"The smartest and most able among us..."

I heard a brilliant commentary on NPR from Ted Koppel about the Bush administration letting go the US Attorneys. It so eerily reminds me of the work situation I just got out of. The incompetent people at the top HAVE TO maintain loyalty to each other, and to the status quo, in order to keep their jobs. People like me are squeezed out in favor of less qualified people who are more likely to support them.

He starts out: "Watch out for governments that put a greater emphasis on political loyalty than they do on competence and creativity."

Imperial Life in The Emerald City, a book about the "bloated American bureaucracy" in Baghdad's green zone, talks about the "young inexperienced people given extraordinary responsibilities for only one apparent reason" their active roles in the Bush for President campaign.

Ted Koppel says: "That they were unqualified and incompetent seemed to disturb no one at the White House."

Uh-oh! This isn't some online personals company like my former job, this is our country! It's normal, he says, to give preference to one's party but when lives are at stake, we should all be worried. He draws comparison to the subject of The Lives of Others, a German film about the Secret Police listening in on people's conversations.

"Where partisanship becomes dangerous," he says, "is when it is valued over ability. When failure to follow the party line results in the rejection and dismissal of the smartest and most able among us, when key jobs are filled by people whose only qualification is political loyalty."

Replace "political" with "corporate" and you've probably described most of the corporations out there. It's fabulous, his inflection is genius and so funny. Have a listen.