Incompetence's Platonic Ideal

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7403

Incompetence's Platonic Ideal
by P.M. Carpenter | May 11 2007 - 10:22am | permalink
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Writers everywhere are running out of apposite adjectives to describe the Bush administration's incompetence at every level. The noun -- incompetence -- is no problem. That quality is clear enough. But since Katrina its incompetence has mutated into a heretofore unseen perfection.

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Not only does he give the appearance of not caring, either about whatever the crisis happens to be or even about his uncaring appearance, he now goes out of his way to affirm how little his administration cares and how forcefully it'll prove it. I can't quite put my finger on the right adjective, but it's a kind of pugnacious, in-your-face, deliberate incompetence. Normally chief executives try to hide incompetence; Bush seems proud of his. It's that fundamental contradiction that makes describing it so bewildering.

Just the latest case in point is the Greensburg KS catastrophe in which a lethal, two-mile-wide tornado wiped the town off the map. Obviously no government can prevent natural disasters, but most governments at least respond to them, and usually do so without being asked.

That's what Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has been trying to do, though we already knew, as she properly pointed out Monday, "that a shortage of tents, trucks, helicopters and trained personnel that had been sent to Iraq was hampering rescue and aid efforts." That much was a given, and no surprise.

But the administration's response to Gov. Sebelius staggers any mind with any sense of orderliness. "If you don't request , you're not going to get it," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "As far as we know, the only thing the governor has requested are FM radios. There have been no requests to the National Guard for heavy equipment." As Roger Simon of the Politico reported, "By Tuesday afternoon, Snow admitted that Sebelius had requested more than FM radios, including search-and-rescue teams."

It's hardly the "clarification" that staggers. It's the fact that the White House's studied, initial, and wholly assbackward political response to a devastated community was that its state government -- one part of our United States -- was expected to first cruise appropriate bureaucratic channels to receive emergency aid, even though the federal government was as aware of the need as the state.

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