Sarah Heath Palin and 'The Peter Principle'.

[trof]

No, noooo, kiddies.
Get your minds back up out of the gutter.
:evilgrin:

Many of you are too young to remember "The Peter Principle".
In the late 60s it was a very popular book (and surprisingly spot on theory/observation)
about how work actually gets done in the typical American (world?) corporation.

From Wiki:
The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." While formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter, the principle has real validity.

It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

Ladies and Gents, I give you the Poster Child of The Peter Principle:

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I think Palin, like Bush before her, is another DISPROOF of the Peter Principle.

Here is an excerpt from an old DU journal piece of mine that explains my view:

According to the Peter Principle as expounded by Laurence Peter, people rise in bureaucracies (public or private) until they hit their level of incompetence, at which point they cease to rise, so over time the higher rungs tend to become filled with incompetent people.

In the Bush administration, however, people tend to overshoot their levels of competence by several orders of magnitude. Take Shrub himself, for example. If he had ceased his upward trajectory when he hit his level of incompetence, he'd still be a drunken cheerleader at Yale. However, the rules are different for members of the privileged classes, just as they were in the British military of 3 centuries ago, where the higher ranks were filled with the moronic, inbred younger sons of the aristocracy.

I think Palin exceeded her level of competence when she got elected to the Wasilla City Council or whatever it was. She has continued to rise because of boobs--her own and the ones who support her. She is now so far above her level of competence that she is going to break things in her fall.

[trof]

2. I can't argue with that.

Because it's true.
The Peter Principle thing just hit me and I thought it kinda applied.

[H2O Man]

4. Perhaps Senator McCain's choice

was based on another variation of the principle.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Maybe the Peter Principle by Proxy:

After you've hit your level of incompetence, you fail to recognize when you've elevated others far beyond theirs. Maybe a corollary like that could be induced to save the Peter Principle.

I think, though, that the Palin thing, as well as Bush's elevation by the Supreme Court, has less to do with considerations of competence than with sneer malicious intent.

[H2O Man]

6. I suspect that

Senator McCain found Ms. Palin attractive -- his statement that she was his "soul mate" seemed a bit over the edge. And I think that he believed that others would find her equally attractive .... well, not equally, in the sense of a soul mate .... but that his peter's principle attraction to Palin got in the way of rational thought.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Oh, drat! I missed that in your first comment.

:dunce: Duh.

[samsingh]

3. this lady give me the creeps

[Curtland1015]

8. That's a real nice picture of Sarah with Rick Davis!

That man is so photogenic!

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Ya know, that fish doesn't look quite natural. Too stiff, like

it's been dead a while or something.

[Bensthename]

10. Ouch, but so true..