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Robert Kuttner explains why competence is not a substitute for liberalism:
In November 2005, the Prospect published an ingenious and influential piece by Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias titled "The Incompetence Dodge." The article took lethal aim at liberal hawks who had argued that the Iraq War was the right idea; it had just been executed incompetently. Rosenfeld and Yglesias demolished that conceit, demonstrating that the whole enterprise was flawed, in premise as well as execution.Some progressives who find themselves disappointed by Barack Obama's senior economic appointments are consoling themselves with what might be termed "the competence dodge." The orthodox moderates named to top economic positions, the argument goes, were admittedly part of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's team whose deregulatory policies helped spawn today's crisis. But at least they are highly competent.
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--The Editors
