jawfish

Contempt for Competence Among the Republicans
john posted in politics & culture on October 5th, 2006

Cronies on Bush:

Steve Sack hosted at Slate

Bush on Bush:

“I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves.” — Sept. 21, 2003

“I’m the commander — see, I don’t need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being president.” —quoted in Bob Woodward’s Bush at War

“I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.” — June 4, 2003

“I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe — I believe what I believe is right.” —July 22, 2001

“I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.” —July 9, 2004

all quotes excerpted from political humor at about.com

Normally these tidbits from The Decider get treated with contempt, but it’s what they succeed in articulating, not their clumsiness that I want to look at. In Republicanland, competence and expertise are for chumps. Power is all that matters.

There is an odd disinterest in competence at the White House, and in the Congressional leadership too. I have written about the hapless Democrats before, but after all, they have been shut out of power in all three branches of government for six years. The Republicans have indulged in spectacular incompetence and cronyism, and yet remain vigorous indeed, indefatigable, on the political front.

Science and Expertise Are Out

It’s not just the well-known Bush antipathy to science I am describing: it is a general lack of faith in competence, in efficiency, in planning, and management. It is odd that the lower Bush administration, with the most sophisticated political organization in memory, a juggernaut of planning and disciplined execution, can’t perform the simplest tasks of actual governing without scandal and failure, yet can manage electoral politics, the bully pulpit, and re-election like masters. The reason is, they are post-war children of privilege, products of the cozy insiders crowd.The key lies in the personal history of the people responsible…

It Starts with Reagan

The Reagan administration showed a similar lack of interest in policy details, with Iran-Contra ( does anyone remember why we cared about the Sandinistas?) the arms-for-hostages deal, Star Wars, and the savings&loan debacle. Before Reagan, you have to go back to Cleveland and Coolidge for such dumbed-down policy. Yet the Reagan administration behaved fairly rationally with the Soviets and the allies, and did succeed in getting inflation under control. But I see the beginning of a trend under Reagan, brought to full flower in the GW Bush years, where smoke&mirrors have become the policy, and only winning matters. With Reagan you could argue that ideology got in the way of pragmatic policy, but with Bush, the nation builder, the deficit-spender, the Orwellian defender of torture, policy has become a matter of pure cronyism.

Pat Oliphant hosted at Slate

Eisenhower Would Be Appalled

I think a strain of anti-intellectualism and anti-expertise has grown in the Republican party that would have shocked the Republicans of Eisenhower’s and Nelson Rockefeller’s day. The organizer of D-Day would have had no sympathy with the bumbling organizational efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Louisiana. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy were of the war-time generation. They saw a sleepy isolationist nation transformed overnight into a vast co-ordinated industrial machine. The war-time crowd knew well what the scientists and technocrats had done for the war effort. They knew the war was won by code-breakers, atomic scientists, radar engineers, and industrial managers as much as by GI Joe. In addition, they knew the distasteful alliance with the Soviets was absolutely essential. The WWII generation had actually done something important and difficult with their lives, and they expected others to do so as well.

Carter and Bush Senior were of that generation too. But actor and corporate spokesman Reagan had no such background. He had spent his career as the narrator on a TV show and acting in a few movies, then was elected Governor. In Sacramento and in Washington, he relied on cronies and an impervious amiability to withstand the demands of office. He was famously credulous about astrology and pop theology. He showed the way to the world of sound bites, homilies, and the importance of controlling the superficial pieties.

The Reagan Ideology is Also Part of the Problem

The small-government-is-always-better ideology of the Reagan years also leads to incompetence in governing. The constant drumbeat of anti-government rhetoric since the 1980’s has left the Republicans with the sense, I think, that government does nothing of importance ( always excepting military spending). Actual governments do a myriad of critical things, from snow-plowing to airport construction to printing the currency as everybody knows, so this view is ludicrous. But nevertheless you hear it in the talk radio rants, the sneers at the press conferences, and the fund raising ads. A second factor reinforces this view, the fact that it is much easier to govern when you claim to do nothing but reduce government. This is the ultimate in controlling expectations.

The Asylum is Run by the Apparatchniks

A recent New Yorker article pointed out that none of the White House bunch are lawyers or professionals, or even ex-military. And since they are not businessmen either ( no I don’t count Bush and Cheney as businessmen), just what are they? They are people with no professional training at all, and no school of hard knocks experience. They are not products of any meritocracy, they aren’t products of a life of hard work and risk-taking, they are just the power-brokers that floated to the top of the Machiavellian stew. They may be masters of bureaucratic infighting, geniuses at political posturing, able to leap scandals at a single bound, but they are utterly incapable of discussion, negotiating, of formulating a policy, and sadly, of furnishing a war.

Tribal Power

Expertise has figured in their success and they have no respect for it in others. They simply measure everything by personal power. It’s a tribal viewpoint, where if you are at the top of the pecking order, then what you say is unquestionably right. In their world, they have no responsibility for making a good decision, whatever THEY think simply IS the right decision. When things go horribly wrong it’s purely a matter of spin control. Their ideas are right by fiat, unaffected by discussion, fact-checking, or comparison. Power opinion creates its own facts and trumps expert opinion by default. The bully pulpit is a stage for myth-making. This is a strange regression to the age of the divine right of kings. How like George the Third is George the Lesser. A man of little ability, he is surrounded by powerful insiders, jockeying for position, contemptuous of scientists and managers.

What Next?

In 2008 Bush will leave office, and the next President, most likely McCain, will bring in a fresh set of cronies. Will we get the man who withstood a POW camp and called for Global Warming controls, or the man who sucks up to the Religious Right and caves on torture? Most likely both. The Republican base has become so mired in know-nothing issues like stem cell research and immigration, that a Republican President will have his hands tied. Whether the know-nothing wing will trust McCain and vote for him, is another story.

Bush Policy Failures:

Katrina
Iraq war
North Korea
Afghanistan war
Iranian ambition
European alliance
Moderate Islamic alliance
Submission to Israeli foreign policy
Energy Policy
Global Warming
Industrial and scientific competitiveness
Balance of payments
Federal deficit
Dependence on Chinese economic boom to buy treasuries
War on terrorism
Homeland security
Domestic spying
Torture, rendition, repudiation of habeas corpus and the Geneva Convention
Immigration reform
Education reform
Social Security reform
Medicare drug plan
Faith-based social programs

More Astonishing Bush quotes in quiz format, from The New Yorker

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