Bush Is Not Incompetent by George Lakoff:
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. 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.
The article is long and elaborate, but the core idea is exactly what I wrote back in September 2005: Stop Beating on Bush!
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While I'm not the world's biggest fan of George Lakoff, he has published two posts that are worth reading. The first, co-authored by Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger, and Sam Ferguson, argues that the "Bush is incompetent" theme is a losing strategy (coturnix has additional commentary on this post):
The…
If you have not received the e-mail from the Center for American Progress, it is here, under the fold:
MEMO
To: Interested Parties
From: John D. Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Date: November 9, 2006
Re: The End of the Grand Conservative Experiment
There is a…
Regular readers know I've been beating this drum since the inception of this blog, but the Krugman says it well:
The fault, however, lies not in Republicans' stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has…
Almost everyone now seems to think the Iraq debacle was, well, a debacle. Many of us thought invading Iraq was a terrible idea to begin with. Others are silent on that issue (or approved) but think it was carried out poorly. No planning. Failure to plan, however, is a hallmark of the Bush…
Oooh, that's the ticket, look beyond the superficial to the bigger picture. Our current situation is the result of a prolonged and concerted effort, employing empirical sciences such as demographic modeling and state-of-the-art computer modeling, in conjnction with some serious sociological and psychological applied advertising science, to manipulate the political climate. The people behind this 'movement' (neo-conservatism... look up Leo Strauss...) are certainly not retarded by a long shot. Our figurehead, Mr. Bush is the obvious red herring presented for our amusement, and to distract us, while the real plotters work for the most part in anonymity, safe from exposure and public scrutiny.
Hey Daniel, I was just about to go visit your blog since I haven't been in a while. What's up?
Also, back to the topic of this post, this comment is also very true.