Common Dreams has an editorial up by a Theo Stein, who I'm not aware of having heard of, which is my fault and not his. I tend to agree with most of it, the premise of which is that the Bushies are a bunch of fuckups who couldn't organize a two-person parade to the end of the block with a compass, a map, and a yellow brick road. As premises go, this one is fairly inoffensive to anyone who still has half the wits they were born with (and is not in some way income-dependent on this administration). Hell, even I agree.
But at the end of it, Mr Stein has this to say:
Can’t these guys do anything right?
No, and that’s the point, gleeful liberals and progressive bloggers are saying. The Bush administration’s mighty implosion is the logical, inevitable result of entrusting ideologues who abhor government with the responsibility of governing.
It’s like handing the keys to your new car to a demolition derby champ and wondering what the heck happened when your ride comes back missing its bumpers.
Conservatives would have a tough time arguing government is the enemy of the people if Republicans actually made it work, they argue. Thus, this snarky take goes, Bush has been an extraordinary success.
Well, that's certainly an argument made by some snarky liberal bloggers. (You know who you are.) He goes on to say, however:
Count me among those who are hard-pressed to accept the notion that conservatives live in an upside-down world where spectacularly incompetent governance is a mark of success.
But these cowboys sure make you wonder, don’t they?
Which is where the missing of the point comes in. Either I'm missing it, which I'm not prepared to rule out, or Mr Stein is. Mr Stein, have you met Grover Norquist, by any chance? Mr Norquist, a leading thinker of the right--a group that admittedly considers Newt Gingrich a Man Of Ideas--has some interesting theories about the role of government in America's future. I believe Mr Norquist considers the Bush response to Katrina to be not inconsistent with success.All of which actually seems to be rather beside the point. Snark aside, the people who make this point are generally making a slightly more subtle point, or at least I know I am when I say things like that.
The reality here is not that this administration, or any other going back at least as far as Reagan who governed under the theory that government is not a solution but a problem, actively goes out of its way to fuck up. They don't have to. People who don't believe that government can--or should--be used to help people do not go into government to make it help people. Which leaves a limited range of motivations: power is the biggest one, though running close apparently is "creepy Oedipal issues".
But it is not unreasonable, if you believe that government cannot be used to help people and you also believe that government is innately corrupt and wasteful, also articles of faith among the GOP, to figure that some of that money might as well come the way of you and your friends. It probably seems positively benign to use the power and money of government to pay back the people whose favors and money got you where you are. After all, it's either that or the money will just be thrown at poor people, which, apparently, is bad for their character.
So that's, to my mind, the driving dynamic of republican politics. It's all basically cronyism, though I suspect they'd object to the pejorative nature of the word and suggest that all politicians bring their friends with them and use appointments to return favors. Which is probably true, but I think it's fair to expect that people be selected for competence or expertise when it comes to positions where peoples' lives are on the line. FEMA is the obvious illustration of this, Defense, the Justice Department, CDC, and Homeland Security would be others. I'd consider things like OSHA to be too important to play with, too. The commission for overseas peanut butter marketing, feel free to appoint your lazy brother-in-law.
So I don't think I would seriously attempt to make the point that Bush has installed people in key positions with the expectation that they would fuck up and he could argue that government doesn't work--if only because he absolutely doesn't argue that. In fact, he says that whatever happened was pretty much the best possible outcome, and then backslaps and heckuvajobs and passes out medals and promotions like Mardi Gras beads.
Instead, I would argue that he simply doesn't care if the people he installs are incompetent and bad things result. The fact that conservative thinktanks can then use those bad results to argue that government doesn't work, and suggest that privatization would be the solution, is a benefit, but probably not the intent.
On the other hand, if we ever, God help us, elect Grover Norquist, I would expect him to install people he trusts and outright instruct them to fuck things up enough that anarchy starts to look like kind of a good idea. I think he's willing to take a hit to his legacy in favor of his friends with their pathological aversion to paying taxes. Bush? Not so much. He likes his rich friends and patrons well enough, but he likes himself most of all. It's sickening to contemplate, but I suspect he really does think he's doing a good job--at least for the people who matter.
Which, just for the record, isn't us.
6 comments:
Why do I now have an image of Mike Brown jumping up and down and flashing a garishly-dressed (there may be colorful feathers and sequins involved here) Bush in a midnight-black yet very active street full of drunk people?
You forgot the FDA. Not just because of the pet-poisoning fuckup, but also the dozens of mass recalls of drugs that are killing people because the FDA no longer requires adequate testing or investigation of new drugs (as that impairs the profit margins of Eli Lilly et al), it just rubber-stamps whatever the pharmaceutical conglomerates want, as well as the corporate farms and industrial food manufacturers.
And we (and our beloved animals) are the ones who suffer, because it's better (for Dumbya & Dick) to hire unqualified, borderline-illiterate cronies and spawn of cronies, than it is to have government agencies actually FUNCTION as was intended. THAT, to them, is governmental "efficiency." Cut out the rules and safety issues, just sign the damned check.
After all, it's either that or the money will just be thrown at poor people, which, apparently, is bad for their character.
D. that paragraph says it all about Republican attitudes. The "welfare queens" story has been debunked time and again, yet it is trotted out for everyone to see each time good and decent pols try to get some assistance to the less fortunate among us. Republicans consider being poor a character flaw at best or evidence that God has it in for you (and therefore why should anyone else try to help you) at worst.
I agree absolutely. The thing is, competence can really only be measured against an objective. If we assume the goal of our leaders is to maintain and support a more perfect union, insure justice and domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to the American people then the Bushists are supernaturally incompetent by any rational standard. But then, except for the useful tools who think they are doing God's "moral" work, I don't think this crew cares a whit about the good of the country as we might define the words (good or country) but only the benefit of the narrow elite of their wealthy constituency and corporate cronies. In this regard, the Bushists have been wildly successful. It's not like this wasn't predictable, either. They approached the governance of Texas in exactly the same way, with exactly the same results.
(Of course, being the self-aggrandizing fucks that they are, neither their incompetence nor indifference to it will stop them from praising the hell out of themselves at black tie dinners, kind of like the "you're a great American" phone fellatio performed by Hannity and his shitheads on each other because they share the same ignorant opinions.)
Very true, Annti. I also forgot the EPA. And the more of a disaster the country and world becomes because of this kind of crap, the fewer safe harbors there are to stick your incompetents. At this point, even the committee for seaweed managment is a big deal that determines whether California's coastal fisheries will be surrendered to invasive Caulerpa taxifolia, for example.
On the other hand, I've been off my antidepressants since my grandmother died, and I tend to think we're all going to be dead in thirty years or less anyway. I should probably get some refills.
Mebbe. Mebbe not. They never work for me, they work exactly backwards, actually. I've got weird brain chemistry (whatta shock, eh?).
At any rate, you sound like you're coming out of the initial pain pretty well, and your thinking seems pretty damned clear, so best of luck, no matter what you do next. You know that there are plenty of people out here who are thinking about you and wishing all good things for you, right?
And y'know, it's been so fucking long since the EPA actually had laws to ENFORCE (can you say, "Clear Skies Initiative To Hand The Entire Fucking Planet To ExxonMobile"???), I pretty much forgot that they existed. Who's running that now, anyway, Donald Trump or Neil Bush?
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