Everyone Else's Fault But His

Today Bush tsk-tsked about the collapse of the Dubai port deal, claiming it sends "the wrong message" to the Arab world.

I'm not even going to ponder the multiple levels of hypocrisy in that statement, or the sheer madness of having our ports under the control, not of simply a foreign company, but a foreign government. Or of his utter tone-deafness in not realizing some might object after he's spent five years scaring us about Arabs. Or how much credibility he has taking us into that quagmire in Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and yet asking us to accept the takeover of our ports by a power that recognizes the Taliban.

Because all this would be obvious in a less mentally retarded era.

I'll just mention that it was he who chose not to inform Congress, and it was he who more or less ordered them not to defy him, at a moment when most of them are desperate for an opportunity to distance themselves from him, and it's he that still acts as though he has(or had) political capital when he wasted it all on Terri Schiavo last year around this same time.

Someday he may realize that when you make your bed, you'll end up sleeping in it. But for now, I don't suppose he understands that nobody takes him seriously anymore, that he's outlived his usefulness even to his base, and that he did it to himself. Or that this is what it looks like when you're a lame duck and your past can finally catch you on the heel.

For a time I thought perhaps the "stupid" thing was just an act, that it was typical Republican feigning so as to take advantage of low expectations, which are usually their best way to avoid judgement or consequences of what they do.

But no, the Bush administration really is stupid and incompetent, and doesn't take running government seriously. They don't have to be evil. Isn't stupid and incompetent enough? In fact, given that those flaws make one far less predictable, isn't that worse?