An incompetent administration?

Last night I saw another background documentary on the Bush administration. The claim of this program was that there is a parallel between Bush and Nixon. Well, if you drink a bottle of wine, squint your eyes and hold your head crooked while staring into the sunset, you would see the parallel as clearly as the documentary makers saw it too.

However, several interesting people were interviewed: Gordon Liddy (yes, he did get out of jail after serving only five years of his twenty...), a liberal colleges professor whose name I forgot and Joseph Wilson, the former ambassor to Iraq and author of a report that discredited claims that Iraq was procuring so-called yellow cake uranium in Niger. Wilson is in a sort of indirect battle with the White House. In the course of this battle, the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative was made public. That affair will cost several people their career. "Scooter" Libby was one of them.

Anyway, the journalist who compiled the documentary was not very careful in hiding his disgust with the Bush administration. As a piece of journalism it was not great, but it got me thinking about what the USadministration has achieved so far.

It turns out it is one of the most divisive governments since, well, I suppose, since Nixon. Bush c.s. have managed to go into deficit BIG TIME, they invaded Iraq without a clear contingency plan and with what became clear afterwards, poor intelligence, the invasion seems to have set a civil war in motion that looks like it will last a 100 years, they have managed to give Arab discontents a clear target, they alienated many of their allies in the world (witness the recent trip of Condoleeza Rice to the Middle East), with the open (and illegal?) tapping of thousands of citizens and the complete faillure of the rescue and rebuilding operations after Katrina hit, they are polarising American society into vocal camps of Bush lovers and haters (where is the moderate middle contingent?!?) and with Dick Cheney nearly killing a friend and major sponsor they look like stumbling fools to many.

This is the administration that right after 9/11 had enormous political capital, that could count on the unconditional support of a majority of the nations in the world. I don't think that Americans are stupid, like too many of my countrymen do. Nor do I think this administration evil. I used to that the individual members of this administration were no fools, but if you oversee all of this, I cannot help but wonder if they are competent to lead the most important and (as a US citizen I can say this) greatest nation of the world. Their track record does not look promising, to say the least...