Malevolence, or: Brad is wrong, too.

The estimable Brad DeLong writes:

[ list of Bush administration misdeeds ]

Now none of these are cases in which the Bush administration’s view of the national interest and national welfare of the United States is different from mine All of these are cases in which the incompetence of the Bush administration is truly breathtaking.

(emphasis mine) But Brad is wrong. Bush is not incompetent. The aura of incompetence does for him what Reagan's 'teflon', or whatever it was that allowed Clinton to pluck himself from the jaws of the right-wing smear machine again and again, did for them. It provides a neat story for the press, and a never-expiring get-out-of-jail card for the man. Bush doesn't lie: he's just a doofus. He's not evil: he's a boob. He doesn't deliberately stage photo-ops that make it look like he's promoting programs that he's actually working to destroy: he probably doesn't undertand the complexities of the policy he signed off on, poor thing.

He didn’t lead us into a war of conquest and occupation on now demonstrably false pretexts: he was duped by those nasty intelligence people.

Don’t believe the antihype. Bush policy shows entirely too much internal consistency to be the result of incompetence. We would do well to stop underestimating him just because he can’t speak well, in public, off the cuff. Bush is not Chauncey Gardener. He’s a formidable, malevolent politcal manipulator.

This administration has shown it will do anything, up to and including bankrupting the nation and starting an unnecessary and illegal war, for political gain or to pay back its plutocratic allies. And as long as we keep giving the Bushistas implicit credit for good intentions gone wrong, keep calling Bush a moron and not a liar, keep ridiculing him instead of fighting him, he’s going to keep winning, and the damage to our nation, our culture, our civil society, and the world, will continue.

Filed under: politics