The Peter Principle Presidency
Sunday, July 4th, 2010Author James The Wanderer
From Wikipedia, “The Peter Principle is the principle that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle”.
Viewed from this perspective, we now have an explanation for the current state of events in the U.S. I suggest that B.H. Obama was an excellent State Senator in Illinois. He did not get indicted, convicted or even charged (as far as I know) with any crimes while a State Senator. Unfortunately, his ambitions did not keep him in the Illinois State Senate.
I understand there were some shenanigans involved (something about his opponent’s divorce papers, and a lapsing deadline to prevent entering someone else) but again I suggest he was (at least) an adequate Senator from Illinois (for the one term he partially served, while not running for higher office). While he is not known to have written or even sponsored any significant legislation while he served in the U.S. Senate, at least he did little or no recognized harm. That alone qualifies him as a success in the U.S. Senate (at least, from a citizen’s / libertarian point of view). He may have signed on to some questionable bills, but it takes at least 51 to tango a bill through the U. S. Senate, so he cannot be held responsible (in total) for the abominations of TARP, bailouts, and so forth.
It is evident that he was a superlative candidate for the U. S. Presidency. He won it, didn’t he? Against some really tough competition in Hillary, at that. McCain was a cakewalk, but that isn’t Obama’s fault either. But winning all those primaries, and then the general election, says that he was a terrific candidate for the Presidency.
Apparently, though, that was where he found his level of competence – and rose beyond it. B. H. Obama is one of the least effective, qualified or capable Presidents this country has seen in generations – the current joke is that Jimmy Carter can now relax, his legacy as the least competent President since Harding has now been eclipsed.
Obama does not understand economics – or he does, but wants to bankrupt the country for reasons of his own. He does not understand foreign policy – or he wants to degrade the role of America in the world, for reasons of his own. He does understand crony politics, rewards given for favors traded – just when America is tired of sleazy deals for sleazy reasons. He does understand playing to his base of supporters – just when America needs a President for all of us, not just those in political favor at the moment. And he does understand that there is a limit to what Americans will tolerate in the name of equality and justice – but not that that line was passed, about six failures back.
History, assuming enough survivors live to record one, will describe his as the Peter Principle Presidency – when one man, who was talented enough to win the Presidency, was nonetheless incapable of actually performing the responsibilities of it. But then, responsibility is an old-fashioned word, not relevant to today’s postmodern societies full of promise and potential – or so Obama would have us believe.
We can do no better than to prepare ourselves, our families and our friends to survive and prosper after the coming conflagrations destroy our currency, our economy and our country. We can rebuild the republic – after we demote those who have reached their personal levels of incompetence back to irrelevancy.
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The Real Obama Economic Plan: Overwhelming the System to Destroy Capitalism and Freedom | MorallyRight.org says:
July 4th, 2010
1:16 am
[...] The Peter Principle Presidency | The Texas Ring [...]
Kurt says:
July 4th, 2010
3:19 am
Actually, I do not believe so much anymore that Obama is incompetent. I believe him to be a liar. I believe him to have an agenda most are not familiar with, including some of his supporter and staff. I believe he is not who he claims to be, and his agenda is to knock the US down a peg or two, at minimum.
In the words of Bender Bending Rodriguez “Well, we’re boned….”
Desertrat says:
July 4th, 2010
9:04 am
Well, insofar as what Obama’s doing as President, it looks to me like he’s in tune with the views of his mentors. Here’s one article about a few of them: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,425584,00.html
Saul Alinsky is another. Alinsky, in one of his books, said that he didn’t want to reform the US system. He wanted to tear it down and rebuild it as a socialist system.
From that standpoint, Obama is a huge success in progress–along with his allies in the Congress and the upper levels of the federal bureaucracy.
Steve Foste says:
July 4th, 2010
10:41 am
James,
Your being unfair, He can only rise to his level of incompetence in regards to all those people he has appointed to run his administration. So who fits where in this hierarchy. Or am I being redundant.
CheriVNB says:
July 4th, 2010
1:50 pm
First, BIG SMILE! : D to James. I have always heard it quoted as “highest level” of incompetence. There is a difference between “slightly” incompetent and COMPLETELY incompetent.
Steve, yes I would agree. This presidency demonstrates the Peter Principle to the nth degree. No matter how you slice it you turn up incompetency. Probably part of the plan:
1) Degrade education.
2) Devalue healthy families and morals.
3) Compromise America’s integrity and good name.
4) Create economic instability and civil unrest.
5) Weaken governmental resolve by nuturing discord and bitter partisian politics.
6) Elect and appoint incompetents to high power positions in the government.
7) With the government in shambles… Insert new government/savior here.
It is hard to believe someone doesn’t know what they are doing…
Cheri
Steve Foste says:
July 5th, 2010
7:12 am
Thanks Cheri,
It is hard to believe someone doesn’t know what they are doing..
True, but the question may be, Why are they doing it? And why do we and they as individuals allow it. It could be I and most of us do not understand how they think. Many of these people are obsessed with power and control and money, They think differently than we do. And if the think differently they will act differently.
James the Wanderer says:
July 5th, 2010
9:54 am
My word, I do believe that we’ve been externally linked! Thanks, MorallyRight.org!
Kurt, if it’s intentional or not, can we stop it? How?
‘Rat, I can agree with that. What a poor job the LSM did in vetting this candidate! Isn’t it a shame there’s no “warranty clause” on politicians?
Steve, as far as I understand the Peter Principle it’s a personal thing – individuals rise until they fail. In this case, you could argue that BHO nominated / appointed the wrong advisers – but isn’t getting the correct ones a matter of competence also? I agree with your second comment, that “Many of these people are obsessed with power and control and money, They think differently than we do.”
You and I would not view destroying the work of generations in a positive light – even if you considered at least part of it the creation of racist, oppressive malingerers. Buildings aren’t racist, mines, factories and dams aren’t racist, and the armed forces are hardly racist – not with so many black, brown and yellow soldiers in the ranks these days. But in order to “tear it down and rebuild it as a socialist system.” as ‘Rat says, nearly all that has been built must be demolished. It’s just not worth it – to us.
Big smile back, Cheri! It’s hard to believe they don’t know what they’re doing – until you see what they’ve done already. There won’t be systems to keep BHO and his friends healthy and fed if this continues – so are they suicidal, as well as manipulative? I don’t know – but I have seen examples of “groupthink”, “brilliance blindness” and “conceit corrosion” among smart people in my life, so I don’t say that’s not it.
[groupthink - we all think alike, even if we're wrong, so we can't see problems ahead.]
[brilliance blindness - we're so smart, whatever we come up with is the best solution to the problem.]
[conceit corrosion - everyone else is so stupid, we don't need to even consider their ideas and opinions.]
Once this blows over, we’ll finally see what they were thinking, in the archives and the memoirs – but by then, we’ll either have solved their problems or been overcome by them, at least for a while. Stay tuned, the show is rolling along!
Kurt says:
July 5th, 2010
1:40 pm
It is on purpose James. The question is not whether it’s on purpose or not, it’s who’s purpose. I believe Obama is in fact in on it. Few humans could be that stupid, and he doesn’t strike me as having an IQ of 23.
How do we stop it? We can’t anymore. The die is tossed, from here on out no human can. God could, but didn’t the US just toss Him out a few years back? Nope, it ain’t gonna change. The world is going to go through a major upheaval now. Billions will die before it’s over. There is a strategic reason for taking down the US first: some Americans would try to stop it and perhaps succeed in mitigating some small part. All parts of the global economy, military, etc, have been perfectly timed and positioned to be unable to stop it, or to enable them to help bring it about, make it worse. He foretold all of this starting thousands of years back, and He is still talking to some about it. The only questions left are which side will you be on? His, or….? And from what geographical location are you going to watch it all unfold from?
jlsim66 says:
July 6th, 2010
7:24 pm
Speaking as some that knows an Obama voter. They believed that he would stop the “Patriot act”, Gitmo. Obama told them so. Now you may call them naive but the did vote for a change and GW was no winner. Just the best among bad choices. Picking a lesser of 2 evils is still picking evil. Do really think Shamnesty Mcain would be any better on domestic policy? As Twain said politicians and diapers have 1 thing in conman and must be changed for the same reason.
I’d rather draft congress critter rather than the armed services. Let them try to live on an E-6 budget even with a housing allowance. I don’t want the best and brightest. Just real folks that have to deal with schools taxes and shopping. They’ll do better than those “educated idiots”
Cheri says:
July 13th, 2010
5:52 pm
Lynne,
So Socialism is better than Bush? Daddy won’t let us play in the street unsupervised so let’s get Nanny to spend all his money taking care of us and buying us goodies?
It is why we are parinoid. What the “Right” can’t do the “Left” can’t wait to do.
Cheri