Qualified applicants need not apply

September 16, 2005

We’re all sick to death of hearing about how tragically unqualified Mike Brown was when hired to lead FEMA. Yes, he was fired from the Arabian Horse job. We get it. But the reason it’s important to keep it in mind is that it fits into a pattern with this administration: when making hiring decisions, these guys just don’t care if you’re qualified.

Matthew Yglesias noted the other day that “this administration, run by a president who seems not particularly interested in policy, has never been big on the idea of qualifications.”

It’s an important point. From Michael Chertoff, to Alberto Gonzales, to Treasury Secretary John Snow, to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, to Condoleezza Rice, to HHS Secretary Mike Leavit, the president has surrounded himself with people who have no experience in the areas in which they’ve been placed. It is, Yglesias said, as if “Republicans are so convinced that government is inefficient and full of people who don’t know what they’re doing that it just doesn’t occur to them to do it any other way.”

Fortunately, it appears this trend is starting to catch up with them — and a growing body of lawmakers is sick of it.

Senators told the president’s pick to head U.S. immigration law enforcement that they are still weighing a plan to re-organize her agency, just two-and-a-half years after it was set up — and one of them said he doubted she was qualified for the job.

Julie Myers was nominated by President Bush to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE — the agency charged with hunting down money launderers, sanctions busters and human traffickers, and which is the sole enforcer of immigration laws inside the country. Thursday, she faced a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

“I’m really concerned about your management experience,” Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, told her, pointing out that ICE, with 20,000 employees, was the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government.

“I think that we ought to have a meeting with (Homeland Security Secretary) Mike Chertoff … to ask him… why he thinks you’re qualified for the job. Because based on your resume, I don’t think you are,” Voinovich concluded.

This is really the only way it’ll stop. The Bush gang will keep ignoring skills, experience, and qualifications as long as they think they can get away with it.

After all, Bush just tapped a political expert to be in charge of the reconstruction effort on the Gulf Coast. If he’ll do this, he’ll do anything.

The only skill that is needed in the Bush administration is LOYALTY.
Once you’ve got that down you will have no problems at all working there.
Just don’t expect to be able to respect yourself any more.

  • I would say that John Roberts falls into this category, as well. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems odd to name someone as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who has only TWO years experience as a judge. He’s a judicial neophyte.

  • EXERCISE

    Am I wrong to think that one of the big qualifications that Roberts has is that he seriously exercises, (or exercises seriously) each day? Bush has fired people because they are too fat and don’t exercise. OK, maybe the lack of exercise was just one of the reasons.

    I don’t have a clue who Julie Myers is but I am willing to bet that she isn’t overweight and that she exercises regularly.

    It seems that about the only overweight person around is Rove. I guess that talent is important for some administration jobs

  • “I think that we ought to have a meeting with (Homeland Security Secretary) Mike Chertoff … to ask him… why he thinks you’re qualified for the job. Because based on your resume, I don’t think you are,” Voinovich concluded.

    I once had a guy tell me the same such thing in a job interview. And he was absolutely right. I wasn’t qualified for the job. And I shouldn’t even have had the interview. But it kind of pissed me off, because he seemed to be slightly angry at me about it. As if it was my fault that he gave me an interview. But my resume wasn’t padded or anything. I think that someone involved just didn’t know how to read resumes, and assumed that I had several more years of experience than I really did. And to be honest, I’m glad I didn’t get the job, because it would have had too steep a learning curve, and that guy seemed like kind of a dick. I’m sure I could have done it…eventually; but I really hate dicks.

    But the difference is that I was applying for an accounting position at a small-sized business, and this lady’s going to be responsible for this nation’s immigration policy. It was embarrassing that I had that interview. It’s disgraceful that she had hers. I’m glad to see that someone’s finally speaking out about this kind of incompetence.

  • I should add that this is the exact reason why we need to hold Congress accountable for the nominees they approve. If their feet are held to the fire and they see the political aspects of their job performance, they’ll be more likely to question these people and make sure that loyalty isn’t a subsititute for competence.

  • “It seems that about the only overweight person around is Rove. I guess that talent is important for some administration jobs”

    I think you meant unbridled, soulless, criminal malevolence, not talent.

  • Here’s my theory: (a) most of Bush’s cronies aren’t qualified to do much of anything, and not being surrounded by friends and sycophants is a real bummer, and (b) a qualified employee/appointee might ACTUALLY DO their job (which could be a BIG problem) and is way too likely to point out the boss’s errors in judgment, contradictory statements, math mistakes or the elephant in the room – any of which might make it harder to give the rich another round of tax cuts and pound the rest of us into dust.

    I think there are probably only three things one would have to be able to do to get a job in this White House: read a talking points memo, avoid ever answering a direct question with a direct answer, and say, “Yessir, Mr. President.”

    Shannon

  • Okay, fine–lawmakers are finally “getting sick of it” when Bush appoints donors and donor’s buddies to jobs requiring technical expertise and basic competance beyond mere salemanship. The question we should be demanding answers for is WHY did it take them five freaking years to start asking these questions?

    In the past, Washington has been run by professional managers. True, they occasionally bumble into bureaucratic snafus and red tape. That’s why you have Republicans around–to keep the bureaucrats worried enough so that they’ll do their jobs efficiently. We were supposed to have Democrats around to make sure the Republicans don’t turn their anti-government, anti-expertise chatter into an excuse for both plunder and outright incompetence whenever they take over.

    I feels like since January 2001, we really haven’t had any Democrats around.

  • So y’all remember the Peter Principle:

    “The original principle states that in a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence”.

    That was Dr. Lawerence Peter’s founding principle for hierachies in general. Be they military, corporate, educational, govenmental, or whatever.

    If Carpetbagger is correct:

    “From Michael Chertoff, to Alberto Gonzales, to Treasury Secretary John Snow, to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, to Condoleezza Rice, to HHS Secretary Mike Leavit, the president has surrounded himself with people who have no experience in the areas in which they’ve been placed.”

    The US Executive branch is no longer functioning according to the laws of hierarchies in general.

    So what kind of a system is it mimicing?

    Surely not the mafia?

    Because surely, even crooks are smart enough to put hit men where hit men belong; A capo where a capodecina belongs; with a strong, visionary Capo di tutti capi at the top.

    Surely.

    So then what exactly is this Bush Administration?
    How does it hang together?
    How can it continue to adhere and push the envelope day by day by day (pun intended)?

    This is all beyond my complexity horizon.
    As far as I am concerned… entropy ought to tear this Administration apart limb by limb by limb…

    And yet…
    And yet…

    Still it moves and breathes and insists on its future.

    EXPLAIN PLEASE.

  • I wish it weren’t women we were picking on here. This is a classic Repug trap; be careful not to fall into it. They nominate political hacks who are women and/or minorities, so that we can’t help but “go easy” on them… we have to otherwise we’ll seem like racist misogynistic bullies. It’s classic Rove. Watch out.

    As for resembling the Mafia, yeah, they do, but they even more closely resemble Corporate America (is there a difference? discuss…). I like Steve Jobs’s take on the Peter Principle: “A” players hire “A” players. “B” players hire “C” players. And what we got here is “B” player president, if that. “Mayberry Macchiavelli’s” isn’t too far from the mark.

    I saw this in business over and over again. Cronyism. Nepotism. Sychophancy. Egomaniacal autocracy. Hiring for loyalty, and nothing else. Remember, this is our first– and hopefully our last– MBA president. He wants his orders followed and his ass kissed, NOW, or you’re FIRED, you hear me?

    If you ever– EVER– hear anyone complaining that government should be run “like a business”, please slap that fuckchop upside the head. The ways of business are useful for business, and utterly wrong for government.

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