Bush Is Not Incompetent

[John Q. Citizen]

Bush Is Not Incompetent
by George Lakoff, Sam Ferguson, Marc Ettlinger
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/incompetent

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.

Last modified Tuesday, October 3, 2006 10:29 AM
by George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger and Sam Ferguson
(c)The Rockridge Institute, 2006 (We invite the free distribution of this piece)

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. For example, Nancy Pelosi said “The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader." Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative office holders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff.

To Bush’s base, his bumbling folksiness is part of his charm — it fosters conservative populism. Bush plays up this image by proudly stating his lack of interest in reading and current events, his fondness for naps and vacations and his self-deprecating jokes. This image causes the opposition to underestimate his capacities — disregarding him as a complete idiot — and deflects criticism of his conservative allies. If incompetence is the problem, it’s all about Bush. But, if conservatism is the problem, it is about a set of ideas, a movement and its many adherents.

The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:

Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based initiatives
Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment — “The Healthy Forests Act” and the “Clear Skies Initiative” — to deforest public lands, and put more pollution in our skies
Winning re-election and solidifying his party’s grip on Congress
These aren’t signs of incompetence. As should be painfully clear, the Bush administration has been overwhelmingly competent in advancing its conservative vision. It has been all too effective in achieving its goals by determinedly pursuing a conservative philosophy.

It’s not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it’s the conservative agenda.

The Conservative Agenda

Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual initiative, that is, government’s positive role in people’s lives outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.

The conservative vision for government is to shrink it – to “starve the beast” in Conservative Grover Norquist’s words. The conservative tagline for this rationale is that “you can spend your money better than the government can.” Social programs are considered unnecessary or “discretionary” since the primary role of government is to defend the country’s border and police its interior. Stewardship of the commons, such as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to people’s own initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be made — conservation, healthcare for the poor — charity is meant to replace justice and the government should not be involved.

Given this philosophy, then, is it any wonder that the government wasn’t there for the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Conservative philosophy places emphasis on the individual acting alone, independent of anything the government could provide. Some conservative Sunday morning talk show guests suggested that those who chose to live in New Orleans accepted the risk of a devastating hurricane, the implication being that they thus forfeited any entitlement to government assistance. If the people of New Orleans suffered, it was because of their own actions, their own choices and their own lack of preparedness. Bush couldn’t have failed if he bore no responsibility.

The response to Hurricane Katrina — rather, the lack of response — was what one should expect from a philosophy that espouses that the government can have no positive role in its citizen’s lives. This response was not about Bush’s incompetence, it was a conservative, shrink-government response to a natural disaster.

Another failure of this administration during the Katrina fiasco was its wholesale disregard of the numerous and serious hurricane warnings. But this failure was a natural outgrowth of the conservative insistence on denying the validity of global warming, not ineptitude. Conservatives continue to deny the validity of global warming, because it runs contrary to their moral system. Recognizing global warming would call for environmental regulation and governmental efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Regulation is a perceived interference with the free-market, Conservatives’ golden calf. So, the predictions of imminent hurricanes — based on recognizing global warming — were not heeded. Conservative free market convictions trumped the hurricane warnings.

Our budget deficit is not the result of incompetent fiscal management. It too is an outgrowth of conservative philosophy. What better way than massive deficits to rid social programs of their funding?

In Iraq, we also see the impact of philosophy as much as a failure of execution.

The idea for the war itself was born out of deep conservative convictions about the nature and capacity of US military force. Among the Project for a New American Century’s statement of principles (signed in 1997 by a who’s who of the architects of the Iraq war — Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby among others) are four critical points:

we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future
we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values
we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad
we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
Implicit in these ideas is that the United States military can spread democracy through the barrel of a gun. Our military might and power can be a force for good.

It also indicates that the real motive behind the Iraq war wasn’t to stop Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but was a test of neoconservative theory that the US military could reshape Middle East geo-politics. The manipulation and disregard of intelligence to sell the war was not incompetence, it was the product of a conservative agenda.

Unfortunately, this theory exalts a hubristic vision over the lessons of history. It neglects the realization that there is a limit to a foreign army’s ability to shape foreign politics for the good. Our military involvement in Vietnam, Lebanon, the Philippines, Cuba (prior to Castro) and Panama, or European imperialist endeavors around the globe should have taught us this lesson. Democracy needs to be an organic, homegrown movement, as it was in this country. If we believe so deeply in our ideals, they will speak for themselves and inspire others.

During the debate over Iraq, the conservative belief in the unquestioned authority and moral leadership of the President helped shape public support. We see this deference to the President constantly: when Conservatives call those questioning the President’s military decisions “unpatriotic”; when Conservatives defend the executive branch’s use of domestic spying in the war on terror; when Bush simply refers to himself as the “decider.” “I support our President” was a common justification of assent to the Iraq policy.

Additionally, as the implementer of the neoconservative vision and an unquestioned moral authority, our President felt he had no burden to forge international consensus or listen to the critiques of our allies. “You’re with us, or you’re against us,” he proclaimed after 9/11.

Much criticism continues to be launched against this administration for ineptitude in its reconstruction efforts. Tragically, it is here too that the administration’s actions have been shaped less by ineptitude than by deeply held conservative convictions about the role of government.

As noted above, Conservatives believe that government’s role is limited to security and maintaining a free market. Given this conviction, it’s no accident that administration policies have focused almost exclusively on the training of Iraqi police, and US access to the newly free Iraqi market — the invisible hand of the market will take care of the rest. Indeed, George Packer has recently reported that the reconstruction effort in Iraq is nearing its end (“The Lessons of Tal Affar,” The New Yorker, April 10th, 2006). Iraqis must find ways to rebuild themselves, and the free market we have constructed for them is supposed to do this. This is not ineptitude. This is the result of deep convictions over the nature of freedom and the responsibilities of governments to their people.

Finally, many of the miscalculations are the result of a conservative analytic focus on narrow causes and effects, rather than mere incompetence. Evidence for this focus can be seen in conservative domestic policies: Crime policy is based on punishing the criminals, independent of any effort to remedy the larger social issues that cause crime; immigration policy focuses on border issues and the immigrants, and ignores the effects of international and domestic economic policy on population migration; environmental policy is based on what profits there are to be gained or lost today, without attention paid to what the immeasurable long-term costs will be to the shared resource of our environment; education policy, in the form of vouchers, ignores the devastating effects that dismantling the public school system will have on our whole society.

Is it any surprise that the systemic impacts of the Iraq invasion were not part of the conservative moral or strategic calculus used in pursuing the war?

The conservative war rhetoric focused narrowly on ousting Saddam — he was an evil dictator, and evil cannot be tolerated, period. The moral implications of unleashing social chaos and collateral damage in addition to the lessons of history were not relevant concerns.

As a consequence, we expected to be greeted as liberators. The conservative plan failed to appreciate the complexities of the situation that would have called for broader contingency planning. It lacked an analysis of what else would happen in Iraq and the Middle East as a result of ousting the Hussein Government, such as an Iranian push to obtain nuclear weapons.

Joe Biden recently said, “if I had known the president was going to be this incompetent in his administration, I would not have given him the authority .” Had Bush actually been incompetent, he would have never been able to lead us to war in Iraq. Had Bush been incompetent, he would not have been able to ram through hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Had Bush been incompetent, he would have been blocked from stacking the courts with right-wing judges. Incompetence, on reflection, might have actually been better for the country.

Hidden Successes

Perhaps the biggest irony of the Bush-is-incompetent frame is that these “failures” — Iraq, Katrina and the budget deficit — have been successes in terms of advancing the conservative agenda.

One of the goals of Conservatives is to keep people from relying on the federal government. Under Bush, FEMA was reorganized to no longer be a first responder in major natural disasters, but to provide support for local agencies. This led to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Now citizens, as well as local and state governments, have become distrustful of the federal government’s capacity to help ordinary citizens. Though Bush’s popularity may have suffered, enhancing the perception of federal government as inept turned out to be a conservative victory.

Conservatives also strive to get rid of protective agencies and social programs. The deficit Bush created through irresponsible tax cuts and a costly war in Iraq will require drastic budget cuts to remedy. Those cuts, conservatives know, won’t come from military spending, particularly when they raise the constant specter of war. Instead, the cuts will be from what Conservatives have begun to call “non-military, discretionary spending;” that is, the programs that contribute to the common good like the FDA, EPA, FCC, FEMA, OSHA and the NLRB. Yet another success for the conservative agenda.

Both Iraq and Katrina have enriched the coffers of the conservative corporate elite, thus further advancing the conservative agenda. Halliburton, Lockhead Martin and US oil companies have enjoyed huge profit margins in the last six years. Taking Iraq’s oil production off-line in the face of rising international demand meant prices would rise, making the oil inventories of Exxon and other firms that much more valuable, leading to record profits. The destruction wrought by Katrina and Iraq meant billions in reconstruction contracts. The war in Iraq (and the war in Afghanistan) meant billions in military equipment contracts. Was there any doubt where those contracts would go? Chalk up another success for Bush’s conservative agenda.

Bush also used Katrina as an opportunity to suspend the environmental and labor protection laws that Conservatives despise so much. In the wake of Katrina, environmental standards for oil refineries were temporarily suspended to increase production. Labor laws are being thwarted to drive down the cost of reconstruction efforts. So, amidst these “disasters,” Conservatives win again.

Where most Americans see failure in Iraq – George Miller recently called Iraq a “blunder of historic proportions” – conservative militarists are seeing many successes. Conservatives stress the importance of our military — our national pride and worth is expressed through its power and influence. Permanent bases are being constructed as planned in Iraq, and America has shown the rest of the world that we can and will preemptively strike with little provocation. They succeeded in a mobilization of our military forces based on ideological pretenses to impact foreign policy. The war has struck fear in other nations with a hostile show of American power. The conservatives have succeeded in strengthening what they perceive to be the locus of the national interest —military power.

It’s NOT Incompetence

When Progressives shout “Incompetence!” it obscures the many conservative successes. The incompetence frame drastically misses the point, that the conservative vision is doing great harm to this country and the world. An understanding of this and an articulate progressive response is needed. Progressives know that government can and should have a positive role in our lives beyond simple, physical security. It had a positive impact during the progressive era, busting trusts, and establishing basic labor standards. It had a positive impact during the new deal, softening the blow of the depression by creating jobs and stimulating the economy. It had a positive role in advancing the civil rights movement, extending rights to previously disenfranchised groups. And the United States can have a positive role in world affairs without the use of its military and expressions of raw power. Progressives acknowledge that we are all in this together, with “we” meaning all people, across all spectrums of race, class, religion, sex, sexual preference and age. “We” also means across party lines, state lines and international borders.

The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush’s management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for another radically conservative president in 2008, so long as he or she can manage better. Bush will not be running again, so thinking, talking and joking about him being incompetent offers no lessons to draw from his presidency.

Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush’s conservative philosophy is what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.

Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people, destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.

[OneBlueSky]

1. essential read . . . kicked and recommended . . . n/t

[Contrite]

2. Okay, but he's still an evil megalomaniac.

I think people would actually prefer to think him merely incompetent. Perhaps they are afraid to face the truth.

[John Q. Citizen]

15. Yes, many are afraid to face the truth. And a lot of that is the incessant framing

the Repos have accomplished in the last 30 years. It has caused a lot of people to buy into the conservative myths on an unconscious level.

So when faced with the reality of the consequences of those myths, it is much less personally disturbing to just write it off as 'bush is incompetent' instead of examining unconsciously held beliefs.

[StClone]

39. Conservative = Republican

I wish we'd grind on that relentlessly. Thirty years of Con/Repo is enough to kill the best form of Government in the greatest country. Dangerous to men, woman, kids, birds, little kittens.

[StarTurtle]

3. K & R.

I'm glad to see this laid out so cogently. The war in Iraq is a great success for the CONservatives - besides enriching BushCo et al., it is a very efficient way of defunding the government. Makes it easier for Grover Norquist to drown it in the bathtub, I guess.

[Grateful for Hope]

4. An excellent cogent article.

Perhaps you might think of cross-posting this in the 9/11 forum?

Thanks for posting this!

[John Q. Citizen]

16. Done! And thanks for the suggestion. n/t

[nofurylike]

5. emphatic yes. ty. eom

[Fridays Child]

6. k/r

[Higans]

7. K&R'd to the greatest, happy to give you five.

[GuvWurld]

8. Why does Lakoff reinforce the myth that this radicalism is actually conservatism?

It is fair to debate whether or not there is incompetence. But nobody should believe that this administration exemplifies conservatism or its classic principles.

[smoogatz]

13. This is what passes for conservatism these days.

It's not your old-school, country club republicanism anymore. Those guys are dinosaurs--extinct or soon to be extinct. Today's "conservatives" are Straussian interventionists and military Keynesians who believe that America owes it to the world to be a ruthless empire. Democrats are the new fiscal conservatives--hadn't you heard?

[thingfisher]

26. I think the use of the terms conservative and liberal

have outlasted their usefulness.

What these neo-cons have done bears no likeness to what a Barry Goldwater style conservative would support. The kind of big government, executive rule that has been fostered by Buchco would be anathema to them.

The irony is that the old conservatives were so paranoid of the left. That they would lead us into big government, one world government, new world order or communism. The values once espoused by the old time conservatives would probably resonate with a large portion of society now than they did in the past.

New Deal liberals have been beaten back as anachronistic. At least New Deal spending went to help the people. Neocon spending has bankrupted the country and helped no one but the military industrial complex (that a republican president once solemnly warned against).

[smoogatz]

27. Very interesting article in this month's Harper's

talks about exactly what you touch on in your last paragraph--the author calls Reagan/Bush-style deficit spending "Military Keynesianism"--the idea that you perpetually stimulate the economy by running big deficits and spending the money on the military. As you rightly point out, the people get little if any benefit from all this spending--as far as they're concerned, you might as well take all those tax dollars and bury them in a hole. It's really criminal--and the majority of the American people have no idea how thoroughly they're being screwed. With relatively small cuts to the military, we could have universal health care, free college and tax freedom for eveyone making less than $30k a year--and a much less belligerent foreign policy. But, you know, that would be communism.

Anyway, those old-line Goldwater conservatives you're talking about? They're all dead, and their political philosophy has gone to the grave with them. There may be parts of it we can salvage, but in general I do not mourn its demise. The trouble is that what's replaced it is infinitely more virulent. I have a feeling neo-conservatism as a movement is just about over, too, though. Then we'll be faced with a battle between the center-progressives, the left-progressives, and the outright fascists. Should be interesting.

[John Q. Citizen]

42. Barry would have ended social security in a heart beat, if he could have. n/t

[GuvWurld]

35. OK, but let's talk about Lakoff.

I understand what you are saying. My point is that Lakoff is not accounting for that. Instead he is claiming to show us all how to effectively change the subject, or at least more successfully work with what we've got, and at the same time he is perpetuating other myths that must be shattered. I am not calling bullshit on you, smoogatz, but I think together we should be calling bullshit on Lakoff.

[John Q. Citizen]

43. Why should we be

calling bullshit on Lakeoff?

Lakoff is about using language effectively to frame issues. That's not about changing the subject. In fact, you seem to be trying to change the subject.

We all frame and relate to frames. It's intrinsic to human communications and how humans process language. If you want to argue with him that conservative values are really a good thing, but that radical values are what's bad, then go for it.

I'm a progressive and I believe in progressive values. I don't support conservative values. I like Social Security. I like unions, I like 8 hour work days, and paid sick leave. Those are progressive values. Conservatives would do away with all of them in a New York minute, in fact they are on their way to doing just that.

[GuvWurld]

45. let's take a closer look at how we define framing

I realize Lakoff is credited with creating this concept, but that doesn't mean every time he introduces or applies it he is doing so perfectly. I see you, JQC, and I have a different opinion of what framing is actually about. In my view it is about changing the subject, or at least the premises that are accepted at the onset of exploring a subject. I agree with you that we all relate to frames and that it is intrinsic to processing language. Likewise, I share progressive values. My bullshit detector goes off, however, where fundamentally flawed premises are left unchallenged. I had this same experience observing Lakoff as a paid consultant to the Dems. He counseled on all sorts of ways to compete against the Reps more effectively, but as far as I saw, he never blew away the premise that the competition is real given unverifiable elections with secret vote counting. I think that in general I'm going to have a hard time with Lakoff as long as his suggested frames don't challenge the general set of American myths: that we are a democracy, with a free market capitalist economy, free speech, competitive media, etc. We can learn a lot from Lakoff about the concepts of framing, but I no longer feel (as I did when I first read his book Moral Politics in 2001 - excerpts of which became his best seller Don't Think of an Elephant) that he is offering effective frames for We The People to achieve what we need to set out to do, which is taking our government back through peaceful revolution.

[John Q. Citizen]

17. Because what we have now is radical conservatism, to answer your

question. The conservatives grew tired and weary of competing in the realm of ideas and losing. So they figured out a different way to impose their bad ideas on the rest of us. That is the radical part. The conservatism is evident in the starving out of social programs, the policies that concentrate wealth and power into the hands of the few, the notion that government is inherently bad, and the notion that that the individual is all important, even at the expense of everyone else.

I will concede that the move towards empire isn't a classic American conservative notion, yet it seems to be a universal conservative outcome. Our current conservatives are activists and utopians, and they are using radical means to force their conservative views on the rest of us.

[GuvWurld]

36. please see #35 above, it is in response to you too (eom)

[Dover]

9. Thanks! Check out the "list" in this DU thread >

It's so important that people not fall for the 'incompetence' argument and realize just how much damage has been done. Those who want to topple our current form of government so that THEY can seize power, took full advantage of a governmental system that was already overloaded and unprepared for the pace or the 'information age'. They threw everything they could throw to tie it up in knots and clog the works so they could show it's weakness (as opposed to the much endorsed "efficiency" of the corporate model"...which, by the way is anything but democratic).

That was the point of this thread and an attempt to assess the extent of the damage. It is, indeed, overwhelming. So how best to address these GOP changes when our governmental system is already too burdened with critical current and future issues? That's a question we should tackle NOW:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2509149&mesg_id=2509149

[John Q. Citizen]

18. Wow, those are some lists.

Ice4Clark does a great job on the timeline and the actual rules/legislation,

and JCrowley's list of conservative actions and consequences is very long and sobering.

Thanks for the link.

[tiptoe]

10. Spot on...a couple of earlier postings re "incompetence"

The mess in Iraq is going exactly as planned. - Dec-01-05

But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?
Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq

Re: Drop the "Incompetence Theory" - Mar-15-06

[Dover]

11. One more old thread on Iraq's controlled chaos:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2356117

You can see how much attention this thread attracted...lol.

[cassiepriam]

12. I agree, very competent in getting money and power for themselves.

Anything else is simply not on their radar screen.

[smoogatz]

14. Exactly right.

It's not just Bush that's a failure--it's conservatism. Contrast the real-world performance of unfettered theoretical conservatism under Bush with the real-world performance of populist-progressivism under FDR, and tell me which system performs better. The big question is, why do the American people continue to allow themselves to be hoodwinked into retrying the same old conservative bullshit, time after time?

[tiptoe]

19. Perhaps time after time, fraudulent election systems have cheated America of its true choices? nt

[smoogatz]

22. It's hard to make that claim for '80, '84, '88

or the '94 midterm. The last two presidential elections were fraudulent without a doubt--but even if Gore had been successful in the post-election wrestling match in '00, he would have faced a hostile media and a midterm defeat in '02. The Republicans are amazingly successful at repackaging their pro-corporate, anti-people agenda and selling it to successive generations of American voters. I think it's a cycle we're probably doomed to endure--the Republicans take power, fuck everything up, and then the Democrats are brought back in to clean up the mess. Then the corporate oligarchy gets nervous and pushes the conservative narrative--usually in the form of some dire national security threat, or the inverse (resistance to "meddling" in the affairs of foreign countries), and/or the old tax manipulation dodge. Americans fall for it more than you'd expect. But we're not all that well educated, by and large--and that's part of the plan, too.

[John Q. Citizen]

23. The authors of the OP article are part of a progressive think tank whose focus

is exactly your question; "...why do the American people continue to allow themselves to be hoodwinked into retrying the same old conservative bullshit, time after time?"

Thier analysis, which I believe is spot on, is that the conservatives have invested the last 40 years into framing the issues, the debates, and thus the political contours of the nation. By doing this, they limit the scope of the debate. Opponents to a policy, for intance, are forced to argue their points within the dominate framing of that policy and are at a significant disadvatage, not because of the facts but because of the framing.



Here's a great interview with Lakeoff that explores this idea more indepth.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

Except from the interview:

You've written a lot about "tax relief" as a frame. How does it work?

The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for "relief." For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add "tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.

"Tax relief" has even been picked up by the Democrats. I was asked by the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to talk to them, and I told them about the problems of using tax relief. The candidates were on the road. Soon after, Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax relief in a press conference. You see the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot.

So what should they be calling it?

It's not just about what you call it, if it's the same "it." There's actually a whole other way to think about it. Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education system, the power grid, the system for training scientists — vast amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained and paid for. Taxes are your dues — you pay your dues to be an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don't. The federal justice system, for example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The Securities and Exchange Commission and all the apparatus of the Commerce Department are mainly used by the wealthy. And we're all paying for it.

So taxes could be framed as an issue of patriotism.

It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It's about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built and paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's the same thing with our country — the country as country club, being a member of a remarkable nation. But what would it take to make the discussion about that? Every Democratic senator and all of their aides and every candidate would have to learn how to talk about it that way. There would have to be a manual. Republicans have one. They have a guy named Frank Luntz, who puts out a 500-page manual every year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican side, what the other guys' logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use.

[smoogatz]

24. Thanks--

I know about Lakeoff; he's a smart guy, and among the first of the lefties to talk coherently about "framing" the issues. We still lag behind the Republicans in terms of crafting a simple, coherent, comprehensive message, I think--but at least we're working on it now. The miracel is that Republicans have been able to repackage the same old shit in bright, appealing new bags as often and as successfully as they have--and that the American public keeps falling for it, hook, line and sinker. Look! A shiny thing!

[tblue37]

20. I just read pabgeneris's post about suing the "other"

site for copyright infringement. In it he mentions how careful DU is about protecting people's copyrights. Aren't you limited to a 4-paragraph excerpt when posting other people's copyrighted material?

[tiptoe]

21. "(We invite the free distribution of this piece)" - bolded, after "(c) The Rockridge Institute"

Explicit release from copyright restrictions -- with permission to copy/distribute freely -- seems to have been granted by the authors.

I see your concern, though: Discussion Forum Rules

5. Copyrights: Do not copy-and-paste entire articles onto this discussion forum. When referencing copyrighted work, post a short excerpt (not exceeding 4 paragraphs) with a link back to the original.

Perhaps the restriction in DU rule #5 above -- since it's cited under "Copyrights" -- is meant primarily as protection by DU against risk of copyright infringement. Such restriction may not be of utmost relevance in cases of published material where infringement risk has been explicitly removed by the authors (like the article in the OP).

[John Q. Citizen]

25. I bolded that release myself, so that the mods would see it and not remove the

post because of copywrite infringement.

The original is unbolded plain text.

[tblue37]

32. I missed that. Thanks. (eom)

[progressoid]

28. marking this for a later read...

[Dover]

29. This was accomplished with immense corporate support from organizations like ALEC

These corporations are, in effect, using our tax dollars and fed reserves to fund their agenda, and infiltrating our government with their people and influence. Not to mention spilling our blood and that of the people whose countries are invaded to further this agenda.

It is these corporations and their primary officers that should be the focus of public activism.

About ALEC

Background about ALEC

More than a quarter century ago, a small group of state legislators and conservative policy advocates met in Chicago to implement a vision: A bipartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty. Their vision and initiative resulted in the creation of a voluntary membership association for people who believed that the government closest to the people was fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C.

At that meeting in September 1973, state legislators, such as then Illinois State Representative Henry Hyde, and Lou Barnett, a veteran of then Governor Ronald Reagan's 1968 Presidential campaign, together with a handful of others, launched the American Legislative Exchange Council. Among those who were involved with ALEC in its formative years were: Robert Kasten and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin; John Engler of Michigan; Terry Branstad of Iowa, and John Kasich of Ohio, all of whom moved on to become Governors or Members of Congress. Congressional members who were active during this same period included Senators John Buckley of New York and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and Congressmen Phil Crane of Illinois and Jack Kemp of New York.


Our Mission Statement

The mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council is to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism and individual liberty among America's state legislators... cont'd

http://www.alec.org/index.php?id=300

[ooglymoogly]

30. Sooo, what you seem to be saying is that * has been a very effective

voice for the rich and their free pass to raid the treasury under the banner of conservatism. As far as his oath of office in protecting the constitution and defending this country, he is a diabolical and dangerous incompetent. Who amongst us gives two flying batfucks that he is furthering some fascist reinventing of the grand ol' party. As far as the good of the country and our constitution he is the worst president this country has ever suffered. Through the rose colored gin bottles of the super rich he is perhaps perfection, as they steal public lands, airwaves, off shore drilling rights and huge kickbacks from everything that is war and for that matter anything and everything and pay minimal or no taxes on this obscene theft and that list of calumny could go on ad infinitum. It is a kind of reverse robinhood on steroids. I guess one could call robbing the country blind could be considered by some (the very rich and fascistochristians who are dumb as a bag of rattlesnakes) starving the government and thereby shrinking it, but that is not what is happening nor is that its aim. This policy is in fact expanding the govt by powers and growing its policing powers to corral and neuter the middle and poor to the max to say nothing of starving that middle
class right out of existence making them amongst the poor and then putting the poor onto the streets. if this is the neoconartists' interpretation of the conservative philosophy then, if we are to survive, that philosophy needs to be shamed out of existence and dumped on the toxic waste of dead ends in evolution. An entity that gorges itself on everything around it until there is nothing left will finally start devouring itself...a dead end in the evolution of man. Milty and Rand must be spinning in their simplistic graves.

[Kurovski]

31. A truly great perspective.

k&R

[The Count]

33. "Winning re-election"? had me going up to that one....

Anyone who doesn't get what happened in 2004 has anything to teach me....sorry.

[John Q. Citizen]

40. So are you saying bush is incompetent because he lost the election yet

remained president?

[The Count]

44. I am saying Lackoff lacks the awareness of a fundamental fact: democracy is

broken in this country so competence/incompetence hardly play a part into who gets the power. Whether Bush is incompetent or conservatism is matters not - they can take over anyway.

[John Q. Citizen]

46. You can apply Lakeoff's lessons in language, and i bet you do. I bet

you say "election fraud" instead of "voter fraud." If I'm right in my bet, then you do enbrace what Lakeoff is saying about framing an issue.

Just because Lakeoff writes about the tendencies of some progressives to attribute incompetence to the problems created by the bush administrations instead of blaming a conservative agenda, is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

For instance, your use of the phrase "democracy is broken in this country," isn't very effective to bringing about the changes I assume you might want.

I would switch to saying "our election process is broken."

For one thing, the US is not now, nor ever has been a democracy. So the fact that something that never existed is broken doesn't worry me too much.

Second, democracy, which doesn't now and has never existed here, isn't a thing which can be broken, it's an idea, a concept. So how does an idea or concept become broken?

I do feel our election process is broken and has been for a long time. It is just more broken now with the advent of computerized vote casting and tabulation. However, the fact that 95% percent of the time the candidate spending the most money wins office (and has for years) is disturbing also. That points to the electorial process as being broken for a long time. The fact that we are statutorily limited essentially to 2 parties is also anti democratic, it's a form of intentionally limiting democracy. And gerrymandering is anti democracy.

So my advice is to learn from Lakeoff instead of attacking him because he dared to write about a subject which isn't your number 1 issue.

[neuvocat]

34. The article could not be more wrong.

Bush used conservatism to forward his agenda. Bush is indeed incompetent because of the absolutely undeniable selfish, single-mindedness that has characterized his entire career. Bin Laden is on the loose because of Bush's incompetence. We have a hole in the ground in New York for that same reason. The invasion of Iraq is a result of incompetence not only on Bush's part but also the politicians who are now saying that they didn't know better at the time even though there were protests worldwide.

The article also overlooks the fact that the Bush administration has done more to destroy itself and the cause of conservatism than any of its enemies could have ever possibly hoped. Bush has set the conservative movement back by easily more than a hundred years and it is very likely it will not survive the next two decades.

[John Q. Citizen]

41. If he's incompetent, then how was he able to use conservatism to forward

his agenda? Would he have not been able to use conservatism to forward his agenda if he were competent?

Are selfishness and competence mutually exclusive?

Does bush care as much as you do that bin Laden is "still on the loose?" My take is he likes it like that.

Eisenhower was the last Republican president to hold both houses before bush. Was Eisenhower incompetent and is that why they couldn't get both houses back for 50 years?

Bush now has the military on board for a "surge." Is that because he's incompetent?

Incompetence and policies that you or I don't like are two very different things.

Name six agenda items in the last 6 years that bush wasn't able to accomplish. That's just one a year. I can think of one, and that's the privatization of Social Security. He may still get that since he's so competently bankrupted the ability of our government to afford it. Yet the military budget is safe.
Can you think of 5 more agenda items he didn't get?

That's my take.

[Lucky Luciano]

37. I have always thought this...

* always got what he wanted...that is not incompetence. ok... * is incompetent if left to his own devices, but his handlers know what they are doing.

[Skittles]

38. OH HORSESHIT

the fact that there are some benfits - to REPUKES - from their bumbling incompetence does NOT negate the fact they were derived from INCOMPETENCE

[EstimatedProphet]

47. Thank you!

This is exactly what I have been saying for a long time. All the supposed stumbling and dumb decisions are BY DESIGN. This administration is about one thing, and one thing only: making oil money for cronies. Iraq could have been written off as incompetence after a few months of drumbeating, but Bush insisted on invasion for 2 YEARS, and changed his rationale every time the old one was disproven, yet still insisted that the only course was to invade. And still, Bush refuses to leave. That is not incompetence, that's deliberate.

Lakoff is right. If we keep the Bush is incompetent meme going, we will let a new generation of evil murderers into control in 20 years. We have to make sure that the people know that this result was destined, not just an accident that someone with the same philosophy but better leadership skills could correct.