"We Should Have Paid Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain...."

A few days ago, I smacked Karl Rove around pretty good.

And I stand by what I said.

But I realize that while Rove is largely responsible for the strategy that got George Bush elected and re-elected to the White House, he shouldn’t, in all fairness, get the credit for Bush getting there.

That, my friends, was inevitable.

And the man who explained why George W. Bush’s presidency was inevitable did so in a fun to read book.

In 1968.

First, a little of that “rest of the story” stuff that Paul Harvey does so well….

…a Canadian author, educator, psychologist, and management theorist in US.

1919 - Born 16th of September in Vancouver, British Columbia.

1941 - Began his career as a teacher.

1963 - Received the degree of Doctor of Education from Washington State University.

1964 - moved to California, where he became an Associate Professor of Education, Director of the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching and Coordinator of Programs for Emotionally Disturbed Children at the
University of Southern California.

1990 - died 12th of January.

An accomplished, if primarily academic, life,

Quite a gap there, though, between 1964 and 1990.

Actually, not so much.

For it was that little piece of work he did in 1968 that not only foresaw the ascension of George W. to the presidency with a certainty that would have humbled Nostradamus, but is also applicable to thousands, if not millions, of situations in our past, present and, sad to say, future.

For this quiet Canadian educator was Dr. Laurence J. Peter.

And here’s the factoid that goes in the gap.

1968 - Published the The Peter Principle, in which he states: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".

Simply put…in the hierarchal structure, the guy who runs errands most efficiently gets promoted to being the guy who does the best job of running the mail room for which he gets promoted to working in sales where he gets promoted to running the sales department where he gets promoted to running the whole division.

At which he stinks.

Because, in the end, his skills peaked somewhere between errands and the mailroom.

Errands to mailroom to sales to manager to executive.

Frat boy to baseball owner to oil executive to governor to president.

Bada bing.

I still think Karl Rove is a waste of space on the political planet.

But, it’s not really fair to blame him for the last eight years.

We’ve known it was coming since 1968.