It’s About Competence, Stupid
Michael Dukakis was ahead of his time. His 1988 presidential campaign theme of “competence, not ideology” fell like a dud. The times were wrong, coming out of the Reagan “Morning in America years”. The opponent, George H. W. Bush, was seen even by many who opposed him politically as quite competent at governing. Today, though, given the challenges we face at home and abroad, and juxtaposed against George W. Bush and the serial gross incompetence in the record of his administration, there is a real argument to be made along these lines.
Political communicators will have to scrub and spin the themes, images and bumper stickers. But the ideas are worth exploring, developing, refining. Many analyses and commentaries head us in this direction, including Frank Fukuyama’s “After Neoconservatism” article and the posts of Ivo, Ernie and other colleagues over the past week.
We all know the litany of Bush policy incompetence. It’s been at home --- Hurricane Katrina and Brownie’s “great job”, Medicare prescription drug coverage “reform”, the cynical alchemy that turned a hard-earned budget surplus into a staggering deficit, and much more. And it’s been abroad – the Iraq war headed for strategic disaster, the war on terrorism that even in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s own metric is net negative, a Middle East that is more unstable and explosive in more ways and more places than before, the trampling and trashing of the global prestige that long has been a crucial source of American power and influence.
It’s by now a truism that politics is more important than policy to this administration. There’s some justice in this no longer working as well as the Rovian manipulators would have it. Social Security blew up in 2005. Framing Iraq as success helped stanch the bleeding late last fall, but the prudent American public is seeing through it. Rove’s effort to pin the unpatrioitic label on Democrats headed towards the 2006 election isn’t having the same resonance as in 2002-04.
But it runs deeper than this. This administration and its leader simply do not believe very much in government and public policy. Bush does believe in the presidency as bully pulpit, with the latter word more accentuated than for any other president. He uses it to inveigh about the good and righteous society, but it is largely about the individual, the family, the private actors in all this. Government does need to do a few things well, like fight wars and clamp down on security. But that’s it. Far moreso than other administrations, they put the Brownies in positions that should be for policy but are made into more patronage. They gave 20-something press aides in agencies like NASA the sense of authority to tell top scientists to shut up. They sent to Iraq neoconservative ideologues with visions of a flat tax rather than experience in reconstruction and civil society building.
Back during the Reagan years OMB Director David Stockman spilled the beans on the “starve the beast” strategy. Sure, tax cuts were about further helping the rich, and maybe even some credence to supply side theories of economic growth, but the real agenda was to leave government with many fewer resources so that even if Democrats and others wanted to pursue policy initiatives, the means just wouldn’t be there. The Bush strategy has taken this much further with its massive and so highly skewed tax cuts, sold originally as temporary but now, as planned all along, being made permanent. Starve the beast, who needs government.
Well, we do, both domestically and internationally. Not the old big government of government doing it all and a negatively stereotyped private sector. But there are functions and responsibilities that government can best fulfill in itself and in governance networks with the private and nonprofit sectors. There has to be a tough love dimension of being analytic critic not just advocate, or we’ll be back in the old government-the-bad-guy-context. That’s where it is about competence. Policies that are effective, not just noble-sounding. Government that is accountable not just claiming a sense of entitlement.
Taking this to the foreign policy agenda, what are the issues in broad strategic terms that need to be effectively addressed for a credible claim to competence? I’d start with two.
(1) Globalization and the Policy Principle of Reach and Scope: Whether it is terrorism with its global networks, the proliferation of WMD materials and technologies, the global environment, the spread of AIDS and avian flu, or numerous other issues, ours is such a highly interdependent era that the scenarios that are best met unilaterally or even largely unilaterally are more and more the exception than the rule. A basic principle for any policy is that its reach must match the scope of the problem it seeks to address. That’s the basis on which we developed national economic, regulatory and other policies starting in the late 19th century as the American economy and society grew beyond the reach of states acting largely on their own. And that’s the logic and challenge of globalization today. Given the global scope of so many of the threats and challenges in today’s world, they often simply cannot be solved or even managed by one nation acting alone. They require various forms of multilateral cooperation including government-to-government, international institutions, and public-private-nonprofit partnerships. Yet political, organizational and policy barriers continue to constrain and impede global governance capacity.(2) Helping Build Capable States – To a significant extent we face greater threats today from the weaknesses than the strengths of states. Major powers such as China and Russia will be going through profound internal transformations for many years to come. Their internal instability, if intensive and extensive enough, could pose risks to American interests, including through politically diversionary strategies of international non-cooperation and even aggression. Globally, failed and failing states have been seen in case after case to be both cause and effect of internal instability. September 11 and the safe haven Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda had in the failed state of Afghanistan shattered any illusion that this was just a humanitarian concern or that we could safely ignore “unimportant” states. And in dealing with issues like a possible avian flu pandemic, it’s going to be much less about how much Tamiflu each of us can stockpile than whether Nigeria, Vietnam and other front-line states have the policy capacity to deal effectively with prevention and containment at the early stages.
This is by no means the full picture – more to be added, specifics to be developed as well as the political communication dimension. But I pose them as two of the major challenges which are key parts of defining foreign policy competence.
Yes, competence matters. But, it is not an alternative to, or substitute for, ideology, if by ideology, we mean ideas, ideals and motivations.
It would be helpful, if "competence" did not serve to further confuse people about the differences between the two political parties or among the various ideologies, composing the two parties.
"They don't want what we want" would be a useful, complementary theme.
Bush's Administration has been remarkably "competent" in his management of the macro-economy, in the sense that they have achieved exactly what they have been aiming at. They have achieved a high level of productivity growth, and channelled the benefits of that productivity growth to business corporations and uber-wealthy families.
Even in Iraq, where incompetence and corruption have played such a prominent role in the U.S. failure, Bush has focused on what he wants. He wants a weak government so dependent on the U.S., that the U.S. can maintain a massive military presence. He wants lots of opportunities for the Halliburtons. (His V-P made $7 million dollars last year, by shoveling work to Halliburton. Shoot that in the face, suckers!)
Competent government is important to the welfare of the American People. Democrats want competent government, at home and abroad. Bush and the Republicans, who have supported him, do not.
February 25, 2006 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
David Stockman's book is The Triumph of Politics. If you want an idea how long standing the conservatives goals have ben and how hypocritical they are this is a book you should read.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
February 25, 2006 8:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
bluebell
You mean all they want is for the trains to run on time? So the only lesson for our future is like the one Bush learned from Katrina - send in more military earlier.
We're in an era of true believers but we have no hopes or dreams beyond better police.
February 25, 2006 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
BruceW07 is right. The administration isn't the moral equivalent of Inspector Clousseau (and how ironic that right-wing talk radio tried to use the old Mancini theme song to accompany any mention of UN Iraqi inspections). It's walking into walls because it is building them in the wrong places and then rushing headlong in the wrong direction.
The post comes closest in saying that "this administration and its leader simply do not believe very much in government and public policy." But even that gets at only one aspect of its ideology, its claims for the free market. It can sure use government when it wants to invade the wrong country, tap our phones, discredit opponents, or siphon our monies to its patrons. It "believes in government," whatever that means, just not government of, by, and for us, the people.
Incompetence is worth hammering home, in part to discredit Bush. It's worth it even more in order to insist on a role for government and the inescapable fact of a public sphere. And yet it's worth it more still, if it supplies the opportunity to change the terms of the debate, from "big" vs "small" government to a liberal vision of from whom good government derives and whom it serves.
As I posted yesterday, Kerry among others did a great job of deflecting the port issue from a single questionable decision to how the administration carries out its agenda. I feel hopeful that the opposition may at times be getting the idea.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
February 25, 2006 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Whatever happened to the ReInventors? Our beloved Mayor Newsom's policies consistently hammer two themes:
1. Performance (measures, reinvention, benchmarks, best practices, efficiency)- Hold me responsible
2. Take Responsibility (Putnam Social Capital)
As far as foreign policy is concerned, Americans have a long way to go in terms of interest and knowledge to really make anything but Disaster an item of semi-constructive national debate. That fact goes far toward explaining the proliferation and persistence of foreign policy elites
So hey guys ...let's go REAL - Perform, Take Responsibilty
February 25, 2006 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Starve the beast??
I wonder. Bush has hardly starved anyone save those who were starving and struggling to begin with. Hacker and Pierson have a different take which I find more persuasive. The Bushevik Revolutino is not about starving but about feed the beast, with a different diet - the giant sucking sound you hear? Could be just about any creature - Big Pharma, Big Erl n Gas, Insurance, Banking, Communications, Emirs in Dubai, WalMart
February 25, 2006 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you've hit upon an important point, it is often said how incompetent the Bush administration, and the government it has crafted, is. However, is the incompetence the accident of an inability to do better, or more serious, is it the result of not caring about the functions they were supposed to plan for? Did 'your doin' a heckuva job Brownie' really fail to do the job as Bush and his government wanted, or was he ousted a couple of days later, in response to the massive public outcry and resulting political embarassment to Bush, costing him presious political capital? Had there been a terrorist disaster in New Orleans, I suggest that the Bush response would have been a lot different, quicker, and more comprehensive, because it suits his political agenda, instead of the natural disaster which just interrupted the vacations of Bush and much of his governing team. I think their response was the result of not caring, and the FEMA they built (what was the matter with the old one?) the result of not caring.
February 25, 2006 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
That the policies of this administration are driven by politics is certainly true for some of the players. However, such is not the case for all of them, the ideologues, the feather-my-own-nesters, the sociopaths, the blind sycophants, and Mr. Bush who I am afraid is basically out of touch with reality. It is being suggested that the qualities necessary to be a competent, wise, intelligent, strong president are, tragically, not the qualities that will ever get him/her elected in these times, and perhaps it is time to study our political system with the view of changing it. And I don't mean tweaking yet again the campaign finance mess. That's plastering and painting the house when the foundation is rotten. A well-functioning viable government can always weather the misbegotten ideologies, be they democrat or republican.
February 25, 2006 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans: Corruption, Cronyism, and Incompetence.
"Democrats come to Washington to make government work;
Republicans come to Washington to work the government."
Had enough? Vote Democratic on Nov. 7thFebruary 25, 2006 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Incompetence? Maybe not - how do we know its not the grand plan? All you had to do was look at what Bush left behind as governor of Texas, where a "good business climate" was all-important and the watchword has always been "economic development", and where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. Then you would see what he and his cronies had in store for the country.
Texas is the living laboratory of the radical right, so where does Texas rank in a few areas important to a civilized society? Texas ranks last (50th out of 50 states) in percentage of population with heath insurance, last in percentage of high school graduates age 25 or over, last in percentage of low-income children with health insurance, last in consumer credit score, and last in affordability of homeowner's insurance. Texas ranks next to last (49th) in tax revenue raised per capita, per capita spending on state arts agencies, and total general expenditures per capita. Texas ranks 48th in per capita spending on parks and recreation, and mean SAT test scores, 46th in per capita spending on environmental protection, and 45th in per capita spending on public health and home ownership rates (so much for Bush's ownership society).
So where does Texas excel? Texas is No. 1 in college football this year and in executions every year. Texas is No. 1 in the number of environmental civil rights complaints, No. 1 in clean-water permit violations, No. 1 in toxic and cancerous manufacturing emissions, No. 1 in the percentage of uninsured children, and No. 1 in child population growth. Texas is No. 2 in sales tax dependence, percentage of population that goes hungry, the overall birth rate and the teenage birth rate, and the number of hazardous chemical spills. Texas is No. 4 in percentage of children living in poverty, and No. 5 in the total crime rate.
Got the picture? Welcome to a South African-style apartheid of the haves (and have mores as Bush likes to say of his base) and the have-nots.
This is your country under Bush and the republicans, and as they like to say - Love it or Leave it!
February 25, 2006 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the land of "Giant" was it not always thus? Except, maybe, for 1966 and Texas Western?
February 25, 2006 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow! Was all that info on Texas available in 2000? How about 2004? (I wonder how Rove would have spun it.) American politics has always been a mystery to me. Resumes, real records of past performance etc. are off the table - unlike in the private sector where they're about the only thing on the table. Maybe Theodore White was right - Americans elect kings not presidents.
February 26, 2006 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, it was available. Yes, there were many of us who were trying to tell you that he would do to America what he did to Texas. Yes, nobody (not enough) listened. And, yes, any reporter could have found much of this information in about .28 seconds, depending upon how fast they could Google "Texas fact book." The latest version is always (usually?) published on the Legislative Budget Board's site; older versions can be found with a little work.
2000
2004
Not that you can blame all of this on Bush. The Texas Constitution limits expenditures for assistance to needy families to no more than 1 (one) percent of the budget. On the other hand, a lot of what you see coming out of the White House could have been heard in Austin during his tenure as governor. Same song, second verse, as they say.
February 26, 2006 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
A 'progressive' foreign policy framework for 2008 should probably emphasize a combination of the 'content' of our ideas and the 'competence' with which we design and implement that content. The next administration must be driven by progressive values (content) that advance the interests of all Americans, and the competence to transform those values into realities.
February 26, 2006 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mississippi's revenge....Texas is Mississippi's revenge. Bush's successor, Rick Perry, said three years ago he didn't want Texas to become "like Mississippi."
But as noted, Mississippi is doing so much better in several significant categories that in the "age old struggle for last", Texas might be starting to win.
February 26, 2006 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if America in general hasn't lost its grip on competence. Where are the great political and business leaders? Where are the people working hard everyday to take their jobs? Where are the rewards for hard work? Where are the hard workers being rewarded? I am afraid too many of our leaders are playing golf, visiting some hunting club, or otherwise taking 30 day vacations to get much done. We hold fops like Donald Trump and Martha Stewart up as exemplars of American capitalism. Give me a break.The hard workers and real movers and shakers are now found in India and China. They are stealing our milk money. While the Republicans might exemplify the problem, I am afraid that lazy incompetence is a modern American disease and it goes straight to the national core.
February 27, 2006 6:17 AM | Reply | Permalink