Bush Is Not Incompetent
by George Lakoff, Sam Ferguson, Marc Ettlinger
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by George W. Bush’s
plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's
"failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. For
example, Nancy Pelosi said, “The situation in Iraq and the reckless
economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and
that is the competence of our leader."
Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point.
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. It is conservatism itself, carried out according
to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other
conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well.
We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative
office holders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff.
To Bush’s base, his bumbling folksiness is part of his charm — it
fosters conservative populism. Bush plays up this image by proudly
stating his lack of interest in reading and current events, his fondness
for naps and vacations and his self-deprecating jokes. This image causes
the opposition to underestimate his capacities — disregarding him as a
complete idiot — and deflects criticism of his conservative allies. If
incompetence is the problem, it’s all about Bush.
But, if conservatism is the problem, it is about a set of ideas, a
movement and its many adherents.
The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the
following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush
administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:
* Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented
degree
* Starting two major wars, one started with questionable
intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
* Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking
the lower federal courts with many more
* Cutting taxes during "wartime", an unprecedented event
* Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act,
the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the
Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts for the
wealthiest Americans
* Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory
protections
* Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
* Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based
initiatives
* Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment —
“The Healthy Forests Act” and the “Clear Skies Initiative” — to
deforest public lands, and put more pollution in our skies
* Winning re-election and solidifying his party’s grip on Congress
These aren’t signs of incompetence. As should be painfully clear, 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.
*The Conservative Agenda*
Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual
initiative, that is, government’s positive role in people’s lives
outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is
the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and
opportunity.
The conservative vision for government is to shrink it – to “drown it in
the bathtub” in Conservative Grover Norquist’s words. The conservative
tagline for this rationale is that “you can spend your money better than
the government can.” Social programs are considered unnecessary or
“discretionary” since, they claim, the primary role of government is to
defend the country’s border and police its interior. Stewardship of the
commons, such as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to
people’s own initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be
made — conservation, healthcare for the poor — charity is meant to
replace justice and the government should not be involved [regardless of
the preamble to the Constitution declaring governmetn must "promote the
general welfare."]
Given this philosophy, then, is it any wonder that the government wasn’t
there for the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina? Conservative philosophy places emphasis on the
individual acting alone, independent of anything the government could
provide. Some conservative Sunday morning talk show guests suggested
that those who chose to live in New Orleans accepted the risk of a
devastating hurricane, the implication being that they thus forfeited
any entitlement to government assistance. If the people of New Orleans
suffered, it was because of their own actions, their own choices and
their own lack of preparedness. Bush couldn’t have failed if he bore no
responsibility.
The response to Hurricane Katrina — rather, the lack of response — was
what one should expect from a philosophy that espouses that the
government can have no positive role in its citizen’s lives. This
response was not about Bush’s incompetence; it was a conservative,
shrink-government response to a natural disaster.
Another failure of this administration during the Katrina fiasco was its
wholesale disregard of the numerous and serious hurricane warnings. But
this failure was a natural outgrowth of the conservative insistence on
denying the validity of global warming, not ineptitude. Conservatives
continue to deny the validity of global warming, because it runs
contrary to their moral system. Recognizing global warming would call
for environmental regulation and governmental efforts to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. Regulation is a perceived interference with
the free-market, Conservatives’ golden calf. So, the predictions of
imminent hurricanes — based on recognizing global warming — were not
heeded. Conservative free market convictions trumped the hurricane
warnings.
Our budget deficit is not the result of incompetent fiscal management.
It too is an outgrowth of conservative philosophy. What better way than
massive deficits to rid social programs of their funding?
In Iraq, we also see the impact of philosophy as much as a failure of
execution.
The idea for the Iraq war itself was born out of deep conservative
convictions about the nature and capacity of US military force. Among
the Project for a New American Century’s statement of principles (signed
in 1997 by a who’s who of the architects of the Iraq war — Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby among
others) are four critical goals:
* to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out
our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces
for the future
* to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge
regimes hostile to our interests and values
* to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad
* to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving
and extending an international order friendly to our security, our
prosperity, and our principles.
Implicit in these ideas is that the United States military can spread
democracy through the barrel of a gun. Our military might and power can
be a force for good.
It also indicates that the real motive behind the Iraq invason wasn’t to
stop Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but was a test of
neoconservative theory that the US military could reshape Middle East
geo-politics. The manipulation and disregard of intelligence to sell the
war was not incompetence; it was the product of a conservative agenda.
Unfortunately, this theory exalts a hubristic vision over the lessons of
history. It neglects the realization that there is a limit to a foreign
army’s ability to shape foreign politics for the good. Our military
involvement in Vietnam, Lebanon, the Philippines, Cuba (prior to Castro)
and Panama, or European imperialist endeavors around the globe should
have taught us this lesson. Democracy needs to be an organic, homegrown
movement, as it was in this country. If we believe so deeply in our
ideals, they will speak for themselves and inspire others.
During the debate over Iraq, the conservative belief in the unquestioned
authority and moral leadership of the President helped shape public
support. We see this deference to the President constantly: when
Conservatives call those questioning the President’s military decisions
“unpatriotic”; when Conservatives defend the executive branch’s use of
domestic spying in the so-called "war on terror;" when Bush simply
refers to himself as the “decider.” “I support our President” was a
common justification of assent to the Iraq policy.
Additionally, as the implementer of the neoconservative vision and an
unquestioned moral authority, Bush felt he had no burden to forge
international consensus or listen to the critiques of our allies.
“You’re with us, or you’re against us,” he proclaimed after 9/11.
Much criticism continues to be launched against this administration for
ineptitude in its reconstruction efforts. Tragically, it is here too
that the administration’s actions have been shaped less by ineptitude
than by deeply held conservative convictions about the role of government.
As noted above, conservatives believe that government’s role is limited
to security and maintaining a free market. Given this conviction, it’s
no accident that administration policies have focused almost exclusively
on the training of Iraqi police, and US access to the newly free Iraqi
market — the invisible hand of the market will take care of the rest.
Indeed, George Packer has recently reported that the reconstruction
effort in Iraq is nearing its end (“The Lessons of Tal Affar,” The New
Yorker, April 10th, 2006). Iraqis must find ways to rebuild themselves,
and the free market we have constructed for them is supposed to do this.
This is not ineptitude. This is the result of deep convictions over the
nature of freedom and the responsibilities of governments to their people.
Finally, many of the miscalculations are the result of a conservative
analytic focus on narrow causes and effects, rather than mere
incompetence. Evidence for this focus can be seen in conservative
domestic policies: Crime policy is based on punishing the criminals,
independent of any effort to remedy the larger social issues that cause
crime; immigration policy focuses on border issues and the immigrants,
and ignores the effects of international and domestic economic policy on
population migration
<http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/rockridge/immigration>;
environmental policy is based on what profits there are to be gained or
lost today, without attention paid to what the immeasurable long-term
costs will be to the shared resource of our environment; education
policy, in the form of vouchers, ignores the devastating effects that
dismantling the public school system will have on our whole society.
Is it any surprise that the systemic impacts of the Iraq invasion were
not part of the conservative moral or strategic calculus used in
pursuing the war?
The conservative war rhetoric focused narrowly on ousting Saddam — he
was an evil dictator, and evil cannot be tolerated, period. The moral
implications of unleashing social chaos and collateral damage in
addition to the lessons of history were not relevant concerns.
As a consequence, we expected to be greeted as liberators. The
conservative plan failed to appreciate the complexities of the situation
that would have called for broader contingency planning. It lacked an
analysis of what else would happen in Iraq and the Middle East as a
result of ousting the Hussein Government, such as an Iranian push to
obtain nuclear weapons.
Senator Joe Biden recently said, “if I had known the president was going
to be this incompetent in his administration, I would not have given him
the authority [to go to war].” 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 for the rich. 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.
*Hidden Successes*
Perhaps the biggest irony of the Bush-is-incompetent frame is that these
“failures” — Iraq, Katrina and the budget deficit — have been successes
in terms of advancing the conservative agenda.
One of the goals of conservatives is to keep people from relying on the
federal government. Under Bush, FEMA was reorganized to no longer be a
first responder in major natural disasters, but only to provide support
for local agencies and its budget was cut. This led to the disastrous
lack of response to Hurricane Katrina. Now citizens, as well as local
and state governments, have become distrustful of the federal
government’s capacity to help ordinary citizens. Though Bush’s
popularity may have suffered, enhancing the perception of federal
government as inept turned out to be a conservative victory.
Conservatives also strive to get rid of protective agencies and social
programs. The deficit Bush created through irresponsible tax cuts and a
costly war in Iraq will require drastic budget cuts to remedy. Those
cuts, conservatives know, won’t come from military spending,
particularly when they raise the constant specter of war. Instead, the
cuts will be from what conservatives have begun to call “non-military,
discretionary spending;” that is, the programs that contribute to the
common good like the FDA, EPA, FCC, FEMA, OSHA and the NLRB. Yet another
success for the conservative agenda.
Both Iraq and Katrina have enriched the coffers of the conservative
corporate elite, thus further advancing the conservative agenda.
Halliburton, Lockhead Martin and US oil companies have enjoyed huge
profit margins in the last six years. Taking Iraq’s oil production
off-line in the face of rising international demand meant prices would
rise, making the oil inventories of Exxon and other firms that much more
valuable, leading to record profits. The destruction wrought by Katrina
and Iraq meant billions in reconstruction contracts. The war in Iraq
(and the war in Afghanistan) meant billions in military equipment
contracts. Was there any doubt where those contracts would go? Chalk up
another success for Bush’s conservative agenda.
Bush also used Katrina as an opportunity to suspend the environmental
and labor protection laws that conservatives despise so much. In the
wake of Katrina, environmental standards for oil refineries were
temporarily suspended to increase production. Labor laws are being
thwarted to drive down the cost of reconstruction efforts. So, amidst
these “disasters,” conservatives win again.
Where most Americans see failure in Iraq – George Miller recently called
Iraq a “blunder of historic proportions” – conservative militarists are
seeing many successes. Conservatives stress the importance of our
military — our national pride and worth is expressed through its power
and influence. Permanent bases are being constructed as planned in Iraq,
and America has shown the rest of the world that we can and will
pre-emptively strike with little provocation. They succeeded in a
mobilization of our military forces based on ideological pretenses to
impact foreign policy. The war has struck fear in other nations with a
hostile show of American power. The conservatives have succeeded in
strengthening what they perceive to be the locus of the national
interest —military power.
*It’s NOT Incompetence*
When progressives shout “Incompetence!” it obscures the many
conservative successes. The incompetence frame drastically misses the
point, that the conservative vision is doing great harm to this country
and the world. An understanding of this and an articulate progressive
response is needed. Progressives know that government can and should
have a positive role in our lives beyond simple, physical security. It
had a positive impact during the progressive era, busting trusts, and
establishing basic labor standards. It had a positive impact during the
New Deal, softening the blow of the depression by creating jobs and
stimulating the economy. It had a positive role in advancing the civil
rights movement, extending rights to previously disenfranchised groups.
And the United States can have a positive role in world affairs without
the use of its military and expressions of raw power. Progressives
acknowledge that we are all in this together, with “we” meaning all
people, across all spectrums of race, class, religion, sex, sexual
preference and age. “We” also means across party lines, state lines and
international borders.
The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence
frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been
in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush’s
management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his
guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will
opt for another radically conservative president in 2008, so long as he
or she can manage better. Bush will not be running again, so thinking,
talking and joking about him being incompetent offers no lessons to draw
from his presidency.
Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush’s conservative philosophy is
what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism
that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.
Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people,
destroying our environment, and weakening our nation.
Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost
every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to
Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of
governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless
conservative philosophy itself is discredited, conservatives will
continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will
continue their domination of politics.
(c) The Rockridge Institute, 2006
rockridgeinstitute.org |
