Perhaps you have seen the thesis advanced by the t-shirt that maintains that “Obama is in over his head”?
It is a point of view that becomes more compelling by the day. One of the reasons why conspiracy theories are so prevalent on the hard right is that it is assumed that those doing whatever it is are smart enough to know what they are doing, and that their intent is therefore of necessarity malevolent. But there is another possibility, one made possible by a potent mixture of ideology, naivete, good intentions, and an inability or unwillingness to follow a logical argument out to the end.
In short, a definition from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary comes to mind.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
Consider . . . a federal deficit in which trillions are doing cartwheels like they were clowns at the circus, the health care debacle that we had to pass to find out what’s in it, unless we were among those cynics who already knew what was in it, to wit, lies, a cap and trade atrocity
being pushed in the middle of a hard recession, which is like watching a lifeguard throwing out anvils to struggling swimmers, and the buffoonish response to the Gulf oil spill, and what do you conclude? If jaw-dropping ineptitude counts as something which can induce a state of awe, and bumbling, third-rate work is the definition of schlock, then we have our description right here — schlock and awe.
When times are flush, families, corporations, nations, and businesses can afford to be sloppy. There is forgiveness built into in the system. But when times are tight, the system is quite unforgiving. Every blunder is amplified, and every boneheaded move shows up the very next morning as a boneheaded move.
When the skies are sunny and the ocean is flat, everyone is a fair sailor. It is the storm that tests you. But for those who will seize any excuse whatever to attack Obama, it is crucial to note that poor sailors don’t cause storms. That which reveals him to be in over his head is not something which he arranged for. At the same time, blunders in a storm cause what they cause, in this case a prescient t-shirt.