Appearance is Everything, Reality Nothing

[survivor999]

By Ian Welsh

In a notebook many years ago I wrote the following:

Getting a job is 90% appearance, 10% ability.
Doing a job is 90% ability, 10% appearance.
Keeping a job is 75% appearance, 25% ability.
Therefore appearance is more important than ability."

I didn't add "getting promoted", but if I had it would have been about 80% appearance, and 20% ability.

I'm reminded of this in thinking about the Bush administration and Republicans in general. The truth is simple - Republicans preside over worse economies and worse budgets and this has been true for a long time. Yet, in the last few years Republicans managed to take over the Presidency, both chambers of Congress, and damn near the courts.

Getting a job is 90% appearance. Republicans promised, in effect, free money. They outspent liberals and reduced taxes. What's not to like? They went to war and didn't ask for any sacrifices from ordinary citizesn. What's not to like?

So what went wrong? That part about keeping a job being 25% ability. Let's face it, if George Bush and co. hadn't been completely and utterly incompetent and corrupt beyond what anyone could have predicted (leading to my rule 1 of the Bush administration "it's always worse than you think") then Republicans would be cruising to victory in 2006. Not much competence was required - just enough to win a war with a nation whose army had imploded under a decade of sanctions. Just enough to not spend too much more money than was coming in. Just enough to rescue someone, anyone, from New Orleans and to rebuild something, anything, in New Orleans.

More: http://agonist.org/ian_welsh/20061016/appearance_is_everything_reality_nothing

[bryant69]

1. It just looks that way

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[survivor999]

2. Thanks for link!

:)

[Richard Steele]

3. That really describes B*shCabal™ well...

We had a balanced budget, a rising surplus,
the goodwill of most of the world...it really
only takes a MINIMUM amount of competence to
handle a situation like that; just the tiny
amount of sense to NOT SCREW UP.

The current misAdministration clearly LACKS
even that most basic, minimal degree of competence.
Never before have so few screwed up so much for so many.

They have all been so busy being greedy, they failed
to ever appoint the small number of COMPETENT crooks
necessary to maintain the illusion that things were
working normally.

It's been commented upon by knowledgable insiders
that this is the first White House wher all aspects
of policy are being controlled by the POLITICAL staff.
Those are the "get the job/90% APPEARANCE" folks running
the entire show...and the show simply doesn't RUN that way.