This needs to be emphasized more, because it’s not accidental. It’s the result of ideological hostility to governance that produces decision-makers who are inept at best, and view politics as a mechanism for distributing spoils at worst. Often both.
Before March I was onboard the “worse human than Bush, but not thus far a worse President” train, because Trump had been lucky enough to avoid any serious external crises. That ended in March, with predictable effect.
And while generally I’m happy that we’ve shifted to the idea that invading Iraq was a Bad Idea, and not simply Bad Execution, it’s worth remembering that it was in fact a Bad Idea that was Very Badly Executed in large part because of the way the GOP approaches governance.
At the state level there still are folks in the GOP who have basic managerial competence in government work, but the national level political environment selects these out. And even at the state level it’s getting harder to find GOP officials interested in governing.
In Kentucky, Matt Bevin was utterly mendacious and widely reviled. The difference between Bevin and Beshear is probably thousands of dead Kentuckians. GOP folks barely bother to dispute this. And yet Bevin only lost by 5000 votes.
Sometimes I think about how we were actually pretty lucky that the financial crisis took as long as it did to percolate. By the end of Bush’s second term, it was almost necessarily true that the administration would have some experience at governance and some lessons learned.
Christ, can you imagine if the financial crisis had happened on Trump’s watch?
And just as a final note: no, Mitt Romney is not enough. He probably would have been a more effective manager than either Bush or Trump (low bars!) but governance requires a deep bench of serious professionals, and the rot in the GOP is pervasive and deep.
