comment20

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Commentary The most salient feature of the Bush Administration is not its ruthlessness, or its mendacity, or its disdain for the Constitution, but its sheer incompetence. It hasn't gotten a single thing right: not foreign policy, not education policy, not even military policy, and certainly not economic policy. Worse even than its policy making has been its executive activities, the execution of policy, carrying out of laws, administration of justice and, lately, the insuring of domestic security.

It used to be said that engineers as President were disastrous, citing Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter as examples. Engineers are trained to believe that there are right answers, which is not good training for political leadership. However, despite their dismal record on the economy, Carter and Hoover were essentially well-meaning, intelligent people with proven records of humane accomplishment; Hoover as administrator of post-WWI international relief, and Carter as Governor of Georgia. President Bush has now added MBA to the list of Presidential credentials to avoid.

Bush as President typifies so much that is wrong with American business: CEOs out of touch with both their marketplace and their internal corporate strengths and weaknesses, expanding the bottom line by liquidating capital (often human capital) and pretending that these numbers represent profits, and saddling their companies with debt to swell the numbers. Rather than seeking synergies, they seek control and market share, and often bankrupt their companies before gliding out on golden parachutes, or resort to illegal activities to keep themselves in power.

Recent Administration responses to the nonexistence of weapons of mass destruction, to censorship of the 9/11 report, to falling consumer confidence despite increases in profits (as if consumers really cared a lot more about corporate profits than about rising unemployment rates), and to the absurdity of the Terrorism Futures Exchange paint a clear picture of a group of people more akin to the Keystone Cops than the John Wayne image they would like the public to buy.

As for their most triumphal arena, military activity, they still haven't been able to find Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, or Sadam Hussein. Hell, they can't even find Dick Cheney.