The conservatives are working hard to characterize the president as incompetent. To do so is an attempt to hide the fact that much of the damage done by the president comes right out of the conservative playbook. George Lakoff elaborates, in this insightful article:
The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush’s management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for another radically conservative president in 2008, so long as he or she can manage better. Bush will not be running again, so thinking, talking and joking about him being incompetent offers no lessons to draw from his presidency.
Very much the same problem when the Republicans blame the military for incompetence, citing this as the reason for failure. Condolezza Rice blamed the lack of progress in Iraq on "thousands of tactical errors"- incompetence on the part of the military- rather than the real problem, that the whole scope of the war made no sense.
LOL! "Thousands of tactical errors" — oh, that's a good one! Next they'll be blaming Satan.
Hmmm…actually, there's a pretty good argument that Cheney is the anti-Christ, so maybe that excuse isn't so far-fetched after all.