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.
Here here...well said, Gold Star for you!!
Hear! Hear!
Sign the Fred Thompson for President Petiton 5234 Total Signatures and growing. Let Fred know there are millions who want him for President!
Join the Draft Fred Thompson Bandwagon
If you'd like to be added to the Fred Thompson list, let Howlin or me know.
I would put a sticker like that in my car window right now.
Fred is going to run. You can see it in the tealeaves. He has enough name recognition (though Rudy and McCain have more). He is going to have a very hard time catching Rudy in the money department.
Howard Dead provides a two-fold lesson on that score:
He was a nobody who raised a LOT of money
Money can't overcome the fundamental weaknesses of a candidate
I don't like the guy, but I don't wish him dead. He's funny!
It is not only in the government, incompetence is every where. Hired a handy man lately, dealt with a sales person? Bought an appliance lately, it is rampant and getting worse. The quality of products and the low level of service is really, really frustrating me. The government is a lost cause, the whole system from VA hospitals, schools, universities and any govenment beauracy(sp) is going down the s**t hole.
You might hurt someone's self esteem if you tell them they are doing a bad job and fire them!!
Aw shucks, thanks.
2 things trouble me about Thompson
1) He was regularly run over in the Senate by Dems.
2) He was part of CFR - it was originally McCain-Feingold-Thompson, which was even worse than the monster that passed.
If he can't stand up to the dems and won't defend the 1st amendment at home, why should I think he will defend our liberty, overseas?
Nonsense. Fred would dominate fundraising from the NRA and pro-life wings of the GOP. Not only that, but he would also have those same motivated and dedicated folks out on the street for him doing the GOTV grunt work. Rudy would not.
First thing you have said in months that I have to agree with.
I'll see if I can make it into a bumper sticker!
Thompson/Hunter 08! I like how that sounds....
Might be hope for this nation, yet!
There is a good explanation of these terms and their confusion in this link but they disallow copying the whole thing:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cut1.htm
A writer will often place a "gotcha" in the text to awaken the reader.
"You made your bed, now smoke it."
I agree with you 100% - beware of what we wish for - Fred is a nice guy from all appearances, but he dropped the ball on the Chinagate hearings, let the Dems run over him, and he thinks that Gov't. is the answer as long as the Repubs are in charge. His conservative voting record on abortion and guns is a reflection of his home state constituency's beliefs. I wonder how much any of these guys/gals care truly care about the country over their own interests.
I briefly flirted with going to work for the Federal government (The Feds have a big footprint where I live). I visited the USAjobs web site and clicked on a few opportunities. The hoops and legalese in even entry-level job requirements run on for 10-12 very turgid pages stuffed with exotic acronyms only a government lawyer would know.
It's so bad that I'm convinced the only way you get past the stiff-arm requirements is through some equivalent of the old-boy network. which then makes exceptions for the favored one.
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