Unprincipled Principles

I have something to say about Wolfowitz' nomination to head the World Bank: I'm for it.

I bet I have the same reason that some European heads of state or government do: I'm eager to see him fuck up in an environment where others can slap him down and Dubya can't protect him.

If the job were solely diplomatic, he might carry it off. It isn't. It requires business acumen this man probably does not possess, and it requires a skill in herding cats that he absolutely does not possess.

In my museum manager days, my colleagues and I would sometimes wonder if we had "Peter principled." Dr. Laurence J. Peter (living at the time) would probably have cringed at being reduced to a verb, but it got to the point. It's hard to imagine Bush's mal-administration not following the Peter Principle, since its leader is the best example of the idea who ever lived. Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank can be forestalled and evaded in ways that Wolfowitz, eminence grise of Bush foreign policy, cannot. Better yet, he can become a Dilbertian pointy-haired boss, and suffer a fate worse than death for someone of his self-importance: global ridicule. Let it happen, says I. I can hardly wait.