CAREERISM FOR DUMMIES

The 9/11 Commission report didn't mention our greatest failing and the principal reason our government agencies failed us. That reason is something called "careerism."

Careerism is defined as existing within your profession inside an organization for the sole purpose of advancement. Nothing else matters except rising to the top by whatever means necessary. The result can be as bad as 9/11 or as benign as the rudeness and indifference at the Post Office or the DMV. All the Muslim countries are said to be in the state of paralysis and decay because of the no holds barred careerism that includes murder, murder for hire, cheating on a daily basis, lying, coverups, having people arrested, and collecting bribes for every performance of tasks requested by citizens that may or may not be given which saturates every business, profession, and government agency. We on the other hand are pure, promote by talent, and consequently have the best people at the top.

Oh?

It's not my purpose here to point out the number of crooked doctors, accountants, lawyers, businesses and so on that we have all around us; fire inspectors and cops who take bribes; reporters who lie in print, but failing to mention them before moving on would be less than honest.

The difference between climbing the corporate ladder and careerism in government can be a difference without a distinction unless you examine the two institutions. Climbing the "ladder" inside business is a misnomer since really good people will leap over others as a matter of routine. Commission or other merit pay helps establish standards of excellence within a business. Within the corporate world a company that continues to promote on the basis of brown nosing, the right friendships, bribery or other criteria beside ability, will eventually collapse or be forced to change as a result of outside competition. New management will come in and clean house. At least that is how it is supposed to work and in most cases does work.

Government has no such disciplines, no competition. Performance doesn't matter and is impossible to measure against a standard. There is no mechanism available to government that will eventually weed out the mediocre who are where they are as a result of "office politics," back stabbing, nepotism, promotion via connections, promotions due to bribery or other methods. The most used criteria for promotion is time on the job. People work to gain "clout", transfers to the "right" promotion track, and do whatever else it takes to get good fitness reports from superiors. Time is spent away from work to focus on this all consuming drive. Labor unions shield incompetents, advancement "tests" can be rigged or not given, a dedicated careerist with skills like the spy Robert Hanssen can rig an entire section of government or obtain data to blackmail superiors safe in the conceit that nobody will hold them accountable. There are no checks within the system. Racial and sexual quotas assure advancement of a certain percentage of unqualified people who will never be held to performance standards. A new president cannot touch the unionized and entrenched bureaucracy. This means the "new management" that can rescue a failing business cannot rescue a failing government. The results of careerism is a system in which nobody does anything other than that which will result in advancement or shield them from any and all accountability for failure: the CYA factor.

In our country we assume murder, false accusations of crime, or a libelous and slanderous media attack resulting in public scrutiny, cannot happen. Yet those are the tried and true methods of the careerist. The only way a government can be "restructured" is national collapse due to war or revolution. We are now face to face with careerism within our State Departments and intelligence services that could very well result in a barbarian culture destroying the greatest "civilization" on the planet. We have all had the experiences of talking with stunningly stupid government employees. In fact, we have so many of these experiences that we have come to expect government employees to be lazy, stupid, and rude. It goes with the territory. The term "government employee" is a standard label affixed to a person we regard as incompetent. It is also a derogatory racial term, a code word for Blacks and Hispanics.

So we have promotion by leaks of secret information to media that will result in the leaker being awarded favorable media treatment in the future; leaks to Congressional staffers who will "go to work" on the Congressman or Senator who can "help" a career. Damaging info can be passed on to another agency in exchange for (fill in the blank). And there is the tried and true tipoff to the IRS or other regulatory body. Keeping your nose clean and actually rewarding ability in this atmosphere is next to impossible. In fact working your ass off and accomplishing something is the road to nowhere; jobs in the field for CIA and FBI, jobs in dirty foreign countries in Africa where nobody will ever know what you accomplish, assignments to complex jobs (examining the Enron books) where others will grab the headlines for your work and success.

The result of careerism in government is now on display. 3,000 dead in New York and the intel failures in Iraq are just a few of its manifestations. You fix it.