It’s Not the Stupidity, Stupid

George Lakoff and associates at the Rockridge Institute are right: It’s not George Bush’s stupidity that is endangering us all. In fact, looked at face on, his list of accomplishments is impressive. It’s just that they scare the bejesus out of us. Bush will not be running again in 2008 but someone will be – riding on the same horse: conservatism with despoilers hooves.

Yes it’s fun once in a while to enjoy mockery and parody of Kingish George but getting stuck there will make us miss the main threat.

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. 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 Is Not Incompetent

[cross posted at www.ruthgroup.org]