Rewarding Incompetence.

Lately I've been trying to figure why exactly it is that this administration who prides itself on it's descision making ability seems to routinely reward people who are completely incompetent? Take for example Condi Rice. Yes, she actually earned her doctorate, ( unlike a certain Yale cheerleader who got into an MBA program with C's), and yes she is a very accomplished pianist but considering she absolutely failed in her job as National Security Advisor, why is it that she was promoted? I mean, if I owned a business and the peron who was in charge of protecting it ignored specific warnings that it was going to be robbed, and then it was robbed by those same specific people I would fire him, not promote him. And yet here she is, Secretary of State. I mean someone like Tom Oneil who's only failing seemed to be that he had his own opinion of things was ran out on a rail. But miss " Smoking-gun-in-the-form-of-a-mushroom-cloud" becomes our chief ambassador.
Even without any googling here's a quick list of people who have been promoted by the Prez yet royally sucked at their job.

1. George Tenet- Hyped and misread reports of WMD's in Iraq- Given Presidential medal of freedom.
2. Donald Rumsfield- Screwed up occupation of Iraq, still Secretary of Defense.
3. Alberto Gonzalez- Encouraged torture of US prsioners , now Attorney General.
4. John Bolton- head of non-proliferation, tried to fix intelligence reports into saying that Cuba had WMD's despite evidence to the contrary, also all around bad boss and bully. Currently nominated for UN ambassador.
5. Paul Wolfowitz- Father of the great big cluster*(%$ known as operation Iraqi Freedom. Promoted to head of World Bank.

But I think I may have finally figured it out. In each and every one of these cases loyalty has been prized more than ability, therefore creating an atmoshere thats fosters the creation of both sycophants ( like Bolton) and vassals ( Jim Baker, Henry Kissenger) who will go out of their way to push whatever cokamamie plan their lords demand in return for some of the spoils of war. In this modern case, those spoils consist of positions of power like Condi's, membership in the upper levels of the business elite like Baker Associates and the Carlylse group, and of course money from as many conservative think tank's as you could desire. Now yes, i admit I am being alittle harsh here, but just take a look at how many government officials have migrated from Reagan, to Bush1 and now to Bush2. And regardless of their performance they are always called on again to serve.

This reminds me of the fates of many of the dynasties of old, where for every Richard the LionHeart or Saladin you had some twit prince with syphillus( or SEC violations) who exploited his name and drove things into the ground. God willing we will stop this slide into further mediocrity in 2008, but as the last election showed, never doubt the ability of the electorate to vote against it's own best interests.