comment41

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Commentary September 15, 2005 The last fig leaf has fallen. The President who campaigned on a theme of compassionate conservatism but diverted billions from the poor and middle class to the very rich and his cronies, the President who vowed to kill or capture Osama bin Laden but diverted our resources into a costly, deadly and illegal war in Iraq, the President who promised to be a uniter, not a divider but has alienated most of our allies abroad and spurred division at home, the President who promised to reduce the size of government and ensure sound fiscal policy and prosperity but has seen a whopping surplus turn into the biggest deficits in history and the government become the most bloated bureaucracy on record, has now proven that his greatest boast, that he is the person best able to protect our people from terrorism, is a total sham. Hurricane Katrina showed that the President was more interested in rewarding his cronies' cronies than in finding competent people to staff some of the agencies most critical to dealing with natural disasters and terrorist attack.

The shameful incompetence of the President and his appointees is now obvious to all. The C student Yale graduate whose admission to Harvard B School can only be viewed as a form of affirmative action for the rich has demonstrated that he learned nothing from his MBA studies. The first rule of being a competent executive is to be in touch with reality; Mr. Bush derides “reality-based” thinking and insulates himself from learning about what is going on in the world to a pathological extent. The second rule of being a competent executive is to hire good people; Mr. Bush's attitude seems to be that since government is to be scorned, it doesn't matter who is appointed to office as long as they are loyal and agree to the party line. Competence and experience in the area being administered don't count, and are probably liabilities. Several important agencies responsible for our health and safety, including FEMA, the EPA, the FDA and others, have been hollowed out by the resignation of able people who could not stomach the incompetents and political commissars put in control. If you don't think that what government does is important, or worse, if you think that government is preventing you from hiding what you are doing from the people, you try to gut those parts of government and render them impotent. This is the only thing that President Bush has succeeded at.

This is not a red state/blue state matter, or a liberal/conservative matter. This is a matter of competence. A president who has demonstrated he is a total screw-up in every area of endeavor is a threat to the entire nation. When accompanied by the massive corruption that Administration stonewalling has only partially managed to hide, it is time to talk impeachment. If Congress had any courage, they would investigate the crimes involved in the coverup of pre 9/11 warnings, the bribery by special interests and enrichment of friends that has been the hallmark of this administration, and the coverup of the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent by Bush's closest adviser, Carl Rove and his Vice President, Dick Cheney. If Clinton's lies were an impeachable offense, surely Bush's lies are even more so.