Evil v. Stupid

George Lakoff had a very interesting piece up at @ HuffPo a few days ago. (OK, a week ago.) He argued that the Bush moron meme does not serve our long term interest.

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. For example, Nancy Pelosi recently charged "The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader." Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point.

Bush's disasters -- Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit -- are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative office holders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff.

To Bush's base, his bumbling folksiness is part of his charm -- it fosters conservative populism. Bush plays up this image by proudly stating his lack of interest in reading and current events, his fondness for naps and vacations and his self-deprecating jokes. This image causes the opposition to underestimate his capacities -- disregarding him as a complete idiot -- and deflects criticism of his conservative allies. If incompetence is the problem, it's all about Bush. But, if conservatism is the problem, it is about a set of ideas, a movement and its many adherents.

On the one hand, I think Lakoff presents a false dichotomy: Bush can be both evil and stupid.

And I have certainly helped to to further the moron meme.

But I think Lakoff is right in a very important way. The Republican machine can compartmentalize and minimize the long-term damage from this train wreck of an Administration by adopting the moron frame. They can flood the Bush compartment and still keep the Titanic that is their bigger conservative disaster afloat. That is, if we are somehow able to succeed in convincing the media to start treating Bush as an idiot, the conservatives will be able to argue that the countless failures of the Bush Administration are tied to Bush's stupidity, not -- perish the thought -- the fundamental wrong-headedness of the policies themselves.

Stupid versus evil? Evil it is.