The Incompetence of the Bush Administration

I like George Bush.

I'm not afraid to say it, and I'm not ashamed that I voted for him over the absolute fraud and loser that John Kerry and his minions of braindead 60's wannabe's and retreads in tow represented. The day after the 2004 election was a boisterous and celebratory day for myself and my fellow GOPers here in the Philadelphia area. Watching Kerry get his butt stomped at the polls while CNN tried oh-so-desperately to avoid reporting the Bush victory was truly a moment to savor in my young political life. But like nearly all good things, it doesn't last forever.

Those who know and love me (you proud few) will probably assert that I'm a partisan Bush booster. In some ways, this is true, but I'm not as much pro-Bush as I am anti-leftist. Leftism is alive and well within the Democrat party, and has its insidious tentacles in nearly every formative institution in the nation (TV, mainstream editorial pages and newspapers, movies, public schools, government bureaucracies, etc.) That makes me conservative, but not necessarily GOP (since conservatism, for the literate, is a philosophy and the GOP is a political party).

I like the man personally - his quirkiness, his family values, etc. I like his demeanor, which is usually a mixture of confusion, stoicism and gentle humor. I like how he is demonized in one minute as the stupidest piece of protoplasm that has ever festered upon the face of the planet, and in the next minute seeing the argument swing around to claim that he is a positively diabolical genius capable of executing the most heinous and ingenious crimes the world has ever known.

There are plenty of things that I really don't like. I have been writing at the Jawa Report for some time with mixed degrees of regret that I am on the outs with the GOP and have reverted to Independent status. The immigration debacle, as with many other GOPers, was the straw that broke the camel's back. I have never supported Bush's open borders policy and am well aware of the fact that one can not claim to be a proponent of strong national security while refusing to seal the southern border of the country I don't particularly like his inarticulateness (once amusing, now just frustrating), which has been a stumbling block that has magnified his Administration's problems more and more with the passage of time.

And though it all, there has emerged one word that has repeatedly come to characterize the Administration, however, that unfortunately is quite accurate. Not evil. Not fascist. Not Nazi.

Incompetence. Pure, unadulterated incompetence.

Here is a brief and far from incomplete synopsis of the downward spiral that is the second Bush term, as seen through the eyes of one of his supporters.

It began in earnest with Harriet Miers - an absolute disgrace that luckily he retracted after furious opposition from his own party. Trying to put his Texas buddies on the Supreme Court while thumbing his nose at the conservative voters who had renewed his tenure was quite simply the beginning of the end. Amnesty rumblings and flawed immigration policies followed, with a misguided attempt to subjugate financial management of certain US ports to businessmen in Dubai. Coupled with repeated attempts to block border security and INS reforms (again, in the face of the wishes of the majority of his constituents) kept the approval numbers tumbling.

The CIA leak case, as stupid and trivial as it was, cemented a perception in the American mind that more nefarious things were going on in the Administration than actually were (in Democrat land, perception is reality as opposed to reality itself.) Of course, Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson are well-known Democrat operatives and Richard Armitage (a war opponent) leaked Valerie Plame's name, but Scooter Libby's scalp spoke louder than the facts or even the original charges (per usual).

Misjudgments and weak leadership in Iraq have been abound since the boots hit the ground in 2003. A repeated inability/unwillingness to talk to the public regarding the war has characterized the Presidency since day one. Those of use who don't need our hands held to figure out why we need to have a large military presence in the snakepit of the Middle East had no real support in articulating this to masses of people who have been yearning for guidance and explanations of the "it" that must be understood in order to support our military efforts in Iraq. Afghanistan is usually forgotten outright next to Iraq, partially because it isn't violent enough for the media to belittle, and is a smaller (some would argue more justified) operation. I am firmly supportive of the effort in Iraq, but I am less than convinced that Bush has the political will or power to continue fighting it with the ferocity and precision that we all know it requires to be effective. Although the casualty rates are on the historically low side of any major US conflict, the media is determined (intentionally or not) to repeat the chaos ad nauseum and to ignore the progress ad infinitum. That's just the reality on the ground. The Administration has been relentlessly clueless about this, and has been paying the political price on a daily basis as a result.

Bush should have been (and still should be) having a fireside chat with the nation every week, explaining the successes, setbacks and general goings-on in Iraq so that he can bypass the media reporting on the issue to speak directly to the population. We all know there is a large segment of the population that tuned him out starting in 2000, but I'm reasonably certain that the rest of the nation would appreciate some reassurance and perceived candidness about this fight. Bush has been a weak wartime leader. He hasn't retreated outright (to his credit) and has honestly tried (IMHO), although he seems to be looking for a way out in the near future. He succeeded in ousting Hussein and crushing the Ba'athists. He has failed to flood the zone with the full strength of the military and control the country (or to control the infiltration of Iran, which has been the catalyst for the ongoing violence for the duration of the war). I'm not saying that the country is blowing up, because a third grader can figure out that one car-bomb in a country the size of California doesn't mean that the entire country has been engulfed in flames. Just as murders in and around our major cities in the US on a daily basis does not indicate a massive slip into anarchy for the whole country, the same applies to the pockets of terrorist violence in Iraq. I can fully understand (through years of formal media education and from analyzing news coverage) why people feel this way, but cultivation theory suggests that this is an unfortunate by-product of today's news reporting. That's just a fact.

All this said, I have basically had my fill of defending George Bush. I had hoped that he would find a spine or a pair of brass ones in the past few years, but the immigration rhetoric and stupidity we are witnessing in Congress and from the White House has caused me to lose all faith that the man and his people are not completely and utterly tone-deaf as to the wishes of those who have been taking his arrows for all of these years.

I will not join the impeachment train. I will not take part in the high-school-crap-flinging that has become the hallmark of the Democrat Party voters. I will stand firmly with our military and their mission. But I have lost a lot of faith in the leader, who has even partially abdicated his Constitutional duties to a "war czar" (whatever the f*ck that is). It pains me to say it, but Bush and me are history. Maybe time will put him into perspective. Maybe a lunatic Democrat Congress/White House bitch combo-plate will shock the nation back into reality as to how badly it is being screwed. Maybe Bush will grow a spine and win back my blessing in the waning years of his tenure.

But I doubt it, given the totality of what I've seen.

So President Bush - I love you, man, but you've been barking up the wrong trees and backing the wrong horses for quite some time now; it is simply too pervasive not to notice anymore. Stay classy, support the Troops, and take a looong vacation in 2009. I'll be waiting to read your memoirs. You're a good man in a bad situation, and that's a sad thing to witness in real time.

Good night, good luck, and God bless you, W.