Fading Away (Not) Gracefully

1 May 2011

Some people can’t seem to grow old with dignity. Back in the old days when I was still working for the federal government one of the presidents I worked under was Jimmy Carter. As president he made some notably bad decisions that even today have an impact on the country.

As a manager he was, from the perspective of an employee, a disaster. He couldn’t get past the mind set of a peanut farmer and had no skill when it came to running a large enterprise. Faced with an economic downturn one of his solutions was to turn off the hot water in all government facilities and limit the heating and cooling systems. Depending on the season the employees were either wearing coats in the office or sweating heavily.

It was good theater and certainly made for positive newspaper articles except his order also stated that political appointees were not to be impacted by this “cost saving program”. The amount of money expended in providing separate utilities for political appointees far exceeded the “savings” gained by making the working troops uncomfortable.

About two years ago the government of North Korea told all the foreign assistance workers who were trying to help the country recover from decades of bad crops and subsequent starvation that their help was no longer needed. The U.S. pulled its aid workers out, as demanded, and left some 20,000 metric tons of food behind. Since then the North Korean government has overseen more food production failure and wide spread starvation of its people.

Now comes Mr. Carter, fresh from a recent visit to the People’s Republic with a press conference where he accused the United States of committing human rights abuses by withholding food aid from North Korea. I was pleased to see that the State Department didn’t waste any time refuting Mr. Carter and letting the world know the true series of events that have resulted in North Korea deliberately creating a disaster for their own people. I think it’s about time we encouraged him to return to his peanut farm and stop trying to play with the big boys.