Paper Tiger: The man who never was.

Newsweek

...According to Sen. David Vitter, a Republican ally of Bush's, the meeting came to a head when Mayor Nagin blew up during a fraught discussion of "who's in charge?" Nagin slammed his hand down on the table and told Bush, "We just need to cut through this and do what it takes to have a more-controlled command structure. If that means federalizing it, let's do it."

A debate over "federalizing" the National Guard had been rattling in Washington for the previous three days. Normally, the Guard is under the control of the state governor, but the Feds can take over—if the governor asks them to. Nagin suggested that Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the Pentagon's on-scene commander, be put in charge. According to Senator Vitter, Bush turned to Governor Blanco and said, "Well, what do you think of that, Governor?" Blanco told Bush, "I'd rather talk to you about that privately." To which Nagin responded, "Well, why don't you do that now?"...

Well, I "knew" this was going on behind the scenes (you haven't been reading the Grover's Bathtub series?), but not the exact depth of fecklessness from the Cowboy-in-Chief.

When it's just you in the chair--no fluffers, no handlers or script coaches--that's the measure. Pass-fail. No curve. No lifeline.

George, somehow, somewhere along the way never got the tools. Maybe he also never got "the talk." George Senior never sat the boy down and told him what's wrong with business, as well as what's right--what you need to guard against if you're going to sing the virtues of commerce. Ditto for people. Now, Dubya, had he been subject to the free-market of merit without the benefit of the golden trampoline that is his last name; well, he would have learned some of this. And no doubt, not found himself in the places he has, in positions to exercise his ill-formed capacities to their tragic fullest.

Yes, he's the CEO president. In the most embarrassing and dark iteration of the term imaginable to other Executive Officers.

Absent Daddy sitting the boy down, and by way of remediation, perhaps, George should look for understanding (yes, a hoot, I know. ) Not the answers, mind you. Those you come to you on your own when you have looked, and truly found your core. And George, cores are dark. Have to be. But if one is going to do a thing, lead, say, one must wonder about the light and dark side of it.

Rule #1: No one, no thing--least of all one's self--is perfect, or, infallible. And that's okay.
Rule #2: Find someone to repeat Rule #1 in your ear, once a day.

George, read this, Tigers and psychopaths and companies, oh my, and substitute government or organization where you see the word "Corporation." A snippet...

The frequency, reach, and signal-to-noise of corporations trumpeting their virtue while failing at the internal act is now deafening. It puts their modus operandi at odds with those it needs, and from whom it needs favor. But they and their official mistakes and oversights, excused by systemic, inert officialdom and firewalls of deniability feel like a hailstorm. The insults to psyche and the resulting overload stands to soon tilt things on their axis. It must. Turbocharged entropy will do that to systems. They get manic. They generate shrapnel. [link]

[In looking for the URL to the above, a google of fouro and entropy turned up the below comment, made over at Business Evolutionist in February. The parallels to today are freaky...

...Institutions are experiencing sustained scour the way bridge pilings do, and like no other time in business it seems. In many ways the lateral counterweight of popular support for companies and traditional "pillars of society" has been inundated by the shabbiness of their own actions and character failures. The violent dissonance between PR claims to virtue and internal acts to the contrary is having a horrendous effect inside even the "better" outfits, and new media like blogs are only laying bare the level of rot even more. The next serious dip in national economic fortunes (or perhaps storm is a better analogy), and over many go. It'll be messy but, supposedly, the death throes of dinosaurs usually were. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but things should redirect a bit from there.