One of the hallmarks of the left is a complete lack of personal responsibility. An outcome of this feature is the quick revival of the biggest failures into new careers.
One thing that always puzzled me about professional coaches was how quickly they moved from one failure to the next. A lousy NFL coach who has three losing seasons is fired by one team only to be picked up by another. He does even worse in his new home, gets fired mid-season, lays low as he collects his guaranteed salary and voila, he now has his third coaching gig in a decade. The results at his final stop are no better.
The argument in pro sports is that there is a very small pool of people who have the tools to be a coach. The endless grind, the stress, the need to manage dozens of other coaches and players, the relationship with management, etc—there are simply not many people who know how to juggle so many dishes and not have them come crashing down onto the floor. That a coach was awful in one job is all but ignored as he is introduced into his new role. Two years later, he is fired in disgrace for producing only failure.
The same kind of phenomenon is common in many areas of our Western societies. Can you name anyone who was fired for all of the failures required to let 9/11 happen? Head of the CIA who was supposed to keep an eye on our foreign threats? Nope. Head of the FBI that actually knew of some of the terrorists in the country but never followed up? No. Head of immigration who should have tracked the hijackers, many of whom had overstayed their visa. Also there, no one was fired. The same is true for all of Western failures. Nobody lost his or her job for the botched Afghanistan skedaddle. Billions of dollars of working military equipment was left behind. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in Kabul. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the US were left to fend off the reinvigorated Taliban. Nobody was fired. Nobody was lowered in rank. Nobody was punished.
This state of affairs was not always the case. Several of Margaret Thatcher’s ministers resigned over the taking of the Falkland Islands. They concluded that they had failed in their jobs and tendered their resignations. In much earlier days, admirals whose actions caused failure for the British fleet were hanged. Even Richard Nixon, after having left Washington in disgrace, had the good taste to lay low for years before he agreed to give his first interview. Rank, wealth or position came with responsibility. If you screwed up, you could expect to be fired, investigated, jailed, or shot. Today, our leaders know that there is no price to be paid for failing spectacularly. So there is no driver to make them do the right thing. Even the wrong thing will not cost them their job.
In this vein, it was no surprise that Liz Magill, former president of the University of Pennsylvania, has been given a visiting fellowship at Harvard Law School. The woman who disgraced herself and her school in allowing antisemitism to metastasize on her campus is in short order given a new position not only at Harvard but also at the London School of Economics (Mick Jagger’s alma mater). Her performance in front of the Congress where she could not bring herself to defend the rights of Jewish students and faculty to be protected from antisemtic attacks was as awful as that of her fellow Harvard failure, Claudine Gay. Professor Gay lost her position but not her president’s salary or her faculty position at my old school. Instead of being fired or having the personal dignity to resign and move to the Outer Hebrides, she is collecting nearly $1 million a year while keeping a low profile. Harvard should have treated Dr. Magill as radioactive and kept her as far away from campus as possible. But instead, the old network of connections at the Law School, where she had taught previously, brought her right back in. Maybe she can give a course on how to lie with your mouth closed.
Personal responsibility is the hallmark of good character and earned authority. Dwight Eisenhower had his “this failure is on me” speech in his pocket as hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors made their way to Normandy. We live in an age of zero responsibility—look at Covid and how many people in positions of power wrought so much destruction but neither quit in disgrace nor were fired for their incompetence. Dr. Fauci could say that there was no basis for the six foot rule—after he retired—and not expect any blowback for his actions that cost people and businesses dearly during the pandemic. It used to be that a lack of performance meant being fired. General Curtis LeMay took over the bombing raids over Japan when his predecessor failed to use the new B-29’s to slow down Japanese warmaking. General LeMay wasted no time in changing tactics and producing results.
It is appropriate that Harvard University, which failed to fire or punish its president, bring another retread under its wings. Claudine Gay tolerated antisemitic bigotry and calls for violence against Jewish and Israeli members of the Harvard community and could not explain why that was such a problem. For the intersectional crowd, oppressed browns wishing evil on oppressing whites makes perfect sense. She also has been credibly called a plagiarist, which in my day at Harvard would have meant a one-way ticket out of Boston. But she remains, and now ex-president Magill can join her at a local cafe to talk about the responsibility-free life of a leftist professor. Being incompetent has never been so rewarding.
Because Donald Trump comes from a business background, he understands the central role of personal responsibility. If you don’t perform to his expectations, you will find your desk in the parking lot. One may say that such an approach creates great stress and worry; but, it also produces the best results because those in charge realize that they need to produce in order to succeed. Magill and Gay disgraced formerly great educational institutions. It is only appropriate that they should be reunited to teach new generations of Harvard students that there is no price for personal incompetence.
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