the GOPs war on competence

[xchrom]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/11/the-republican-war-on-competence.html



John F. Kennedy is not the only Massachusetts Democrat with an anniversary worth marking this fall. Nor is November 22nd the only occasion for sombre reflection, for rueful meditation on what might have been. You might have missed this amid the endless rerunning of the Zapruder reel, but it was twenty-five years ago this September that Governor Michael Dukakis, on a campaign visit to Sterling Heights, Michigan, strapped on a helmet, climbed into an Abrams tank, and effectively ceded the Presidential election to Vice-President George Bush.

As Josh King, a former Dukakis advance man, recently recalled in Politico Magazine, the photo-op-gone-predictably-awry was a case of the Governor “pretending to be something he wasn’t.” But the larger problem for Dukakis was being something he actually was: a technocrat. No less damaging than the tank photo was Dukakis’s bloodless pronouncement at the 1988 Democratic National Convention that “this election isn’t about ideology; it’s about competence.” The G.O.P. made merciless hay of this. “Competence,” Bush said in his acceptance speech a few weeks later, “is a narrow ideal. Competence makes the trains run on time but doesn’t know where they’re going.” More commonly it is fascists (namely, Mussolini), not technocrats, who are said to make trains run on time, but nonetheless: advantage, Bush. And soon, election, Bush.

Competence, indeed, is a narrow ideal. It does not send a thrill up one’s leg, and we will never write country music about it. That said, we Americans do like our trains to run on time—just as we like our Web pages to load quickly and our hold time on toll-free calls to be brief. If we are forgiving of sin, we are intolerant of incompetence. One of the unkindest cuts President Obama has received in recent weeks was the finding in yesterday’s Washington Post-ABC poll that a majority of Americans, fifty-six per cent, think he’s not “a good manager.”

It’s easy to forget how central that quality was to Obama’s appeal in 2008. The placards said “hope,” but Obama’s equanimity—especially in contrast to the bumbling George W. Bush Administration and the flailing, flipped-out campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin—said “competence.” At long last, twenty years after the Dukakis debacle, the C-word itself could again be uttered in polite company: in the final days of the campaign, Obama pledged “a better government—a more competent government.” Newspaper endorsements picked up this line. “For all the excitement of his … candidacy,” the Los Angeles Times observed, “Obama has offered more competence than drama.” The Financial Times wrote that “the steady competence of the Obama operation commands respect.”

[Scuba]

1. Goes hand-in-hand with their war on empathy.

[pampango]

3. And their war on science, evidence - reality - in favor of emotion and fear. n/t

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. A passage leapt out at me that, I think, undermines the author's premise --

One of the unkindest cuts President Obama has received in recent weeks was the finding in yesterday’s Washington Post-ABC poll that a majority of Americans, fifty-six per cent, think he’s not “a good manager.”

We refer to presidencies as "the Administration." They are expected to administer the laws enacted by Congress and that implies competence. Bush Sr. had a good sound bite but Dukakis was ultimately right.

[malaise]

4. Profound

I was suggesting to hubby this morning that the biggest school dunces are now ReTHUGs and their baggers.

[Mass]

5. It is not a war on competence. It is a war on government.

It is an attempt to destroy the social contract in America which, though already not that great, can still be diminished.

If you do not believe that government has a role, you do not need people who are competent at governing.

If anything, the GOP has people who are very competent accomplishing their goals. As misleading and dubious as it is, their campaign against the ACA is very competently done. Its only goal is to amplify complaints that people have and that are related to real problems. Of course, these problems are overblown, but the efficiency of the model comes from the fact they are real.

But the fact that they do not look at people who are competent at governing is logical: they do not believe in governing.

However, we have seen this backfire on them (at least in the House of Representatives) quite a few times this year, when they tried to pass bills that did something (not something good, but still something) and that the Republican caucus rebelled because GOVERNMENT SHOULD DO NOTHING. Expect more of that coming, and it will be a problem of their own making.

Now, if we could have this debate about the role of governing and its importance rather than relying on old tropes like streamlining government, we could win this war, but the truth is that too many Dems are adopting the message that we should have a lighter government.