When is incompetence an asset?

The story is that the Clinton administration’s mangling of the Wen Ho Lee espionage case raised the racial consciousness of the Asian-American community, which perversely but inevitably redounded to the benefit of the Democrat party.

I will make the prediction that the Obama administration’s incompetent response to the BP oil spill will raise the environmental consciousness of the Gulf states, which will perversely but inevitably redound to the benefit of the Democrat party.

I wonder if either president knew these things in advance, and if that partly explains their behavior.

Obama in particular has made a political career of “failing upwards.”