Bicycle Riding in January

Mark Graber

Monday and Tuesday were the first days in over a month that I wore gloves when taking my bicycle ride on the Rock Creek Trail outside of Washington, D.C. The daily temperature for the previous 30 days was above average for this time of year. On many days, I did not bother with a sweater. More than once, a t-shirt was sufficient.

I do a good deal of my academic thinking on my bicycle rides (which the comments below will no doubt suggest, probably explains a great deal). Often my mind wanders to Iraq. I was opposed to the original Iraqi invasion, suspecting that overthrowing Hussein was likely to be fairly easy but creating a stable polity (if not a stable democracy) next to impossible. On the other hand, the invasion was supported by the Washington Post, initially the New York Times, and some people whose judgment I think usually quite sound. They failed to persuade me (not that they needed to), but given their beliefs, the initial invasion seems best described as a mistake rather than incompetent. There is a revisionist school of thought, led by the Washington Post, which claims that Iraq could have been pacified had only President Bush adopted a more competent policy once the initial invasion succeeded. On my bicycle ride, I am inclined to think this mistaken. Destabilized Middle East countries, what little I know of comparative politics suggests, are next to impossible to put back together. That was my initial judgment of the Iraqi invasion and one that seems confirmed on a daily basis. For this reason, my suspicion is that President Bush’s present plan is no more incompetent than any other plan, all of which are as likely to succeed as any other effort to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. If we were to fire this bum as incompetent, the next bum, Democratic or Republican, in my pessimistic judgment, is likely to do no better. At least, I have yet to see any consensus among any experts I respect on a plan that is likely to result in a stable Iraq that is not a haven for Al-Quida.

Matters seem different on my bicycle ride when I think about how the winters in this area seem to grow milder by the year. A consensus does exist among experts that global warming is real and likely to have catastrophic consequences in the relatively near future unless something is done. Of course, dissenters exist on the details and a few on general themes. Still, if the best measure of incompetence is divergence from expert consensus, Bush administration environmental policies seem far more incompetent than Bush administration Iraqi policies. We have a looming environmental disaster, general agreement exists as to what must be done to prevent that disaster, and this administration does little more than censor scientific reports critical of industry.

As is the case for the initial Iraqi invasion, however, blame is hardly limited to the Bush administration. Global warming does not seem even to be on the agenda of the Democratic Congress. "An Inconvenient Truth" does well at the box office, but has hardly created a mass political movement for environmental reform. Higher gas prices bring out contrary voters, whether the cause is the Iraqi invasion or taxes intended to limit pollution. If as President Bush informed us after 9/11, the major American sacrifice during the war on terrorism would be to continue our normal consumer habits, this does not bode well for calls asking Americans to rethink behaviors responsible for pollution. My sense of the universe is that if 99 experts say an environmental disaster is coming and one legitimate expert says this may not be the case, the general public either believes the solo expert or at least concludes that the matter would benefit from more study. In this case, incompetent public policy is substantially rooted in a too apathetic general public.

My good friend and mentor Sandy Levinson would have us agonize over the possibility that an incompetent president has 740 days yet to reign. I worry more that the next President of the United States will be chosen by the same electorate that twice preferred a candidate who was widely known to be disinterested in the details of public policy. Impeaching Bush for incompetence is a bit like impeaching Clinton for philandering. What intelligent person thought they were voting for a master of policy or a devoted monogamist. "I may not know what I am doing," Bush informed the American people, "but I will stay the course." He has kept the promise on which he won the 2004 presidential election. Is there any reason to think that the Bush presidency has taught the American voter a lesson or is the likelihood greater that American voters will repeat their same mistakes in the future? Does American environmental policy teach us that we are unlikely to consistently elect more competent presidents unless we have a more competent public? 740 days left until a different kind of incompetent takes office.
Posted 2:00 PM by Mark Graber [link]