The Peter Principle

In 1969, Laurence J. Peter published a seminal, best-selling book entitled The Peter Principle which explained the phenomenon often seen in business and professions, [and, in Ratcatcher’s opinion, especially in academia] in which people are promoted to their level of incompetence.

In 2020, a former Vice President and United States Senator was elected to the presidency of the United States. In so doing, he epitomized the Peter Principle. A man who had been a mediocre Senator and an inept Vice President was suddenly handed “the Football” and given the power to launch a world war to say nothing of devastating the lives and fortunes of Americans far and wide.

The Peter Principle can be seen at work in the Biden Administration as well. Rather than list the incompetence demonstrated by numerous members of the senior staff, a small selection will serve to illustrate the point.

At the head of the list is, of course, Vice President Harris. She has embarrassed herself and the nation repeatedly since being selected as Biden’s running mate. Her inability to string together meaningful sentences, punctuated by her cackling laughter has provided the material for numerous comedians and commentators. She has raised the eyebrows of foreign dignitaries by her malaprops.

Running a close second for incompetence, clearly a man over his head and promoted far above his abilities, is Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security. Under his watch the Southern Border has been rendered non-existent. Illegals have been invited to invade the homeland; Mexican cartels have been allowed to traffic in human smuggling, rape and virtual slavery; and China has been allowed to import, through Mexico, deadly drugs killing Americans in horrific numbers. All the while, Mr. Mayorkas has had the temerity to look members of Congress directly in the face, and swear under oath that the border is secure. He is not just incompetent. He is guilty of perjury and ought to be prosecuted.

The candidate for Class Clown in the Biden Administration is none other than Secretary Pete Buttigieg, ostensibly in charge of all forms of transportation in America. Tucker Carlson has offered a bet to any taker that Secretary Buttigieg would not even know how to change a tire on a car let alone deal with the transportation issues confronting the country. Mr. Buttigieg is most interested in locating and identifying racist roads and bridges while bemoaning the fact that the nation has too many white construction workers! His incompetence is plain to see. His late and incomprehensible responses to problems with shipping, railroads, airlines, and, most lately, the train derailment and subsequent catastrophic fire in Palestine, Ohio, taken together with his dismal record as Mayor of Columbus, Ohio, [“Pothole Pete”] clearly show a man who has been promoted over and over again well above his level of competence.

The team of Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley have distinguished themselves with repeated failures of leadership, abandoning Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, demanding that members of the Armed Services observe the “woke culture” with appropriate pronouns, expelling members from the military who declined to accept the various Covid-19 vaccines on religious grounds, and, most lately, failing to take action promptly to protect the homeland from overflight by Chinese spy balloons, while recommending that they be downed over what where, of course, the electronics would be ruined, depriving the country of valuable information concerning the intentions of the Chinese.

And finally, Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. Secretary Granholm, when asked about her plan was to ease gasoline prices nationwide, laughed out loud, “That is hilarious, Would that I had the magic wand on this.” Well, we might reasonably ask, if not you, who. Granholm is, after all, in charge of national energy policy.

Her fallback to the question was to blame Middle Eastern oil providers, repeating a Biden administration claim that oil prices are largely out of the federal government’s control. By the way, in case you have not noticed, blaming someone else is a hallmark of the Biden Administration. Nothing is Mr. Biden’s fault; it is always someone else who is to blame – generally President Trump or President Putin. Notably absent from the list of people responsible for Biden’s screwups is Xi Jing Peng, President of China. Think about that.

Perhaps never in history has the Peter Principle been so thoroughly proven and demonstrated with actual examples as in the Biden Administration. 2024 cannot come too soon.

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