While I am all for the "vetting" process to root out potential incompetence in people seeking high office, the ultra-high standards that we have imposed upon high public officials have gone to the point where they are actually backfiring.
The Obama administration is having difficulty filling key roles in the Treasury Department in the midst of a major economic maelstrom. There are many people who would be very qualified to help the president and the country fix this mess, but we are unable to access their abilities, experience, leadership, and expertise, because many of the best people for the job have not been Boy Scouts their entire lives, and they don’t want to put their peccadillos out on public view.
There is an old saying, "send a thief to catch a thief." If we are to have someone in power to fix this banking mess, were going to need someone who has some experience in that world… and it’s going to be very hard to find someone with the necessary skill set who isn’t in some way connected to the people we’re all so mad at.
We are actually limiting ourselves as a nation by creating ridiculously high standards for personal behavior of public officials. It’s hard to find anybody with any real life leadership experience who has never bounced a check, never made a mistake on their tax forms, never had a problematic relationship, and/or never got drunk and did something foolish in their college days.
High standards always sound good on paper, but in practice they often backfire. By eliminating from consideration the most unusual, provocative, experienced, original, and freethinking people, our ultra-high arbitrary standards and the press's hair trigger moral indignation results in either empty chairs or extremely well-polished mediocrity.
(c) Justin Locke
