Festival of Incompetence

I honestly wish I had time to blog seriously, but unfortunately, I don't have the time. So, for example, right now I have the seeds of what I believe could be a solid post about the need to emphasize competence in government, but rather than lay out evidence and present a persuasive case and contribute in my small way to the nation discussion, I have to content myself with merely sketching.

Much has been made over the course of the last 4 years of Bush Administration incompetence, and there's no surprise there. However, what hasn't really been discussed is the remedy. No, I'm not really talking about impeachment, not directly anyway, but I am talking about taking some steps rhetorically and possibly, legislatively, to make incompetence a punishable offense. It should be anyway, but as this administration has shown time and again, the People, absent any nudging by the media or the opposition party, are willing to cut people in power a lot of slack.

As but two examples, take the recent assertion by Karl Rove's attorney that "...Rove had no idea the e-mails were being deleted from the server, a central computer that managed the e-mail," and the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the press in the run-up to the war.

• In the case of the Plame leak, there is a statute called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act that criminalizes any act that "intentionally discloses any information identifying" a covert agent. Unfortunately, "intentionally" gives the Bush Adminstration a lot of cover, which is being used effectively by both the Vice President and Karl Rove.
• In the case of Rove's e-mails, there is the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which requires that "the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records."

In both cases, it's clear that the Executive branch fucked up royally. However, in both cases, they are hiding successfully behind an incompetence defense, and this is what really needs to be addressed. We're talking about the President of the United States of America and his staff, not the night manager at Arby's; is "incompetence" really an adequate excuse for these people to escape the consequences of their actions?

And when did the conservative movement in this country, the movement of "personal responsibility" and "you'll go as far as your talent will take you" start settling for much less defending this kind of ineptitude?

When you're job is this important, shouldn't incompetence be just as criminal and just as disqualifying as deliberate acts of sabotage? The legislative remedy to this problem is to make no allowance for "mistakes". If Karl Rove was sufficiently afraid of the PRA, all he would have to do is make sure he saved every one of his emails; it's not that difficult.

Oh, and while I'm semi-on the subject, how is it we can even have these two simultaneous perceptions running around our national debate?

• Karl Rove is the genius who engineered sweeping GOP victoriees in 2000, 2002, and 2004...
• Karl Rove inadvertently deleted emails that he should have saved in violation of the PRA and only incidentally was using a non-White House RNC email server for 95% of his messaging, and only coincidentally do all of those emails appear to have something to do with one scandal or another, be it the firing of US Attorneys who did not sufficiently politicize their positions or the outing of a CIA operative whose husband was poking holes in your case for war...

Given that the first statement is almost universally accepted as true (even if Rove isn't a "genius", most people will still accept that he's a canny dirty-trickster, and that requires...well, being canny), it's almost impossible that the second one is true, so while the guy is innocent until proven guilty, let's all please accept that there is a massive case to be made against him.