Bob Herbert Discusses the Bush Administration 'Incompetents'

I find it ironic that the group who came to the White House claiming that "the adults are back in charge" in reaction to the Clinton administration may represent the most inept policy leaders in the history of the United States. (If you don't believe that this administration has no real concept of how to create policy or how to justify it, you need only read Ron Suskind's account of Paul O'Neill's tenure as SecTreas, The Price of Loyalty, or Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. I imagine Christie Todd Whitman's book could shed some light on the subject as well, but I have not read it myself. I also anxiously await the books by Colin Powell and Rich Armitage.)

In a recent Op-Ed column in the NYTimes, Bob Herbert (thanks for the link Joan) writes about the incompetence of this administration. He discusses the fact that the Bush White House largely chooses to ignore the sage advice of experienced professionals who have spent decades in public service while relying heavily on relative new-comers to the political process.

Mr. Herbert talks about Condoleezza Rice's experience. She was a student of the first President Bush's National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft. Unfortunately for her, she didn't take his advice in the lead-up to the war on Iraq. Scowcroft argued very publicly that Iraq most likely did NOT have WMDs nor that they were prepared to make them any time soon. Again, sage advice went unaccepted by the Bush administration. Even Bush himself was unwilling to seek advice from his father or his father's key foreign policy advisors.

Mr. Herbert writes--

As I watch the disastrous consequences of the Bush policies unfold - not just in Iraq, but here at home as well - I am struck by the immaturity of this administration, whatever the ages of the officials involved. It's as if the children have taken over and sent the adults packing. The counsel of wiser heads, like George H. W. Bush, or Brent Scowcroft, or Colin Powell, is not needed and not wanted.

Some of the world's most important decisions - often, decisions of life and death - have been left to those who are less competent and less experienced, to men and women who are deficient in such qualities as risk perception and comprehension of future consequences, who are reckless and dangerously susceptible to magical thinking and the ideological pressure of their peers.

I look at the catastrophe in Iraq, the fiscal debacle here at home, the extent to which loyalty trumps competence at the highest levels of government, the absence of a coherent vision of the future for the U.S. and the world, and I wonder, with a sense of deep sadness, where the adults have gone.

When they came to office, the Bush administration came with the cry, "The adults are back in charge!" Mr. Herbert writes here that in fact, the immature children are in charge, and the adults have not been consulted! Regardless of one's opinion of the Clinton administration, I think it is clear that at least his team knew how to make policy and how to successfully adminstrate. Some lessons this administration could learn for themselves.