The best and the brightest should be individuals and not cabals

In the not too distant past there was a dilemma at a 23,000 acre quail plantation in the Southeast USA. Many whitetail deer educated people said we had too many deer and needed to kill about a thousand does to get things back in balance. Yet there were paying customers (to the tune of about one-half million dollars a year) who paid much and traveled far, and reported they were not seeing much of any deer compared to the past, and subsequently quit paying and traveling to this plantation. The owners did listen, and convened a conference of whitetail deer educated experts to advise on what to do. Here was where many learned the politics of whitetail deer biology. Depending on one’s connections and expected outcomes, there were cabals of PhD’s on this subject at Clemson, Auburn, and the University of Georgia. The latter was chosen, and we got some good advice, and how things sorted out in the end is unknown for this post. These eco type things take time.

This story of cabals, connections, and expected outcomes applies to those staff members hired to work at all levels of government and even media, since even pundits often have hired staffs. So when you read about a new law or program, or a pundit’s article, it probably is done by a staff member or members as the main effort. And the federal government types, executive, legislative, and judiciary, seem to have a preference for Ivy League School cabals. Whether this is good or bad is in the eye of the beholder, but the present system smells of poor government and leadership, where experience should count more than it does these days. The preference for intelligence and education seems to trump experience these days. One can note that political party tactics and strategies include dominating even the questions that can be asked. This is another symptom of the light-weights from certain cabals being in control.

Exacerbating all this is the mean spirited atmosphere and politics of personal destruction in Washington, D.C. that drives so many of our best and brightest from even applying. One present joke line about “can we get the adults back in charge” is a symptom of what has been happening for more than a decade.

To get the best and brightest political leaders, and hired staffs, depends mostly on voters. To expect the present volunteer candidates from both national parties to undermine their status quo and many decades of comfort factors is unreasonable. More reasonable is to vote in Americans to make things happen in 2008, 2010, and 2012, and subsequent elections. Like the whitetail deer story, these things take time to have an effect.