Unlucky or Just Plain Incompetent

I almost lost my lunch when I read the following two days after the Presidential election;
"Historians: Bush presidency 'battered,' 'incompetent,' 'unlucky'
So says CNN on Thursday, November 6, 2008
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/bush.legacy/

That there is any discussion on whether the presidency of George W. Bush was unlucky seems to be the leif-motif of the true believers in this failed administration. That the Bush administration used it's sense of destiny to push an agenda espoused by the Christian Right is an historical given. From the appointment of political hacks like Monica Gooding who used political fealty and religious litmus tests to make hiring decisions in the Department of Justice to the clearly incompetent Michael Brown to head the FEMA response in New Orleans, the term "unlucky" is not a word I would use to describe the train wreck of the last eight years.

The CNN report found at the following link http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/bush.legacy/ attempts to make the case that all the Bush administration is the victim of some unforeseen mojo that will be better explained through the passage of time.

Now I will agree that the temptation to foresee how any particular administration will be viewed in the future is an exercise in Nostrodamian tea leaf reading, but there a few things that I can state with a degree of certainty; it is not the "unlucky" things that may or may not happen that determines the character of an individual or an administration, it is the response to that "unlucky" event that will reveal the true grit of an individual, a community, or an administration.

It was not the attacks on September 11th that defined us as a nation, it was the response of the community and country that came to the aid of the stricken that showed our true colors; a people who will stand together to heal a national wound.

It was the incompetent response to that tragedy that will mark Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, who with their own agenda to re-fight the First Gulf war, led to four thousand plus Americans and untold thousands of Iraqi's to die and allowed Bin-Laden and his cohorts to escape into the Tora Bora area. The net effect is the trashing of the Geneva Convention rules against torture, maintaining secret rendition sites, and establishing an POW camp in Guantanamo, Cuba.

It was not the "unlucky" turn of events that led Hurricane Katrina to strike with such ferocity that left New Orleans no better than a waste land, leaving many dead and countless others homeless.
It was the incompetent response to that event by the Bush Administration that will forever define the old Reagan adage..."I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

This presidency is the logical progression of those intent on destroying what little is left of the New Deal programs and undoing the benefits that Union members were able to achieve.

The current financial crisis is the outgrowth of of the Reaganite Club for Growth policies that permeate not just through the current administration, but with the tacit approval of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Unlucky or just plain incompetent?

Gimme a break!