Lakoff Says Blame Conservatism, Not Incompetence for Bush Failures

George Lakoff and his colleagues at the Rockridge Institute have a compelling post up on Kos today arguing that the Dems are making a mistake by focusing on Bush's "incompetence." They explain that the Bush administration's so-called "failures" are really the natural and expected results of his conservative philosophy. Excerpt:

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.

... 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?

... 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.

... 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.

Lakoff and his colleagues go into detail advancing this theme and recommend a significant change in how Democrats frame these issues. Do you agree? What are your thoughts?