December 18, 2008
Kennedy's qualifications: Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Donald Sensing, a retired Army colonel, writes on the difference between "credentials" and "qualifications," starting off with an interesting discussion about the military.
In the 1970s the US Army assessed the damage done to the officer corps by the Vietnam War. It wasn't pretty. Careerism had largely displaced professionalism. Col. Dandrige Malone, one of the principal assessors, wrote that the Army's historic code, "Duty, honor, country," had been pretty much replaced by "Me, my [rear] and my career."
Sensing shows how the obsession with credentials trumped the actual qualifications of men better suited to lead, severely damaging the Army for years -- decades, actually.
This leads him into a discussion of Obama's cabinet appointments, one of whom Sensing deems worthwhile, the other ... not so much.
But let's take Lisa Jackson as EPA director. Does she have the qualifications? She has experience in New Jersey where she drew flak from all sides, which IMO means she was doing a good job in what is, unavoidably, a politicized office. She holds a BS and a master in chemical engineering, so she can handle technical matters. No problem.
It's what she said in her acceptance talk that made me think of this post. She offered what is now the standard political tripe that being a mother will make her a more capable administrator because she understands the effects of the EPA work on the children of the country. That's not a quote, but it true to the thrust.
When did being a mother become a qualification? Heck, it's not even a credential. I have three children, and if someone asks me child-raising advice, I have some sort of qualification to answer. But fatherhood neither qualifies nor credentials me to address technical issues, nor even to do sound theology.
That "I'm a parent" really jumped out at me; it's a pet peeve, one that makes my gorge rise whenever I hear it, the idea that the ability to reproduce should serve as some proof of fitness for service other than working on a stud farm.
But then -- at last -- Sensing turns to the topic of the day.
Speaking of no credentials, we have the curious case of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg being seriously discussed as a Senator appointee to take Hillary's place. This is a person who has nothing whatsoever to recommend her to serve in high public office. No service experience of any kind. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Her only credential, such as it is, is her maiden name. And exactly how that deserves even to be a credential escapes me.
Welcome to hope and change folks. Same old identity and entitlement politics, amplified.
While Sensing's comments regarding the woebegone state of the Army in years past are well taken, I'm afraid we part ways when it comes to JFK's kid.
Is she grossly unqualified to be appointed to high office?
Unquestionably.
Is her joining the U.S. Senate an embarrassment?
Well, that depends. I suppose the answer demands a follow up: embarrassing as compared to whom? Certainly not the members of the Senate.
The English House of Lords has long been derided as a collection of long-winded, bilious blowhards, the children, grandchildren and fifth cousins, once removed, of noblemen who once did something to curry favor with a long-dead King.
The House of Lords looks like greatest assemblage of deep thinkers and philosophers the world has ever seen, when compared to the collection of feckless crapweasels who bloviate on the floor of our Senate.
Kennedy will certainly be no worse than any one of a number of current or former Senators who serve with little (read: no) distinction, adding nothing to the debate over our nation's future.
If anything, Kennedy being miracled into the Senate is good for the GOP -- if it wasn't the Stupid Party, incapable of ever capitalizing on an opportunity to do something smart -- an opportunity to point out how deeply offensive it is for the party ostensibly on the side of the working man to give a Senate seat to a child of wealth and privilege, based on nothing more than noble lineage.
The only move that is consistent with the so-called status of the Senate is a special election, allowing the people of New York to decide if they want JFK's little girl as their gal in D.C. But that's a little too ... Democratic for the Dems.
Ironic, ain't it?
But the U.S. Senate has not deserved it's self-proclaimed title as "The World's Greatest Debating Society" in about a hundred years. I can't see how the presence of yet another wealthy, do-nothing, know-nothing nincompoop -- of either party -- does any particular harm to that collection of venal dolts and poltroons.
Good for Princess Caroline.
God save the King!
Posted by Mike Lief at December 18, 2008 06:40 AM
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Comments
I'm very slightly plugged in to the greater sphere of the old house of lords. I.e., I know people who know people in ermine. When Labour was stripping the hereditary peers of their seats, the opponents of the measures never claimed that the House of Lords was in any way representative of the population at large. The one major advantage it had over a wholly-appointed upper house is that it was at least random.
I think a random assemblage of the distant heirs of people who had done something for their states and country would be an infinitely more representative and functional pool of legislators than the twits already in the Senate, and the worse twits likely to succeed them.
Posted by: Dan at December 18, 2008 10:46 AM