Is the “Peter Principle” Alive and Well in Washington D.C.?

The “Peter Principle” was a phrase coined by Laurence J. Peter to explain that members of an organization, whether public or private, in which promotion is supposed to be based on achievement, success, and merit, will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. In other words, “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence”.

Do the terms, “I don't recall”, “I don''t remember”, and “I don't know”, sound familiar? Doesn't that send shivers down your spine when someone in authority makes comments like that? Especially people in government, who are supposed to be working for us, the taxpayers?

Look at what's happening in Wash. D.C. where heads of government agencies of departments (and especially at the top of the food chain, the executive branch) just can't recall who, what, when, or where about practically anything of importance. How, you might ask, were these people selected or elected, with such faulty memories, to their jobs or positions of power in the first place? Not only do they get a pass from the hierarchy and a pliant media, but in many cases, they get promoted (or relieved of duty with “pay” – ex: Lois Lerner at the I.R.S.) thereby validating the precepts of the “Peter Principle”.

The major culprit in these very convenient cases of “selective amnesia” or the “amnesia stonewall”, is none other than our “Liar in Chief”, Barack Hussein Obama. As the most powerful man in the most powerful country in the world (by reason of being the president), how come he only finds out about wrongdoing or policy failures by reading it in the newspapers or watching it on T.V. ( only if he watches Fox News)? His “zombie” supporters endlessly claim that he is the smartest man in the world, but he has difficulty of knowing anything that is going on around him. You'd think he was just some ordinary clerk in the White House, instead of being the President of the United States. For a man who is the epitome of the “tireless” political campaigner, who knows which way the political winds are blowing in order to gather political support for himself and his party, can you really believe he is in the dark on most anything that has gone wrong around him and his administration? How many times can the term “plausible deniability” be used to cover for this guy. Could it be that the the lights are on in the White House, but nobody is home? It sure looks that way.

Look at some of the testimony of some of the big honcho's in the Obama Administration, since he took office in 2009. When the scandal of “Fast and Furious” was exposed, then Attorney General Eric Holder said he knew nothing about the details of the sale of arms to the Mexican drug cartels, or the tapping of phones and e-mails of AP reporters and a Fox correspondent. “Who me”, I'm just the Attorney General and the top law enforcement person in the country, I don't know “nuttin” was what he was implying. Then there is the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who didn't know what happened before or after Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were murdered in Benghazi, and then claimed that it was a “disgusting” anti-Muslim video (which no one in Libya saw) that caused the debacle in Benghazi. Really?

And then there are the IRS officials who adamantly stated that they knew nothing about the auditing and harassment of conservative and religious groups who were critical of the Obama Administration. Testimony shows that the IRS was up to their eyeballs in carrying out the vendetta against these groups. These bureaucrats with the “selective memory problems”, not only weren't punished, but in some cases were even promoted to new jobs.

Yes, the “Peter Principle” is alive and well in Wash. D.C., and a complete house cleaning is in order come November 2016. Winning elections “at all costs” doesn't do our country any good, as the least competent seem to thrive in selling their “snake oil” to the voters, but once in office and power, they haven't a clue as how to implement policies that are good for the citizens of our country, and then very conveniently, can't recall or can't remember what went wrong or who was at fault. A good start would be not to elect Hillary Clinton president.

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann