Second thought: USSS totally exemplifies Conquest's Third Law: "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies", and Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: "In any bureaucratic organization, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always gain control of the organization and write the rules under which it functions. This means that those who prioritize the organization’s goals and objectives are gradually marginalized, and those who focus on maintaining and expanding the bureaucracy’s own interests and power take control."
So, the USSS has been take over by a cabal of career bureaucrats who are the enemy of the USSS.
If the USSS was controlled by a cabal intent on letting this happen, they would have hitched their bets on a more competent shooter, so I find that explanation unlikely.
“The most explosive possibility is that the Secret Service did a bad job of protecting Trump because they, or at least some key people, didn’t much want him protected…” I think this is the most likely explanation along with a huge dollop of typical government incompetence.
"...— more plausible than an actual plot to kill him, ..." Maybe, though we do know some of our ABC agencies excel at wet work.
Whatever and lots of how ever was it possible. Hopefully President Trump now his his own security and is not completely dependent on the SS for protection.
When you fire the people responsible for mistakes, they never have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. Of course, assuming they'll learn from their mistakes has the implicit assumption that they *want* to do a good job in the first place.
It's dificult to see any competence at anything from Cheadle. OTOH, she evidently got the job by being DOCTOR Jill's favorite SS agent when she was Second Lady. Maybe she's competent at sucking up.
Excellent! I hadn't thought of so many reasons or motives.
But my first and continued reaction to a mess-up of this magnitude with such opaque casual chains is that the agency itself must be disbanded and started anew. A resignation or two is insufficient. For want of a better word, the "culture" of the existing place is such that improvement is impossible.
IIUC, such a cure was implemented some years ago in a DC hospital that had become a death trap. After many attempted fixes, it was closed.
Yes. That has the same problem as putting an outsider in charge — you are losing the accumulated experience/expertise of the organization. But at some point that may have net negative value.
To put a humorous twist on the problem, one could have the situation that half the employees are competent and diligent and half the employees are not. We just don't know which half is which!
A series of science fiction novels I'm fond of, the April novels by Mackey Chandler, set in the 2080s, has as part of the background that the Secret Service lost the job of guarding the president (and perhaps was disbanded) after a spectacular failure to do so. That seems like a more plausible extrapolation/speculation than it did a year ago.
Surely the point of letting the director go is not that their successor will automatically be someone with different skills and priorities as such. Rather, it's that they come into office knowing that their predecessor let a problem arise, and was fired; and thus they have a strong motivation to deal with the problem, so that they don't get fired in turn. In effect, it's defining the problem that they're being given the job to fix. If incentives make a difference to performance this might be expected to have some effect.
The great David Frye, a hugely popular entertainer in the late 1960s and early 1970s for his Nixon impersonations, had a line on his comedy album, Richard Nixon: A Fantasy, in which Nixon said he was responsible, but not to blame, for the Watergate break in. "Let me explain the difference," he said. "People who are to blame lose their jobs, people who are responsible do not." A classic album and it can be found on Youtube.
I may be missing the import of this essay -- so attempted another version, substituting organization and individual names. It is still not clear.
Boeing badly messed up in the job of building safe aircrafts, judged not only by the 171 grounded Max 9 aircraft, with doors blowing away mid flight, but by how it happened, pretty clearly due not to insurmountable technical difficulties making secure doors, but incompetence by the company; details available from your favorite news source. CEO Calhoun who had himself been appointed in 2020, after the previous CEO Muilenburg had been fired after two crashes involving 348 deaths and the grounding of 387 aircraft, offered only partial and unconvincing explanations, and will eventually only resign at the end of the year.
At first glance it makes sense. Someone messed up and the head of the organization, as the person with most control over what the company does, is the most likely candidate. The organization still exists and will need someone to run it, and another senior executive is a qualified person, at least in the short run, since he already knows the people and policies of the organization.
The problem is that, if the CEO, as the most powerful person in the organization is the most likely person responsible, his successor, presumably the second most powerful, is the second most likely. If the objective is to have the best person in charge, the organizational failure lowers the claim to the job for both of them. If the successor's appointment turns out to be only temporary he will have to be replaced either with another high-up insider, for whom the same issue arises, or with an outsider, someone without the specialized knowledge that the job requires.
The ideal solution would start by finding out who was responsible. One part of the story, which Boeing has denied any culpability for, is the death of a whistleblower who first rang the alarm about safety issues.
The issue of resources is one part of the story that has surfaced so far but there are probably other and more important parts. The most explosive possibility is that the Boeing did a bad job of making safe aircraft because they, or at least some key people, didn’t much want to make safe aircraft — more plausible than an actual plot to cause aircrafts to crash, although the latter would make a better thriller. That is the sort of thing evidence for which might come up in saved emails. Less explosive but even more plausible would be evidence that people in the company put a low weight on the job they were supposed to be doing relative to other objectives, such as maintaining their and the company’s public image, and allocated resources accordingly. I have not yet seen an explanation from company spokesman of why he first told reporters that the claims of the whistleblower were “absolutely false” and then, after he was found dead, the CEO said he will resign.
My discussion so far assumes that the reason to replace Calhoun was to get someone more competent in his position. For that purpose it might have made more sense to wait until one or more of the ongoing investigations had determined what happened and whose fault it was. A more plausible explanation is that his forced resignation will be symbolic. The company messed up, the company must be punished, and he represents the agency. Something must be done and this is something, so do it.
His very uncooperative response to congressional questioning probably contributed to his decision to resign but people were suggesting resignation or removal before that. He himself had said that he took responsibility for the failure, although it didn’t seem to have occurred to hum that that might have implications for what he should do next.
A related explanation is that the policy of firing the head of a company that messes up is intended to improve not the quality of its leadership but their incentives. Even if this head was not actually responsible for what went wrong, her successor will have a good reason to make sure that nothing goes wrong on his watch, as will the heads of other organizations.
Or at least to make sure that if something does go seriously wrong, the fact does not become public.
A final explanation of the pressure to get rid of Calhoun is his demonstrated incompetence, not at building safe aircraft — that might not have been his fault — but at protecting the company afterwards: we have a hotline for whistleblowers! its not about short term shareholder returns!
In my view there is no reason to accept eithe mere incompetence or lack of resources as explanations for either attempt on Trump's life (or the others that will almost certainly continue). The deep state (insiders cabal) wants Trump dead because he has been exposing its members for corruption and plans to send them all to prison once re-inaugurated. Their "Operation Mockingbird" media have been smearing Trump in a deliberate effort to radicalize young men like the two shooters into doing what they did.
Anyone who tries to apply Hanlon's Razor to government officials is a sheep.
There are multiple objectives in play. For USSS top brass (and people upstream, like Mayorkas) the objective now is to stop the bleeding and get the constant stream of their failures, each worse than the other, off TV screens and out of public's minds. Cheatle would go back to her cushy job at Pepsi, or equally cushy one at a similar place. Trump obviously is interested in being protected for real, but he has zero power in the system until he's elected. Nobody who rules the system now has a real incentive to dig deeper than now, especially when they're talking about protecting a man they vehemently hate. They probably could do without him being shot, but they can't change that, so the next best thing for them is to push Cheatle out and sweep the rest under the carpet as quickly as possible. They wouldn't go deep mining all the roots of this messup on Trump's behalf. The Congress may be interested in this, but they can't do much more than talk and make the government official look stupid before the cameras, and turns out it's not that bad after all, totally survivable for many of them. They declared Garland in contempt and absolutely nothing happened. So, no real power there to make any changes. Thus, the only thing we'd get is Cheatle out, and even that is probably because elections are close and nobody in the government wants this kind of thing being aired. Otherwise we wouldn't be getting even that. We'd get the usual "mistakes were made, no consequences to anybody whatsoever".
Second thought: USSS totally exemplifies Conquest's Third Law: "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies", and Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: "In any bureaucratic organization, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always gain control of the organization and write the rules under which it functions. This means that those who prioritize the organization’s goals and objectives are gradually marginalized, and those who focus on maintaining and expanding the bureaucracy’s own interests and power take control."
So, the USSS has been take over by a cabal of career bureaucrats who are the enemy of the USSS.
If the USSS was controlled by a cabal intent on letting this happen, they would have hitched their bets on a more competent shooter, so I find that explanation unlikely.
Letting it happen is not the same as supervising it.
If Trump had moved his head at precisely the moment he did, the shot would have been perfect.
A skilled assassin wouldn't have left it to chance
“The most explosive possibility is that the Secret Service did a bad job of protecting Trump because they, or at least some key people, didn’t much want him protected…” I think this is the most likely explanation along with a huge dollop of typical government incompetence.
"...— more plausible than an actual plot to kill him, ..." Maybe, though we do know some of our ABC agencies excel at wet work.
Whatever and lots of how ever was it possible. Hopefully President Trump now his his own security and is not completely dependent on the SS for protection.
When you fire the people responsible for mistakes, they never have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. Of course, assuming they'll learn from their mistakes has the implicit assumption that they *want* to do a good job in the first place.
It's dificult to see any competence at anything from Cheadle. OTOH, she evidently got the job by being DOCTOR Jill's favorite SS agent when she was Second Lady. Maybe she's competent at sucking up.
Excellent! I hadn't thought of so many reasons or motives.
But my first and continued reaction to a mess-up of this magnitude with such opaque casual chains is that the agency itself must be disbanded and started anew. A resignation or two is insufficient. For want of a better word, the "culture" of the existing place is such that improvement is impossible.
IIUC, such a cure was implemented some years ago in a DC hospital that had become a death trap. After many attempted fixes, it was closed.
Yes. That has the same problem as putting an outsider in charge — you are losing the accumulated experience/expertise of the organization. But at some point that may have net negative value.
To put a humorous twist on the problem, one could have the situation that half the employees are competent and diligent and half the employees are not. We just don't know which half is which!
A series of science fiction novels I'm fond of, the April novels by Mackey Chandler, set in the 2080s, has as part of the background that the Secret Service lost the job of guarding the president (and perhaps was disbanded) after a spectacular failure to do so. That seems like a more plausible extrapolation/speculation than it did a year ago.
Yes, and any replacement agency must include employment contracts that if their protectee gets assassinated they all serve out life sentences.
That might severely limit your ability to hire competent workers.
They have way too many agents as it is. Have fewer that are actually incentivized to protect. You might have to pay them a lot more.
Surely the point of letting the director go is not that their successor will automatically be someone with different skills and priorities as such. Rather, it's that they come into office knowing that their predecessor let a problem arise, and was fired; and thus they have a strong motivation to deal with the problem, so that they don't get fired in turn. In effect, it's defining the problem that they're being given the job to fix. If incentives make a difference to performance this might be expected to have some effect.
The great David Frye, a hugely popular entertainer in the late 1960s and early 1970s for his Nixon impersonations, had a line on his comedy album, Richard Nixon: A Fantasy, in which Nixon said he was responsible, but not to blame, for the Watergate break in. "Let me explain the difference," he said. "People who are to blame lose their jobs, people who are responsible do not." A classic album and it can be found on Youtube.
I may be missing the import of this essay -- so attempted another version, substituting organization and individual names. It is still not clear.
Boeing badly messed up in the job of building safe aircrafts, judged not only by the 171 grounded Max 9 aircraft, with doors blowing away mid flight, but by how it happened, pretty clearly due not to insurmountable technical difficulties making secure doors, but incompetence by the company; details available from your favorite news source. CEO Calhoun who had himself been appointed in 2020, after the previous CEO Muilenburg had been fired after two crashes involving 348 deaths and the grounding of 387 aircraft, offered only partial and unconvincing explanations, and will eventually only resign at the end of the year.
At first glance it makes sense. Someone messed up and the head of the organization, as the person with most control over what the company does, is the most likely candidate. The organization still exists and will need someone to run it, and another senior executive is a qualified person, at least in the short run, since he already knows the people and policies of the organization.
The problem is that, if the CEO, as the most powerful person in the organization is the most likely person responsible, his successor, presumably the second most powerful, is the second most likely. If the objective is to have the best person in charge, the organizational failure lowers the claim to the job for both of them. If the successor's appointment turns out to be only temporary he will have to be replaced either with another high-up insider, for whom the same issue arises, or with an outsider, someone without the specialized knowledge that the job requires.
The ideal solution would start by finding out who was responsible. One part of the story, which Boeing has denied any culpability for, is the death of a whistleblower who first rang the alarm about safety issues.
The issue of resources is one part of the story that has surfaced so far but there are probably other and more important parts. The most explosive possibility is that the Boeing did a bad job of making safe aircraft because they, or at least some key people, didn’t much want to make safe aircraft — more plausible than an actual plot to cause aircrafts to crash, although the latter would make a better thriller. That is the sort of thing evidence for which might come up in saved emails. Less explosive but even more plausible would be evidence that people in the company put a low weight on the job they were supposed to be doing relative to other objectives, such as maintaining their and the company’s public image, and allocated resources accordingly. I have not yet seen an explanation from company spokesman of why he first told reporters that the claims of the whistleblower were “absolutely false” and then, after he was found dead, the CEO said he will resign.
My discussion so far assumes that the reason to replace Calhoun was to get someone more competent in his position. For that purpose it might have made more sense to wait until one or more of the ongoing investigations had determined what happened and whose fault it was. A more plausible explanation is that his forced resignation will be symbolic. The company messed up, the company must be punished, and he represents the agency. Something must be done and this is something, so do it.
His very uncooperative response to congressional questioning probably contributed to his decision to resign but people were suggesting resignation or removal before that. He himself had said that he took responsibility for the failure, although it didn’t seem to have occurred to hum that that might have implications for what he should do next.
A related explanation is that the policy of firing the head of a company that messes up is intended to improve not the quality of its leadership but their incentives. Even if this head was not actually responsible for what went wrong, her successor will have a good reason to make sure that nothing goes wrong on his watch, as will the heads of other organizations.
Or at least to make sure that if something does go seriously wrong, the fact does not become public.
A final explanation of the pressure to get rid of Calhoun is his demonstrated incompetence, not at building safe aircraft — that might not have been his fault — but at protecting the company afterwards: we have a hotline for whistleblowers! its not about short term shareholder returns!
Man you have a lot of time on your hands
In my view there is no reason to accept eithe mere incompetence or lack of resources as explanations for either attempt on Trump's life (or the others that will almost certainly continue). The deep state (insiders cabal) wants Trump dead because he has been exposing its members for corruption and plans to send them all to prison once re-inaugurated. Their "Operation Mockingbird" media have been smearing Trump in a deliberate effort to radicalize young men like the two shooters into doing what they did.
Anyone who tries to apply Hanlon's Razor to government officials is a sheep.
Btw, the head of an agency is always responsible, in some sense.
Either directly, or indirectly by either not knowing what her agency was up to or by not preventing it.
The leader usually resigns or is fired in cases like this. It may not solve the problem but this is established tradition.
I don’t think there was a conspiracy, just incompetence. Cheatle, apparently close to Jill Biden likely hated Trump but it was still her job.
All of the above?
There are multiple objectives in play. For USSS top brass (and people upstream, like Mayorkas) the objective now is to stop the bleeding and get the constant stream of their failures, each worse than the other, off TV screens and out of public's minds. Cheatle would go back to her cushy job at Pepsi, or equally cushy one at a similar place. Trump obviously is interested in being protected for real, but he has zero power in the system until he's elected. Nobody who rules the system now has a real incentive to dig deeper than now, especially when they're talking about protecting a man they vehemently hate. They probably could do without him being shot, but they can't change that, so the next best thing for them is to push Cheatle out and sweep the rest under the carpet as quickly as possible. They wouldn't go deep mining all the roots of this messup on Trump's behalf. The Congress may be interested in this, but they can't do much more than talk and make the government official look stupid before the cameras, and turns out it's not that bad after all, totally survivable for many of them. They declared Garland in contempt and absolutely nothing happened. So, no real power there to make any changes. Thus, the only thing we'd get is Cheatle out, and even that is probably because elections are close and nobody in the government wants this kind of thing being aired. Otherwise we wouldn't be getting even that. We'd get the usual "mistakes were made, no consequences to anybody whatsoever".