Unless you’re a high-strung rapper or a haughty Harvard nerd, you’ve probably gone to any length, at one time or another, to modestly hide your more outstanding qualities. Personally, I can think of quite a few times I’ve tried (and failed) to downsize my inner-nerd and upgrade my muscles. But when can we recognize we’ve gone just a little too far with a social system that reflects and encourages mediocrity? How different were we 2500 years ago when Plato dreamily wrote that “until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one… cities will never have rest from their evils?”

While ‘evils’ abound in this country today, Bush polls highly for being “a guy like me.” But just how far have we now fallen from Plato’s standard that we have failed to aspire for rulers that have the qualities of a philosopher and instead consign ourselves to debating the competency of the leader of the “free world?” Yet somehow the framing of this debate seems timely: competency, after all, is the same baseline standard that Bush has set for children in the all-too-questionable NCLB Act.

Undoubtedly a far cry from philosopher-king, Katrina’s aftermath has left Bush’s competence, by even the fundamental standards of our era, at stake. But to prove Bush incompetent, the Iraq War and his signature homeland security initiatives must be shown to be ineffective, nay, regressive in accomplishing their progenitor’s intentions.

But in Iraq what was the war-framer’s original intent? If, generously, we ignore the early WMD-mongering and take up latter-day Bushite justifications, we must take a tortuous route to a verifiably blubbering Bush. But even the latest coherent and valid justification that has gained popularity in conservative-hawk circles, Iraq as the ultimate “democracy-building exercise,” has already been recklessly undermined by Bush’s incompetent waging of this milestone war.

Any standard would proclaim the current constitution a complete democratic failure. By declaring that Islam shall be “a fundamental source” of legislation (which, pundits say, might as well read “the” fundamental source) and dividing the country into federal regions, the constitution will likely encourage an unending civil war perpetuated by a strongly theocratic Shiite government. But the US actually ensured these constitutional features in the days immediately following “Shock and Awe.” For at its very heart, the US campaign featured two things: the lack of a coherent singular vision, and a consequent stupid but facile willingness to sacrifice strategic goals for tactical victories.

The story has become history: once the war on the ground ended, the Bush administration faced a conscious choice. Who, in the short term, would govern the provinces now abandoned by Saddam’s semi-totalitarian power complex? For Bush, the simplest answer seemed best: put the organized local militias that, for decades, had been resisting the Baathist government in Iraq in charge. Across the country, the ordered political power fell into the hands of the most highly stratified Shiite fundamentalist militias. Soon, these militias would become legitimate party power—Sadr (an extremist cleric) supporters, SCIRI (Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq funded and begun in conjunction with Iran) and the Dawa party (governed by the same principles). Consequently, Bush’s conscious (!?) decision brought Sistani (another extremist cleric and debatably the most powerful man in Iraq) and Sadr to power, and caused Sunni (having no strong non-baathist militia of their own) political participation to dissipate.

The new Iraq constitution is only the logical conclusion of this occupied country founded upon heavily supported local religious power. Its emphasis on federalism and Islamic theocratic principles were first secured when SCIRI won a majority of the seats in the January 30 elections. Those elections have ultimately forked Iraq’s future into two hopeless halves: that of civil war or that of a doppelganger Irani government.

So Bush might have unintentionally screwed himself in Iraq, but he won (or Kerry lost) the 2004 election largely based on who would keep America safer. The voting populace, facing no other homeland crisis after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, seemed only able to conclude that no news was good news. The tidal wave of Katrina changed all that. But rather than rant about the federal government’s thoroughly inadequate response, I want to generalize that the force behind Mike Brown’s, the incompetent FEMA leader’s, appointment is the one behind the greater pattern of Bush’s ostensible incompetence.

Since the Katrina disaster, Mike Brown’s disastrous appointment has been placed under glaring spotlight. His power has since been exposed to have originally stemmed from his being the close friend of Bush’s ol’ pal Joe Allbaugh. But what did Brown do before getting the FEMA job?

He graduated from what, at the time, was a non-AALS (in shorthand, at best second-rate) law school (Oklahoma City University School of Law), and after an ostensibly failed attempt at the law profession went on to be a commissioner of judges for the International Arabian Horse Association. This was his fulltime job from 1991-2001. I mean, come on, John Kerry might have looked like a horse, but he probably wouldn’t have put the “horse commissioner” in one of the country’s most important positions. But be not afraid: Paul Krugman recently argued that this phenomenon of rampant favoritism has been repeated across the governmental spectrum: similar cases abound in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Treasury Department and the FDA, among others.

But the FEMA appointment, again, seems uncannily logical. Bush’s presidency attempts to accomplish its goals by delegating ruling power – meaning Bush sets up broad policy goals while his entourage works out the major details. Perhaps as a result, all of Bush’s plans seem to lack the same genius of unified vision. Objectively, “Bush” seems to represent a thoroughly incorporated individual, opening himself to the forces of multiple actors, interests, and forces without following through with the details of his most general goals (i.e. eradicating evil).

Whether represented through endlessly pork-barreled national security legislation, tactical focus in Iraq, or the appointment of friends of friends, Bush is an incorporated push-over. “He” has continuously allowed the tactical promise of immediate support, and the wishes of ‘friends,’ to undermine the corporation’s overall goals. As a result, the Presidency, more than ever before, has been ceded to special interests, while getting nothing little to nothing done for the good of the whole country. In Iraq and at home, we’ve experienced the conclusion of this phenomenon: a ship constantly buffeted by forces without a captain to guide it. A non-captain that, so unlike the philosopher-king seems to lack the ability even to, so-to-speak, sign his own name