I remember a time when many Americans were whispering: "Thank God the Republicans are in there!" Do you remember? It was right after 9/11, and we knew what the nation needed to do: Defend itself, go after those who hurt us, and wipe out the threat. Many were relieved that the "tough Republicans," who always seemed to know how to get these kinds of things done, were calling the shots.
Ever since, it has been one inept bungling after another failure. Bin Laden escapes Tora Bora, we invade Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11, we leave Saddam's arms depots completely unguarded and so they are looted, we don't put in enough troops, we lose $8.8 billion without accounting for it, we abuse Iraqi prisoners, torture al Qaeda prisoners and "rendition" innocent people, the al Qaeda-Taliban alliance reforms along the border of Afghanistan, and now this: We ship weapons to Iraq and cannot even account for them. Everyone in the world must be asking the same question: How could this be?
It isn't that hard to figure. The President never takes real responsibility. Listen to his pronouncements about the war in Iraq; despite his claim to be "the decider," he always says that the strategy in Iraq will change when the generals on the ground tell him it should change. But this is not an appropriate delegation of authority to the experts; it is the abdication of his responsibility as the Commander in Chief. One does not turn to the tacticians for guidance on strategy unless, as in the President's case, one is confused about the distinction between tactics and strategy. Could the President of the United States really be so ignorant? Six years of unrelenting incompetence indicate that he is.
For some reason I have not been able to fathom, few in the press have been willing to state the obvious: the President is incompetent. He does not know what he is doing. He failed repeatedly in business, he was bailed out in baseball, and he is failing again in government. He holds no one accountable. He cannot manage. His government is so profoundly incompetent not because he is surrounded by incompetent people, but because he himself is incompetent. Americans do not want to believe this, but the evidence is abundantly clear.
Because it is unstated, Americans experience the problem as this nagging sense that something is wrong, the country is on the wrong track. We are on the wrong track because our government is incompetent. Although it is convenient to blame Congress, the real accountability lies in one man in one office. Unfortunately, he occupies the one office where incompetence can take you a long way.
Check out my forthcoming book Call to Liberty: Bridging the Divide Between Liberals and Conservatives. I regularly blog at http://www.calltoliberty.net. This post was cross-posted there.