Subject: Reframe competence & conservativism

FOOD FOR THOUGHT... Happy 4th!

Dear Friends,This is an excellent article by George Lakoff and others. Take a little time to check it out.

Peace,

Joe Martin

Philip L. Bereano
Professor Emeritus
Department of Technical Communication
University of Washington
Seattle, Wash 98195 USA

Bush Is Not Incompetent!
By George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger and Sam Ferguson
The Rockridge Institute

Monday 26 June 2006

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 will not be running again, but other
conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be
putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative office holders and
candidates who would lead us off the same cliff.

To Bush's base, his bumbling folksiness is part of his charm - it
fosters conservative populism. Bush plays up this image by proudly stating
his lack of interest in reading and current events, his fondness for naps
and vacations and his self-deprecating jokes. This image causes the
opposition to underestimate his capacities - disregarding him as a complete
idiot - and deflects criticism of his conservative allies. If incompetence
is the problem, it's all about Bush. But, if conservatism is the problem, it
is about a set of ideas, a movement and its many adherents.

The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the
following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration,
with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:

a.. Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented
degree
b.. Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence
and in a manner with which the military disagreed
c.. Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the
lower federal courts with many more
d.. Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
e.. Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the
No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a
number of massive tax cuts
f.. Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory
protections
g. Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
h.. Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based
initiatives
i.. Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment - "The
Healthy Forests Act" and the "Clear Skies Initiative" - to deforest public
lands, and put more pollution in our skies
j.. Winning re-election and solidifying his party's grip on Congress
These aren't signs of incompetence. As should be painfully clear, the
Bush administration has been overwhelmingly competent in advancing its
conservative vision. It has been all too effective in achieving its goals by
determinedly pursuing a conservative philosophy.

It's not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it's the conservative
agenda.

The Conservative Agenda

Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual
initiative, that is, government's positive role in people's lives outside of
the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral
authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.

The conservative vision for government is to shrink it - to "starve the
beast," in Conservative Grover Norquist's words. The conservative tagline
for this rationale is that "you can spend your money better than the
government can." Social programs are considered unnecessary or
"discretionary" since the primary role of government is to defend the
country's border and police its interior. Stewardship of the commons, such
as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to people's own
initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be made -
conservation, healthcare for the poor - charity is meant to replace justice
and the government should not be involved.

Given this philosophy, then, is it any wonder that the government wasn't
there for the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina? Conservative philosophy places emphasis on the individual
acting alone, independent of anything the government could provide. Some
conservative Sunday morning talk show guests suggested that those who chose
to live in New Orleans accepted the risk of a devastating hurricane, the
implication being that they thus forfeited any entitlement to government
assistance. If the people of New Orleans suffered, it was because of their
own actions, their own choices and their own lack of preparedness. Bush
couldn't have failed if he bore no responsibility.

The response to Hurricane Katrina - rather, the lack of response - was
what one should expect from a philosophy that espouses that the government
can have no positive role in its citizen's lives. This response was not
about Bush's incompetence, it was a conservative, shrink-government response
to a natural disaster.

Another failure of this administration during the Katrina fiasco was its
wholesale disregard of the numerous and serious hurricane warnings. But this
failure was a natural outgrowth of the conservative insistence on denying
the validity of global warming, not ineptitude. Conservatives continue to
deny the validity of global warming, because it runs contrary to their moral
system. Recognizing global warming would call for environmental regulation
and governmental efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Regulation is a
perceived interference with the free-market, Conservatives' golden calf. So,
the predictions of imminent hurricanes - based on recognizing global
warming - were not heeded. Conservative free market convictions trumped the
hurricane warnings.

Our budget deficit is not the result of incompetent fiscal management.
It too is an outgrowth of conservative philosophy. What better way than
massive deficits to rid social programs of their funding?

In Iraq, we also see the impact of philosophy as much as a failure of
execution.

The idea for the war itself was born out of deep conservative
convictions about the nature and capacity of US military force. Among the
Project for a New American Century's statement of principles (signed in 1997
by a who's who of the architects of the Iraq war - Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby among others) are
four critical points:

a.. We need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry
out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the
future.
b.. We need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge
regimes hostile to our interests and values.
c.. We need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad.
d.. We need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in
preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security,
our prosperity, and our principles.
Implicit in these ideas is that the United States military can spread
democracy through the barrel of a gun. Our military might and power can be a
force for good.

It also indicates that the real motive behind the Iraq war wasn't to
stop Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but was a test of
neoconservative theory that the US military could reshape Middle East
geo-politics. The manipulation and disregard of intelligence to sell the war
was not incompetence, it was the product of a conservative agenda.

Unfortunately, this theory exalts a hubristic vision over the lessons of
history. It neglects the realization that there is a limit to a foreign
army's ability to shape foreign politics for the good. Our military

involvement in Vietnam, Lebanon, the Philippines, Cuba (prior to Castro) and
Panama, or European imperialist endeavors around the globe should have
taught us this lesson. Democracy needs to be an organic, homegrown movement,
as it was in this country. If we believe so deeply in our ideals, they will
speak for themselves and inspire others.

During the debate over Iraq, the conservative belief in the unquestioned
authority and moral leadership of the President helped shape public support.
We see this deference to the President constantly: when Conservatives call
those questioning the President's military decisions "unpatriotic"; when
Conservatives defend the executive branch's use of domestic spying in the
war on terror; when Bush simply refers to himself as the "decider." "I
support our President" was a common justification of assent to the Iraq
policy.

Additionally, as the implementer of the neoconservative vision and an
unquestioned moral authority, our President felt he had no burden to forge
international consensus or listen to the critiques of our allies. "You're
with us, or you're against us," he proclaimed after 9/11.

Much criticism continues to be launched against this administration for
ineptitude in its reconstruction efforts. Tragically, it is here too that
the administration's actions have been shaped less by ineptitude than by
deeply held conservative convictions about the role of government.

As noted above, Conservatives believe that government's role is limited
to security and maintaining a free market. Given this conviction, it's no
accident that administration policies have focused almost exclusively on the
training of Iraqi police, and US access to the newly free Iraqi market - the
invisible hand of the market will take care of the rest. Indeed, George
Packer has recently reported that the reconstruction effort in Iraq is
nearing its end ("The Lessons of Tal Affar," The New Yorker, April 10th,
2006). Iraqis must find ways to rebuild themselves, and the free market we
have constructed for them is supposed to do this. This is not ineptitude.
This is the result of deep convictions over the nature of freedom and the
responsibilities of governments to their people.

Finally, many of the miscalculations are the result of a conservative
analytic focus on narrow causes and effects, rather than mere incompetence.
Evidence for this focus can be seen in conservative domestic policies: Crime
policy is based on punishing the criminals, independent of any effort to
remedy the larger social issues that cause crime; immigration policy focuses
on border issues and the immigrants, and ignores the effects of
international and domestic economic policy on population migration;
environmental policy is based on what profits there are to be gained or lost
today, without attention paid to what the immeasurable long-term costs will
be to the shared resource of our environment; education policy, in the form
of vouchers, ignores the devastating effects that dismantling the public
school system will have on our whole society.

Is it any surprise that the systemic impacts of the Iraq invasion were
not part of the conservative moral or strategic calculus used in pursuing
the war?

The conservative war rhetoric focused narrowly on ousting Saddam - he
was an evil dictator, and evil cannot be tolerated, period. The moral
implications of unleashing social chaos and collateral damage in addition to
the lessons of history were not relevant concerns.

As a consequence, we expected to be greeted as liberators. The
conservative plan failed to appreciate the complexities of the situation
that would have called for broader contingency planning. It lacked an
analysis of what else would happen in Iraq and the Middle East as a result
of ousting the Hussein Government, such as an Iranian push to obtain nuclear
weapons.

Joe Biden recently said, "if I had known the president was going to be
this incompetent in his administration, I would not have given him the
authority [to go to war]." Had Bush actually been incompetent, he would have
never been able to lead us to war in Iraq. Had Bush been incompetent, he
would not have been able to ram through hundreds of billions of dollars in
tax cuts. Had Bush been incompetent, he would have been blocked from
stacking the courts with right-wing judges. Incompetence, on reflection,
might have actually been better for the country.

Hidden Successes

Perhaps the biggest irony of the Bush-is-incompetent frame is that these
"failures" - Iraq, Katrina and the budget deficit - have been successes in
terms of advancing the conservative agenda.

One of the goals of Conservatives is to keep people from relying on the
federal government. Under Bush, FEMA was reorganized to no longer be a first
responder in major natural disasters, but to provide support for local
agencies. This led to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Now
citizens, as well as local and state governments, have become distrustful of
the federal government's capacity to help ordinary citizens. Though Bush's
popularity may have suffered, enhancing the perception of federal government
as inept turned out to be a conservative victory.

Conservatives also strive to get rid of protective agencies and social
programs. The deficit Bush created through irresponsible tax cuts and a
costly war in Iraq will require drastic budget cuts to remedy. Those cuts,
conservatives know, won't come from military spending, particularly when
they raise the constant specter of war. Instead, the cuts will be from what
Conservatives have begun to call "non-military, discretionary spending;"
that is, the programs that contribute to the common good like the FDA, EPA,
FCC, FEMA, OSHA and the NLRB. Yet another success for the conservative
agenda.

Both Iraq and Katrina have enriched the coffers of the conservative
corporate elite, thus further advancing the conservative agenda.
Halliburton, Lockhead Martin and US oil companies have enjoyed huge profit
margins in the last six years. Taking Iraq's oil production off-line in the
face of rising international demand meant prices would rise, making the oil
inventories of Exxon and other firms that much more valuable, leading to
record profits. The destruction wrought by Katrina and Iraq meant billions
in reconstruction contracts. The war in Iraq (and the war in Afghanistan)
meant billions in military equipment contracts. Was there any doubt where
those contracts would go? Chalk up another success for Bush's conservative
agenda.

Bush also used Katrina as an opportunity to suspend the environmental
and labor protection laws that Conservatives despise so much. In the wake of
Katrina, environmental standards for oil refineries were temporarily
suspended to increase production. Labor laws are being thwarted to drive
down the cost of reconstruction efforts. So, amidst these "disasters,"
Conservatives win again.

Where most Americans see failure in Iraq - George Miller recently called
Iraq a "blunder of historic proportions" - conservative militarists are
seeing many successes. Conservatives stress the importance of our military -
our national pride and worth is expressed through its power and influence.
Permanent bases are being constructed as planned in Iraq, and America has
shown the rest of the world that we can and will preemptively strike with
little provocation. They succeeded in a mobilization of our military forces
based on ideological pretenses to impact foreign policy. The war has struck
fear in other nations with a hostile show of American power. The
conservatives have succeeded in strengthening what they perceive to be the
locus of the national interest - military power.

It's NOT Incompetence

When Progressives shout "Incompetence!" it obscures the many
conservative successes. The incompetence frame drastically misses the point,
that the conservative vision is doing great harm to this country and the
world. An understanding of this and an articulate progressive response is
needed. Progressives know that government can and should have a positive
role in our lives beyond simple, physical security. It had a positive impact
during the progressive era, busting trusts, and establishing basic labor
standards. It had a positive impact during the new deal, softening the blow
of the depression by creating jobs and stimulating the economy. It had a
positive role in advancing the civil rights movement, extending rights to
previously disenfranchised groups. And the United States can have a positive
role in world affairs without the use of its military and expressions of raw
power. Progressives acknowledge that we are all in this together, with "we"
meaning all people, across all spectrums of race, class, religion, sex,
sexual preference and age. "We" also means across party lines, state lines
and international borders.

The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence
frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in
the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush's management
capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding
philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for
another radically conservative president in 2008, so long as he or she can
manage better. Bush will not be running again, so thinking, talking and
joking about him being incompetent offers no lessons to draw from his
presidency.

Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush's conservative philosophy is
what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that
must be rejected, whoever endorses it.

Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people,
destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are
undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This
message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue
that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our
country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself
is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public
discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.