I came across this terrific post by Tom Engelhardt via Michael Panzner. Englehardt takes a cold, hard look at the Bush Adminsitration’s performance and practices, and argues you don’t need to be an economist to predict that whatever limited efforts they make to address the credit crisis are sure to fail. After all, everything they’ve attempted to accomplish had ended badly.
It’s hard to remember back to 2000, when Bush promised compassionate conservatism (although Paul Krugman reminds us that those who looked at his proposals knew better) and a competent Administration. Bush was an MBA, so we’d have a President who would act like a capable CEO. Even the New York Times talked up that wishful line of thinking, ignoring the fact that Bush’s qualifications were that he had been a part-time Governor (that office is very weak in Texas), had worked in his family’s oil business, and was co-owner of a baseball team. In other words, he had ridden his entire life on his family’s coattails. And my Texas buddies (very successful oilmen and investors) had nothing nice to say about their former Governor even before he proved their low opinion of him to be well founded.
Most Americans look at Bush and see a path of destruction: bullheaded refusal to abandon failed initiatives, extraordinary success in tarnishing America’s image, fiscal irresponsibility, further enrichment of an upper class that didn’t need any more help. Yet undergriding it is an extraordinary degree of incompetence, as Englehardt reminds us.
I try to avoid featuring others’ posts long form, but this piece merits being read in its entirety. If you like it, be sure to go to the Tomdispatch.com site and sign up for its several-times-a-week e-mailing.
From Engelhardt:
No one was prepared for the storm when it hit. The levees meant to protect us had long since been breached and key officials had already left town. The well-to-do were assured of rescue, but for everyone else trapped inside the Superdome in a fast-flooding region, there was no evacuation plan in sight. The Bush administration, of course, claimed that it was in control and the President was already assuring his key officials that they were doing a heck of a job.No, I’m not talking about post-Katrina New Orleans. That was so then. I’m talking about the housing and credit crunches, as well as the Bear Stearns bailout, that have given the term “bear market” new meaning.
Now, don’t get me wrong — when it comes to the arcane science of economics, like most Americans, I’d benefit from an “Economics for Dummies” course. What I do know something about, though, is history, a subject that hasn’t been on the Bush administration’s course curriculum since the President turned out not to be Winston Churchill and conquered Iraq refused to morph into occupied Germany ‘n Japan 1945….
Just consider the record: Administration officials proved incapable of rebuilding two countries that their military occupied and damaged. In Afghanistan and Iraq, while talking up the President’s “freedom agenda,” they were the equivalent of a natural disaster, a whirlwind of destruction.
In the case of Iraq, in disbanding its military, its government, and even its economy, they were literal nation-wreckers. On taking Baghdad, their first act of omission was to let the capital be looted. (”Stuff happens,” commented Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the time.) Soon after, the administration’s new viceroy in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, promptly plunged the country into the equivalent of the Great Depression — without a Bear Stearns bailout in sight.
In the case of Afghanistan, only a staggering boom in opiate growing — the country now supplies an estimated 93% of the global market in illegal opiates, bringing about four billion dollars into the country — has slightly offset the disaster of “liberation.” By just about any other measure, Afghanistan is a wreck.
In the case of New Orleans, the Bush administration not only couldn’t rebuild an American city that nature (and the Army Corps of Engineers) damaged, but turned a natural disaster into a man-made catastrophe that has yet to end.
Despite a reputation for being the most disciplined, tough, and focused administration in memory, Bush’s men and women couldn’t even secure their fondest inside-the-Beltway dream: constructing a generation-long Pax Republicana in Washington….
And now, with a mere ten “lame duck” months to go, comes the American economy…
You don’t faintly need to understand economics to grasp the immediate danger. The people overseeing the handling of this crisis have done little these last years but hand money over to the rich, while running American power into the dirt.
Let me review our history lesson for a moment: No to nation-rebuilding, no to city-rebuilding, no to Congressional majority-building…
Who dares imagine that the people who brought you Iraq, the war, could begin the rebuilding of an economy, or even successfully caulk the cracks in the levees of a system that, in its complexity, puts Iraq’s feeble economy to shame?
In some ways, an administration — whatever its periodic changes of personnel — can be compared to an individual. At a certain age, its urges become predictable, its habits set, its limits largely known. While change may be possible, you wouldn’t want to bet your house on it.
So what exactly has the Bush administration proven itself good at? The twin skills of destruction and looting would stand at the top of any list. Perhaps that’s because it chose to put its “eggs” in only two baskets — those of the U.S. military and crony corporations.
Awed by the shock-and-awe force of forces that fell into their hands, administration officials moved to transfer as many powers of civil governance as possible to the Pentagon. From diplomacy to disaster relief, nation-building to intelligence gathering, an organization built only to destroy was designated as the go-to outfit for activities normally associated with those who have building in mind.
At the same time, the government was being staffed, top-to-bottom, with ill-prepared political pals, while a small set of crony corporations, of which Halliburton is certainly the best known, was given the nod in every rebuilding situation. It really didn’t matter where you looked, they were the ones camped out, making money, on the landscape of destruction. With their no-bid, cost-plus contracts, these companies ran up the hours and then tended to jump ship when the going got bad. The same corporations that had essentially looted Iraq — it was labeled “reconstruction” — were the first ones called in when New Orleans went down….
Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration has proved serially incapable of building anything, even — in the long run — their own machine. And, from the Enron moment to the Bear Stearns one, whenever it looked like the Titanic might have hit an iceberg, it was a lock that those passengers assigned to the limited places in the lifeboats wouldn’t be from steerage (or be weighed down with subprime mortgages).
So rebuilding. No. Saving people who aren’t already friends. No. Doing a heck of a job in a crisis. No. Now, our latest and greatest crisis is upon us, the sort that, in a matter of weeks, has sent media commentators and pundits from reluctant discussions of whether we might be heading into a recession straight to references to the “d” word, “1929,” and the Great Depression. And they’re not alone. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll indicates that a startling 59% of Americans already believe we’re heading for a long-term depression, not a recession (and 79% are worried about the possibility). Leave the definitional details to the experts. Most Americans have undoubtedly assessed the Bush administration’s proven incapacity in perilous times and drawn the logical conclusions.
Ten months is a long, long time when only their hands are near the pilot’s wheel of the ship of state and water’s already seeping through the hull. It’s an eon for an administration capable of sinking New Orleans in a matter of days, and Iraq in little more than months. Or, thought of another way, it’s plenty of time if your expertise happens to lie in deconstruction. After all, barring a miracle, you’re talking about the little administration that couldn’t, no matter how hard Ben Bernanke may try.
So, even if you, like me, know next to nothing about economics, you already know enough to be afraid, very afraid.
Anonymous 
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I would feel a little bit better if Dick Cheney ( the bunker architect) would resign due to health issues.
The article sums it up. Too bad it has taken so many calamities for the “people” to catch on. The US trade policies are the next time bomb. It’s like watching a slow mo train wreck in progress. Only the crash will get attention.