Striving for Mediocrity

In the spirit of the Christmas season I offer the following grab bag of iconoclastic observations for your enjoyment…

Pop Quiz: Who made this stirring argument? …freedom to destroy unborn children has been a powerful economic stimulus. By legalizing abortion nationwide, Roe freed more women to go to work unencumbered by motherhood, and those women over time have added $3.5 trillion to the US economy.

Ever heard of Laurence Peter? How about his Principle? The late Canadian educator has suggested that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as a corporation or political party, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence. This is the Peter Principle and it is real.

So how does the Peter Principle apply to the world of politics? Take, for example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I am sure she was a better than average high school student and as a mixologist she got top marks. The day she matriculated at BU she was elevated beyond her level of competence. We could discuss Al Gore but there is no record of success at any point in his career. Hilliary Clinton is an interesting case. She was fired from the Watergate investigation team, she flunked a bar exam and she is the Buffalo Bills of presidential politics. Yet she is pondering another attempt to grab the brass ring. Apparently politics is the perfect lab experiment to prove the validity of Peter’s Principle.

How else do we explain this carousel of incompetence other than as a bouillabaisse of mediocrity? Any analysis of the competence of our 45 Presidents is depressing. Who in the world would want Jimmy Carter on a local board of education, let alone in the White House? Mayor Pete and Cory Booker are obvious victims of the Peter Principle. They have failed as mayors of South Bend and Newark, respectively, yet, inexplicably, they believe they should be placed in a position to lead the United States.

As an employee of a major US corporation for more than 40 years I witnessed the decline of the level of talent desperately pursuing mediocrity. There is no value put on competence and accomplishment. In fact there are nut jobs who argue that those values reflect “white privilege” and are “patriarchal”. Such arguments are usually made by those who have no demonstrated competence or accomplishment.

Today there is, available for all to see, a veritable Who’s Who of mediocrity… I give you the best of the worst offered up by the DNC for consideration as the successor of Donald Trump.

Let’s begin by remembering those candidates who are now “woke” to the reality that they have been rejected by the Democrat party. It is not merely an outbreak of coulrophobia. The peak of Robert “Bozo” O’Rourke’s campaign was a YouTube video of his trip to the dentist to have his teeth cleaned. It is impossible to identify a peak in the campaign of Kirsten Gillibrand. The accumulated events of her campaign would not register on a topographical map. The erstwhile mayor of the Big Apple, Bill “Comrade” DiBlasio is now applying his finely tuned administrative skills to deporting the homeless from New York City to New Jersey. Strangely the citizens of the Garden State are not embracing this gesture.

One of the early front runners was a member of Willie Brown’s seraglio. When Kamala Harris walked onto the debate stage she became the poster child for the efficacy of the Peter Principle. There seemed to be an advantage to standing next to her during the debates because you would look smart by comparison. Eric Swalwell (University of Maryland Law School????) continues to demonstrate the success of his intelligence bypass. He believes as an article of faith that Trump’s sarcastic request that Putin track down those emails deleted by Hilliary (in violation of a subpoena) is an impeachable offense. “Moon Unit” Williamson was the 2019 acid flashback candidate but she did have her SNL moments. Jay Inslee dropped out and Washington voters slid into a collective depression because he would return to finish his term as governor. A number of others have skulked off into the night and their absence has been little noted and their participation quickly forgotten. Booker may or may not have dropped but no one has even noticed despite his “Spartacus moment”.

And now, to the complete embarrassment of the Democrat base, all that remains is gaggle of rich, old white people and child star Mayor Pete. Al Sharpton can barely cope with the absence of any person of color from the DNC dream team. The debate crew now looks like the line of people in the Place de L’Etoile awaiting their appointment with Madam La Guillotine. Such is the prospect of running against Trump.

Trump is probably contributing to the Biden campaign so eager is he to debate the father of the integrity challenged Hunter Biden. The gaffe machine provides a steady stream of impossibly idiotic comments while he is on the hustings. The rules for the Presidential debates of 2020 should include a mercy rule if Biden is a candidate. It is clear that even Putin would be embarrassed to back Biden. Why Mrs. Biden and Mrs. Mueller allow their husbands to publicly embarrass themselves defies explanation.

Bernie Sanders, a one man Red Scare, staggers onward like the Energizer bunny. Following his campaign in search of a new idea or even a fleeting grasp of economic theory is a fool’s errand. But his support among young lemmings remains unchanged.

Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren spares no opportunity to demonstrate her tenuous grasp of simple math. Her programs would cost trillions of dollars which she will raise without new taxes on anyone but billionaires. Her real problem, however, appears to be a case of Hilliaryitis…the need to lie about anything and everything, even things that can be checked on Google. Recently she appeared to forget that her son had attended a private school undermining her effort to assume the mantle of the common folk. I think I’ll grab me a new candidate!

Tulsi Gabbard will be representing the Russian precincts in the 2020 election. Someday a new Venona Papers will reveal her code name.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg will be in deep kimchi if verbal phlogiston is ever identified as a greenhouse gas. If you gave this chap an enema you could bury him in a thimble. So many words, so little substance. How exactly did he manage to get into Harvard? Whoops, my bad…Adam Schiff went to Harvard so no explanation is required.

Amy Klobuchar actually looks like a moderate compared to the rest of the field but can she overcome her social faux pas of having eaten a salad with a comb?

Enter stage left the filthy rich trying to buy the nomination: Michael Bloomberg and Thomas Steyer. Bloomberg will be running on his signature issue… banning the Big Gulp. Steyer is pushing his childlike obsession with the myth of man-made climate change. He has named his campaign manager, Chicken Little. The sky is falling, the seas are rising and we are doomed…in exactly (pick a random number) years!

And warming up in the bullpen, on a mound four feet from the plate, is the vampire-like Hilliary Clinton. The most tone deaf politician in American history is showing a bit of leg to let the DNC know that she can “win again”. One can only wonder if her husband’s many trips to Jeffrey Epstein’s stable of nymphets will be a problem. Word is that she is even now scrubbing her electronic media using the same team that erased the embarrassing online history of Christine Blasey Ford.

Let the games begin!

News and notes:

The quickest levitation to a Peter Principle level of incompetence: Adam Schiff 15 seconds after emerging from his mother’s birth canal. His greatest achievement: destroying the value of a Harvard Law School degree.

Among the walking dead is a publication called Time magazine and they have just announced their person of the year. The Nobel Committee, not to be outdone by Time, has announced a new category: The Nobel Prize for Stupidity. The first winner, Greta Thunberg, was announced immediately and the award has now been retired.

The genius who made the Pop Quiz argument was none other than Chelsea Clinton which explains a lot.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!