Sunday, January 26, 2003
The Peter Principle in action
You do know the term “Peter Principle”, don’t you? Named for educator Laurence Peter, who published a book by that name in the late 1960s, its central theme is that:
in a hierarchy, employees tend to rise to the level of their incompetence
The Peter Principle falls neatly between “Parkinson’s Law”:
work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion (C. Northcote Parkinson, 1958)
and the entire Dilbert oeuvre.
I briefly thought about this classic examination of bureaucracy and its unintended consequences while reading an op-ed piece in Saturday’s Seattle Times, but that article remained firmly in the back of my mind until I read Raye’s latest epistle in By Sand and Sea. In her January 27 essay Not a black helicopter, but..., she quotes from an article about the bully-tactics employed by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who are following the example already laid out by the ghouls of the executive branch by accreting all available power and authority to themselves, rewarding those subordinates who toe their line and dumping anyone who steps even a whisker out of (goose)step.
The case of Connecticut’s Christopher Shays, senior Republican on the Government Reform committee, who was bypassed for the chairmanship of that body in favor of Virginian Tom Davis, is well known. Not coincidentally, Shays and Massachusetts Democrat Marty Meehan co-sponsored the House version of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform legislation, while Davis chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee during the 2002 campaign, raising over $180 million in hard and soft money (nearly $1 million of it from his own re-election coffers and his personal PAC).
Also well-reported (see this January 16, 2003 story in the Center for Responsive Politics’s “Capital Eye” site) is the new chairman of the House Resources committee, Richard Pombo (R-CA), who was jumped over five more senior committee Republicans. Needless to say, Pombo is strongly behind the Bush anti-environmental policies of road-building, oil drilling, and logging on wilderness lands. In fact, he goes even farther than most, promising to rewrite (i.e. overturn) the Endangered Species Act because he sees the current Act as an infringement of property owners’ right to develop their land. Pombo received piles of contributions from agribusiness, energy, and construction industry sources, and was also favored with a fundraising visit by Vice President Hallib^H^H^H^H^H^HCheney. How horrendous is Pombo? John Duncan (R-TN), who once compared an environmentalist campaign to Nazi propaganda, was passed over because he’s too moderate!! Even Republican Congressmen, such as Colorado’s Joel Hefley, are angered the Hastert-Delay approach to House governance. As noted in a Denver Post editorial, Hefley said that "Fundraising evidently was an enormous part of it. It’s unseemly. It’s like buying seats and we shouldn’t do that."
The op-ed piece I saw on Saturday was written by Froma Harrop of the Providence Journal on January 22. The ProJo archives require registration, so instead here is a link to the Seattle Times version. The subject this time is an old familiar face, a clear exemplar of the Peter Principle in action—Henry Hyde of Illinois. Yep, that good ole abortion fighter is being rewarded by his friends Hastert and Delay for his valiant efforts during the 1999 Clinton impeachment, given the plum assignment of chairing the House International Relations committee.
Hyde apparently wants to marry the resonance of Dubya’s “axis of evil” with his devotion to diversity, because he’s apparently decided that we need another axis for our own hemisphere. Hyde’s axis includes the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil. To qualify for this particular axis, it seems, all you have to do is lead a government of at least some discernable leftward tilt. Clearly that is sufficient to constitute a weapon of mass destruction, at least in Henry J. Hyde’s small mind. The new president of Brazil, he of the soccer-like single name Lula, qualifies for Hyde’s axis by virtue of running and winning on a campaign to aid the poor, and showing less-than-total support for Bush’s views on free trade. As Harrop points out in her commentary, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick’s diplomatic skills in dealing with Lula’s policy statements featured a snide remark suggesting that if Brazil doesn’t sign on to the Free Trade Area of the Americas plan, they could export their products to Antarctica.
Placing Henry Hyde atop the House International Relations committee demonstrates the Peter Principle in full flower. Who knows what silly, hare-brained, stupid, or insulting remark may emerge from his mouth somewhere along the line? It would be humorous, save for the ever-present potential for real damage to US international policy positions. I’m inclined to think that Henry Hyde is a worse representative of the United States on the world stage than the now-retired Senator Jesse Helms ever was. Say what you will about Helms’s isolationist xenophobia ... at least he had the intelligence to understand some of the ramifications of what he said. When Helms pissed off ambassadors or foreign officers, it was because he meant to do so. Hyde won’t have the slightest clue.
I’m amazed that I got all the way to the very end before mentioning that CAPOTUS is also a shining example of the Peter Principle at its best (or is it worst?). The guy can’t deal too well with the minimal responsibilities of being Governor of Texas, and then he gets kicked upstairs to the White House. Where, unfortunately, he and his minions/handlers can do some serious damage to America and the whole world.
↑ Close ...
Posted by N in Seattle on 01/26 at 09:11 PM
(0)
Comments •
(0)
Trackbacks •
Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages
