Obama sounds for all the world like a whining adolescent rising and surpassing his level of incompetence
President Peter Principle
 | By Tim Dunkin (Bio and Archives) Monday, June 21, 2010 | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us |
Typically, I try not to write when I’m angry about something. This week, however, that is proving to be well nigh impossible. How can I not be just a bit miffed about the way our ostensible President has been handling the oil spill crisis currently taking place in the Gulf of Mexico? Perhaps it is because I don’t suffer fools lightly, but the stunning, nay, mindboggling incompetence emanating from our government, and especially its executive branch, is pushing me past even my expectations for governmental ineptitude.
Every employee will rise to his or her level of incompetence
The “Peter Principle” is a well-known principle of hierarchical organizations. At its simplest, it basically says that within any organization, every employee will rise to his or her level of incompetence. Essentially, each employee will perform their work well and will be promoted within the organization up until they reach the position where they are no longer capable of competently performing the tasks assigned to them, at which point they will not be promoted further.
For President Obama, we have (unfortunately) discovered his “Peter Point,” so to speak. He was quite capable of performing tasks in the various and sundry positions he had occupied before attaining to the Presidency. Community organizer? Of course, he was quite good at race-agitation and shaking down local businesses for more free goodies “for the community.” President of the Harvard Law Review? He did well there, by all accounts, though he seems to have failed to contribute any academic work of his own. But he did fill space and he kept the Review “balanced,” which is as much as we can ask for, I suppose. State Senator in Illinois? Hey, there’s nothing in the employment manual that says you can’t vote “Present,” right?
Unfortunately, at some level between “State Senator from Illinois” and “President of the United States,” Barack Obama’s Peter Point was crossed. Where exactly that level was, we’ll never know, since in 2008, America took the unprecedented step of electing to its highest office a man with no previous executive experience, no familiarity with responsibly running any sort of organization that needed to be profitable or successful to stay afloat, no readily identifiable background, and possibly even no birth certificate. That’s like taking the kid in the mail room and promoting him to CEO. Step back a minute and think – maybe this guy needs a little experience under his belt, to at least see what he’s good at?
Being President isn’t something Obama is good at
And being President isn’t something Obama is good at. In fact, he’s singularly maladept at it. This is likely the reason why he is strongly giving off signals that he’s not, in fact, all that interested in doing the job anymore. It’s pretty hard to be President, after all. You have to make big decisions that have ramifications on down the road. There’s more to it than just standing behind a teleprompter and bloviating. But as we all know, when the going gets tough, the wimps go golfing.
Anywise, back to the particular source of my sturm und drang for this week – the BP oil spill.
I think what irritates me the most about this, in addition to the simple malfeasance of the Administration’s response to it all, is the pathetic blame-shifting that Obama and Co. are trying to engage in. Granted, British Petroleum shares a lot of responsibility for this accident and the ensuing economic and environmental catastrophe. But all the same, I’ll be jiggered if it doesn’t look like the government went out of its way to set this all up, even if accidentally.
Obama’s administration gave a safety award to this very Deepwater rig
Last year, Obama’s administration gave a safety award to this very Deepwater rig. No problems then, right? Guess they forgot to check and see if anyone had checked to see if the blowout preventer valves had been tested and passed inspection (the valves were the proximate cause of the disastrous blowout). Nevermind that the EPA was putting pressure on BP to replace the usual “drilling mud” that is used when sinking extremely deep wells (because this “mud” is designed to prevent things like, say, uncontrolled gushers that would happen after a blowout) with seawater instead. Since the drilling mud is environmentally unfriendly, and could contact seawater at some point and kill a couple of sunfish. So yes, we have the meddling of environmental wackos to thank for this as well, not just BP’s own negligence. Your government at work.
Oh, and did I mention that the only reason BP was engaging in the extremely technically difficult and dangerous practice of sinking an oil well a mile under the surface of the ocean because of all the roadblocks that the environmentalists have managed to put in the way of shallow water offshore drilling, and drilling on land in places like ANWR, both of which are infinitely less likely to suffer from the sorts of technical difficulties that deepwater drills do? Once again, we see that environmentalists and their lackies in the federal government helped to make the Deepwater oil spill a reality.
Then you have Obama’s on-again, off-again acceptance of responsibility for the progress of the fix to this problem. Remember, Obama told us all about the all-star team of grand-high muckety-mucks he had assembled to solve this problem. He had his Nobel Prize-winning Energy Secretary Steven Chu heading up this team of undefeatable technocrats. As an aside, this is the same Nobel organization whose “Peace Prize” has been given to Yassir Arafat for his efforts at bringing peace to the Middle East, Al Gore for his efforts at enriching himself through a carbon-credit Ponzi scheme relying upon blatant fear-mongering, and President Obama himself for occupying the White House for ten days without starting a war, or something. Perhaps the Nobel Committee has a Peter Point of its own.
So anywise, they got into the Big Room, rubbed their massive, bulging skulls together, and came up with a solution…which was to recommend to BP that they “mobilize addition equipment and technology” to address the gusher. Right. We’re on it, big guy. So, BP does just that, trying one after another of these fantastical technological fixes that you have to use for such contingencies when you are forced by the government to drill a mile underwater for oil in the first place. When “top kill” looked like it was working, Obama was there to claim the credit. When top kill failed, he was there to shift the blame. At least we know he’s there for us, in some form or fashion.
Obama sounds for all the world like a whining adolescent
And who can forget Obama’s declaration that he wants to “know whose *** to kick.” Very Presidential, Mr. Obama. I can see George Washington saying that. “That’s it, Thomas Jefferson has bungled our efforts to open trade routes with the French. I wanna know whose *** to kick!” Not. With this declaration, Obama sounds for all the world like a whining adolescent whose 17th level paladin on World of Warcraft just died because he missed a totally obvious hidden trap. Powerless to do anything, it’s apparent to everybody around him, but he wants to puff his chest out and make it look like he’s got a handle on it. Sure. Besides, Mr. Obama, if you’re looking for somebody to do that sort of thing, you really need to give Bob “Fists of Fury” Etheridge a call.
Even worse, Obama tried to drum up sympathy for himself by attempting to compare this oil spill with 9-11, aided and abetted by a compliant news media. “This is Obama’s 9-11!” we all heard. This is his existential moment, when he faces a terrible enemy who would like to destroy us all! Good grief. No, he’s facing a large oil spill that threatens to kill shrimp, birds, and the local economies of the Gulf Coast region. But it’s not quite the same thing as Islamofascist nutcases flying jetliners into buildings full of thousands of people. I don’t think anybody is going to be looking back five years from now and asking each other “Where were you when Deepwater blew?” Trying to make this comparison is insulting to those who lost loved ones on 9-11, as well as to our military men and women who are fighting the type of terrorists who helped engineer the attacks. It is also a blatantly opportunistic attempt to try to buy some citizen goodwill to refill his rapidly draining reservoir. It made him look very small.
But the opportunism didn’t end there. Obama then gave a sleeper of an Oval Office address in which, among other things, he rolled out his plan to utilize the Gulf oil spill as an excuse for ramming cap-n-tax down our throats. I guess he figured we were all dumb enough to be swayed by the simplistic logic of it all. Oil comes out of an oil spill – cap-n-tax would tax oil - taxes will “encourage” us to start running our cars using nuts and berries instead of oil – therefore cap-n-tax will help to stop the oil gusher. Or something to that effect. Needless to say, the connection was not made in the minds of most intelligent people, so instead of seeming foresightful and Spock-like, he just looked like another sleazy politician using a disaster to advance his own ends. Who can blame him, however? His own advisors advocate for that very thing.
Bureaucratic morass that Obama and Co. have sent to “coordinate efforts” has helped to bring much progress to a standstill
Even worse, the efforts that could have helped prevent damage to the environment from the oil, and some which already were doing so, the Administration’s bureaucratic apparatus was working to monkey-wrench. Indeed, as anyone down there in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida who is involved with the cleanup/prevention efforts will tell you, the bureaucratic morass that Obama and Co. have sent to “coordinate efforts” has helped to bring much progress to a standstill. What do you expect? Each agency has absolutely veto power over any decisions made by any other agency. And of course, the federal government has to prove that it’s the rooster on the perch by overruling or otherwise interfering in any state-level initiatives that might actually work.
How else do you explain the weeks-long refusal to substantively meet with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal about the issue of building berms that would have protected a lot of economically-important marshlands in the state? What about the EPA refusing to allow workers to use a chemical dispersant that would make the oil much easier to isolate and clean up, on the premise that the dispersant isn’t “environmentally friendly” (but I guess millions of gallons of crude oil are)? Or what of the U.S. Coast Guard cruising in with a shiny new “cease and desist” order that stopped Louisiana for over a day from using several converted barges to suck up oil from the water? Barges that had been successfully removing a lot of oil from the ocean. Stopped because the Coast Guard hadn’t ascertained that there were enough life preservers and fire extinguishers on the barges. Ridiculous, or worse, criminally negligent.
Obama and Co. refused – refused – help from at least 20 other countries
Further, in addition to holding up our own states’ efforts to fix the problem, we have learned that Obama and Co. refused – refused – help from at least 20 other countries, most of whom have experience in dealing with this type of disaster. Deep water booms that would have contained the spread of the oil were refused. Assistance was slapped away. Apparently, the President doesn’t actually view other countries as partners so much as he views them as sounding boards for his own hate-America apology tour speeches. I can’t blame our allies for being miffed with this government.
And of course, for the past week, while he’s supposed to have been rubbing that massive, bulging cranium of his together with all the other Talosians in his cabinet, what has the President been doing? Well, let’s just say that Tiger Woods isn’t the only half-African to have been working on his chip shot for the past few days. Remember how the press and the Left used to tear into George W. Bush when he would occasionally take a day off to shoot a back nine? Absolute silence now that it’s Obama whose golfing what seems like every other day. At least Bush didn’t go golfing in the middle of national crises. But Obama, well, the stress is apparently getting to him, and he’s finding it harder and harder to stay focused on the issues at hand and to fight the temptation to wash his hands of it all and find something easier and more fun to do.
Which is a sure sign that he’s past his Peter Point.
Tim Dunkin is a pharmaceutical chemist by day, and a freelance author by night, writing about a wide range of topics on religion and politics. He is the author of an online book about Islam entitled Ten Myths About Islam, and is the founder and editor of Conservative Underground, a bi-weekly email newsletter focusing on foundational conservative worldview and philosophy.
He is a born-again Christian, and a member of a local, New Testament Baptist church in North Carolina. He can be contacted at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)