Incompetent, Unlucky, Stupid - Doesn't Really Matter

He received a warning about an impending terrorist attack on US soil in August 2001 and did nothing about it.

He and his administration had a fixation on finding a reason to go to war with Saddam from the earliest days of the administration. He and his administration manufactured a connection between Iraq & al Quaeda after 9/11. He and his administration ran around all over the place indicating that unless we attacked Iraq, there would be mushroom clouds over US cities. He and his administration said we would be welcomed as liberators. It turns out that there was no connection, no nuclear program, and no real welcome.

He and his administration have multiple times claimed the mission was accomplished, the insurgency was in the last throws, the media just showed the bad news, there were enough troops, and that you go to war with what you've got rather than what you want. Well, the mission is not accomplished, the insurgency is well dug in, the media was actually restrained and mislead and is still denied information or access in substantial ways, the military leadership had told the administration that a larger occupying force would be needed, and that our troops were sent to war without body armor.

He said that if anyone in his administration was involved with leaking the name of Valerie Plame they would be fired. Well it turns out that Richard Armitage and Scooter Libby both spoke to reporters about Valerie Plame and the Vice President may have done so..... and then we find out that he "authorized" some or all of these individuals to make such disclosures.

He and his administration pushed a huge increase in corporate welfare through the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The bill was written by insurance and pharmaceutical companies and is costing vastly more (100 times) than was told to Congress. And it turns out that the administration official in charge knew the facts that it was going to be massively more expensive than told to the people or the Congress.

He inherited a huge surplus and is now presiding over the biggest annual debt (by any measure) in our history.

I could go on and on, but this gets the basic idea across. The military is on the verge of being broken. Our debt threatens our economy for years to come. We've lost our moral leadership position in the world. We've created so many problems in Iraq that it defies all understanding.

So my point is this. We elect presidents because we expect them to be right. We elect them with the hope that we will be better off as years go along - safer, richer, healthier, whatever. Personally, I would prefer that presidents be open, honest, deliberative and reasoned and that such a process would lead to making right decisions in providing leadership. Some would prefer that the president be motivated more by faith, intuition, principles, or just plain good luck. That's not my preference. Regardless, it turns out that he and his administration have been wrong about a lot of important issues.

Whether you think he lies or you think he is dealing with a lot of difficult situations not of his making, the reality is that most of us think it is wrong for us to be engaged in a war in Iraq, wrong to participate in torture, wrong to have lost our focus on hunting down Osama Bin Laden, wrong to be loading down future generations with massive debt in order to finance a massive corporate welfare system, and more.

We elect our presidents to be right. Unfortunately, we don't have much recourse between now and the next election.