Sunday, May 22, 2016
Parkinson and Parliament
Stressed out from storms and lack of sleep. Convective and probably defective thought:
Parkinson says: In normal organizations the CEO keeps two or three assistants who compete to take his job when he retires. This competition provides both training and selection.
The parliamentary system resonates with this natural arrangement. The prime minister rises through the ranks in Parliament, reaching an office like Whip. In that position he gets consulted and effectively mentored by the current PM. (If the current PM is of the other party, the mentoring is negative, but it's still learning by watching.)
Result: You can switch to the other brand and get a pretested leadership team, ready to run.
The 1776 system never worked right. The single VP wasn't meant to be the assistant and successor; he was only meant to be an emergency substitute. It's no wonder we've had atrocious governance with two or three exceptions.
Our arrangement means that switching to the other brand always brings a wasted (and sometimes dangerous) period of OJT for the president, thus pretty much negating the benefits of switching. The outsider can't get anything done unless he relies on the permanent bureaucracy. They always blackmail and sabotage all efforts toward real change. If the new brand had his own Top Thousand Bureaucrats ready to plug-n-play, the permanent insiders wouldn't be permanent any more.
We really need to delete 1776 and return to Parliament.
¶ 10:26 AM 
