The Peter Pandemic Takes Its Toll: HR McMaster is Passed Over

2007-07-24T15:14:00-06:00

George W. Bush may be the purest example of “the Peter Principle” in all of human history. Call him “The Peter Principal.” Rarely before has someone risen, with such spectacularly dreadful consequences, to his own “level of incompetence.”

Others in his Administration have vied with the President for the title of Peter Principal: the hapless Alberto Gonzalez, an Attorney General so bad he makes one pine for Ed Meese; the feckless Michael Brown, who was promoted to lead FEMA after being fired as the head of the Arabian Horse Association; the moronic Doug Feith, one of the intellectual forces behind the Bush Iraq strategy and of whom Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff once said: “seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.” The list is endless.

But the fact that a bunch of incompetent imbeciles are running our country is old news. Now we find that the Bush Administration has brought us the corollary to the Peter Principle: genuinely gifted and brilliant public servants who are kept far below the level to which they should ascend.

There are, no doubt, scores of such talents in the federal bureaucracy, held down from their rightful rise by political calculation, petulance or oversight. But one recent and egregious example is the Pentagon’s failure to promote (for a second time) Army Colonel HR McMaster.

Now you may be thinking, wasn’t it H.R. McMaster that led the pacification of Tal Afar, an operation so successful that Bush devoted an entire speech to it just last year? Didn’t I read about McMaster’s brilliant strategy in a long New Yorker piece about him? Wasn’t it McMaster who won a Silver Star in the Gulf War, leading troops so bravely and well that Tom Clancy wrote it up? And surely it was McMaster who’s PhD dissertation became a hugely influential book, Dereliction of Duty, that the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs made required reading for senior military types?

Well brace yourself – the answer to all of your questions is yes. McMaster is a brilliant tactician, a decorated hero, a soldier’s soldier, and a master of the very kind of war we’re fighting in Iraq – the counterinsurgency. In fact, he’s back in Iraq now, helping soon-to-be-fall-guy David Petraeus try to fend off further disaster. But somehow McMaster’s “superiors” – the suits at the Pentagon who helped bring us the Fiasco that McMaster is attempting to clean up – have decided that he isn’t flag officer material.

In the pantheon of Bush Administration outrages, this is, alas, only a small one. But that’s setting the bar rather high. The fact is, McMaster is far better suited for command than many of the yes-men who had stars pinned on by Don Rumsfeld.

The Dereliction of Duty described by McMaster took place in the Vietnam era, but the sad coda is being written today. What a shame that a man with all the right qualities – brilliance, courage, competence and dignity – has been judged wanting by individuals possessing none of them.

Third Way Dispatch: The Peter Pandemic Takes Its Toll: HR McMaster is Passed Over

The Peter Pandemic Takes Its Toll: HR McMaster is Passed Over