the Bush administration actually demonstrated incompetence. In fact,
Had Bush actually been incompetent, he would have never been able to lead us to war in Iraq. Had Bush been incompetent, he would not have been able to ram through hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Had Bush been incompetent, he would have been blocked from stacking the courts with right-wing judges. Incompetence, on reflection, might have actually been better for the country.