Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal calling for a counterpart to Time's "Person of the Year" award -- a "Bumbler of the Year" for the biggest boobie of the past 12 months.
It's not a bad idea, really. But he names Hillary Clinton as his favorite to win in 2008. Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrisey thinks Rod Blagojevich, Hugo Chavez, and Elliot Spitzer all would be better nominees.
Well, there's little doubt about Blago and Spitzer and Chavez all bumbling to varying degrees, the first two especially. Hillary, on the other hand, did indeed wind up looking the bumbler, but that was largely due to the contrast to Obama's extraordinary competence.
As it happens, Obama left his tracks even more indelibly down the backs of Republicans this year. If you want to find bumblers, you might want to look there first.
Indeed, all these ostensible "liberal" bumblers (Chavez does not qualify) were mere pikers -- more in the way of mediocrities -- compared to the right-wing bumblers on parade this year. The three biggest public displays of idiocy and incompetence this year came from Sarah Palin, John McCain, and most of all George W. Bush.
Palin: Who can forget the painful Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric interviews? The visit to the turkey farm? The Perky Conservabot debate with Joe Biden? And the best thing about Palin is that she's the GOP's Great White Hope for 2012.
McCain: The list of mistakes is endless, from the "suspension" of his campaign just prior to the first debate to the insistence that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" to his selection of Palin as his running mate. And those were just the big mistakes. It seemed as though every day, McCain's campaign was trying to recover from some fresh gaffe or tactical blunder. It's a credit to the power of Kool Aid that he was able to win any states at all.
George W. Bush: The economy, stupid. 'Nuff said. Without doubt, the biggest and most consequential blunderer of them all.
Funny how right-wing folks always manage to see incompetence on the other side of the aisle (and there's plenty there to be remarked, make no mistake), but keep the blinkers on when it comes to their own little cesspool, isn't it?
