Comment on Ed Morrissey: Hot Air » Axelrod: No evidence that Sestak is telling the truth

Hot Air » Axelrod: No evidence that Sestak is telling the truth

How could someone who;
1. had no combat experience,
2. was extraordinarily political with ideological fringe positions,
3. is haplessly naive and clueless about ruthless dishonest people,
rise in the Navy and get promoted to 3 stars? If Mike Mullen hadn't come along and fired the guy Sestak would have become CNO.

In 1986 Sestak worked for COMNAVSURFPAC at Coronado CA as his Chief of Staff. I was there for a few months working in the Intel shop so I must have met the guy. By all accounts he seems to have been an efficient hardworking competent officer. The worst I have heard about him on a nonpolicy level is that as a Congressman he has an extraordinarily high level of staff turnover because he expects everyone to work as hard as he does.

That inability to deal with mediocrity can resonate with his current problem. One weakness in liberalism is that it assumes hard work and good intentions from everyone. Problems are assumed to be because of a failure in communication, not from bad intentions. Unproductive people are marginalized within the inner circle, liberals can be tougher bosses than conservatives, but they fail to extend to society as a whole the freedom to make those judgments that they exercise themselves. They can choose who to hire and fire as individuals but you or a "faceless corporation" they do not trust with the same authority. Oddly enough in the military it is very hard to fire someone, officers can get a bad Fitness Report but to actually remove a lazy sailor as opposed to letting them coast a few years can be difficult. Sestak has little training in how to handle the incompetent, less in how to deal with the unmotivated or indifferent, and none in how to deal with the hostile and malicious. He operated a very efficient ship but he never actually engaged an enemy.

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Now we have a report that the job putatively offered to Sestak, on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, is one that as a sitting Member of Congress he was ineligible for.

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(fm the BC thread "Ye Olde Shell Game")

Cowboy,
SECNAV would be a much bigger deal if it was offered. Do you have a source to link?