Posted on 03/14/2007 4:49:20 AM PDT by slowhand520
The Case for Competence What government%u2019s missing.
By Fred Thompson
Editor's note: Click here to listen to the original radio commentary.
Wasn’t it Casey Stengel, the old baseball manager, who said one day after the third dropped fly-ball in the outfield, “can’t anybody here play this game?” That’s sort of the way I feel when I watch certain parts of our government in action.
We’ve known for a long time that our intelligence capabilities weren’t cutting muster. It was certainly the case before 9/11, and it’s still true in Iraq and elsewhere. Now we have apparently decided that we really don’t know if North Korea has a uranium enrichment program to make bombs or not.
Whether it’s the Katrina response, the problems at Walter Reed Medical Center, bungled border security, or the IRS and FBI which can’t get their computer systems working, it seems like we’ve lost our ability to take care of some of the most basic duties of government.
Not that this problem is new. For decades, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has told us, time and time again, that we’ve lost control of the waste and fraud and mismanagement in many of our most important agencies. And it’s getting worse.
A big part of the problem is our outmoded civil-service system that makes it too hard to hire good employees and too hard to fire bad ones. The bureaucracy has become gargantuan, making accountability and reform very difficult.
Faced with this managerial swampland, the number of talented executives willing to come to Washington continues to dwindle. Those who do accept the challenges usually want to tackle big national goals in the few years they spend in public service instead of fighting their own agencies. So the bureaucracy just keeps rolling along.
Department heads should learn a lesson from Casey, who once said about his winning Yankees, “There is less wrong with this team than any team I have ever managed.”
What we need now are managers who understand that even building a government with “less wrong” about it would be a major public service and a truly worthwhile legacy. Of course, it would be nice if they got a little help from Congress and the White House.
— Fred Thompson is an actor and former United States senator from Tennessee.
He is dead on about the government being filled with incompetents that cant be fired.
Problem is what can he do about it. Most of them are affirmative action hires. Answer: There isnt much anyone can do about it. Its become entrenched and incompetence has become the rule of the day.
ping
This guy needs to run already! I think, however, that he's biding his time while the others spend obscene amounts of money. If he wins, it'll be by a groundswell of support from people like us!
Well, we got a little language use/mixed metaphor problem here. "Passing muster" is OK, "cutting the mustard" is OK but dated, "cut muster" is meaningless. This is a nit-pick, but little stuff like this bothers me as it is a clue about how precise the thinking mechanism works. Totally aside, one my favorite quotes is "I may be too old to cut the mustard, but I can still lick the jar."
Thompson/Hunter 08! I like how that sounds.....
This guy needs to run already! I think, however, that he's biding his time while the others spend obscene amounts of money. If he wins, it'll be by a groundswell of support from people like us!
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I said before he, Newt Gingrich and other possibles are better off waiting, but for a different reason. They won't be so tiresome. As it is now, all the early announced candidates (Democrat and Republican) are making me ill. I'm tired of ALL of them. If these folks wait a while, they will be seen as fresh and, at least in my mind, have a better chance of getting my vote.
If he simply gave this speech over and over again for the next two years he'd get elected.
Thompson/Hunter 08! I like how that sounds.....
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Or Hunter/Thompson, but then it will sound like the writer. :)
Fred fills in for Paul Harvey from time to time; I've wondered if he writes his own commentary for these broadcasts, or reads someone else's.
Carolyn
I agree, he's my choice at present. I just tend to be a bit of a language Nazi.
Unfortunately Hunter does not have any name recognition, as hard as I try to get his name out there, I am only 1 person =(. Thompson is already known, which is why I put his name 1st. However, either one of them is a ok in my book. Our country's life and saftey hangs on our next election, we better make damn sure to GET A CONSERVATIVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!!! I know I know, I'm preaching to the choir, lol, just had to say it!
"Cutting muster"?? I always thought it was "cutting mustard."
BTTT :)
"Our country's life and saftey hangs on our next election..."
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My major criterion for the right candidate will be what kind of a leader will he be -- especially in a crisis situation. We're never going to find a candidaate with whom we agree 100% on every issue. Sure, I would like a guy with impeccable personal morals and all that. But what I want most is leadership. I want a President who will ot abandon the war on terror, but lead us on to victory, no matter how long it takes. I'm afraid some of the other prospective candidates don't have the spine for the job. They will mess everything up or turn this country into a nation of cowards. We're already becoming spineless in some matters. We need to stop that, turn ourselves around and be the great nation we always have been.
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