Politicians are, as the saying goes, only human. So it should be expected that they occasionally make mistakes – that's part of human condition. Nevertheless, people who make have a history of making lots and lots of mistakes generally find themselves working in positions in which their blunders are minimized – and sometimes they wind up out of a job altogether.

The problem is that when one amasses a huge list of critical errors, a disturbing question arises: are those mistakes due to gross incompetence or outright dishonesty? This is a question that American voters should be asking themselves about the Bush administration. The pattern of their misstatements that have developed over the last four years is troubling no matter how one chooses to interpret it, because there are only two possible causes for it: incompetence or malfeasance.

A recent State Department report, which claimed that terrorist attacks were at their lowest point in 34 years, is only the latest in a long series of assertions that the Bush administration has had to back away from. (It is expected that the corrected report will show an increase in terrorist activity for 2003.)

The Bush-backed Medicare bill, which was passed in November of 2003, offers even more examples of the Administration's propensity for dissembling/honest mistakes. First, the administration misrepresented the cost of the plan by about $100 billion. Second, the administration broke two federal laws when the Department of Health and Human services produced videos promoting the Medicare changes. They were presented as genuine news reports, when in fact they were HHS promotional materials.

Then there were the administrations claims (touted mostly by Condaleeza Rice) that they had received no credible information indicating that Bin Laden had been planning an attack on U.S. soil, prior to September 11th, 2001. But, according to one of the president's own daily briefings, it turns out that there, in fact, were indications of just such an attack.

But no issue is more troubling than the Iraqi WMD issue. How could we be so wrong? Such a mistake, (if indeed it was a mistake) paints a picture of an administration incapable of making good use of intelligence. If it's an honest mistake, at the very least, it's evidence that Bush and his employees are unsuitable for their positions. If it turns out to be a case of deliberate dishonesty, well, that's just plain criminal behavior.

The list of the Bush administrations various retractions goes on and on. Such a list brings to light what appears to be a strategy of public assertions and quiet withdrawals. Whether or not this is something that the administration is deliberately doing, either to disguise their incompetence or their dishonesty, in the end the sheer number of them makes the question moot. Even if we take the administration at their word, incompetence is not something we want in the White House.

-B. C. Silvia
-6/16/2004