The Chronicle‘s Cragg Hines, with his perfect hindsight firmly in place, gave us this column last week that calls President Bush (surprise!) incompetent.
It’s supremely easy — and facile — for President Bush to ridicule John Kerry’s shifting positions on the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. For, unfortunately, the president has never had a qualm.
“Stubborn incompetence,” as Kerry put it Monday in his speech at New York University.
The “stubborn” part we’ve known about Bush for a long time. It’s, in some measure, genetic. And it has seemed over the years that the deeper Bush digs himself into a hole, the more stubborn he can get.
But the “incompetence” part, at least judging by pre-White House experience with Bush, is a more surprising and alarming development.
That, of course, was the italic subtext of Kerry’s latest take on Iraq. Yes, the policy has gone awry. But why? “Stubborn incompetence.”
Thankfully, Tom Kirkendall leads us to a very helpful Max Boot column in the LA Times:
Lest we be too hard on Bush, it’s useful to recall the travails of the nation’s two most successful commanders in chief, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
Lincoln is remembered, of course, for winning the Civil War and freeing the slaves. We tend to forget that along the way he lost more battles than any other president: First and Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga
