Unless you live under a rock, you are already aware that John P. “Pat” Philbin, FEMA’s director of external affairs, faked a press conference on Tuesday. All of the questions asked were posed by FEMA employees; there were no independent reporters present.
This required such incredibly poor judgment at so many levels that I can only shake my head in disbelief. It sounds like the kind of completely over-the-top activity that you would see Boris Badenov instigate in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. Sadly, it really happened.
As a brief aside, I have been accused of being a bleeding heart liberal and strongly against the Republican party. It is much simpler than that: I am strongly against incompetent management by anybody, including both Republicans and Democrats. It happens that, with a Republican administration in place for the last six years, most of my recent pot shots have been aimed at Republican targets.
Philbin came into his FEMA position, Director of the Office of External Affairs at FEMA, just seven months ago, according to his bio on FEMA’s web site. Prior to that, he was the Director of Communications for FEMA, a position which he held for nine months. It sounds like he was doing such a good job that rapid promotion was in order.
Updated October 29, 2007: According to CNN.com
The man who oversaw public affairs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency when it held a fake news conference last week will no longer be taking over as head of public relations for the director of national intelligence…. It was not immediately clear whether he offered his resignation or was fired just as he was set to begin the job.
I am glad to see that someone in Washington is acting responsibly.
So what do you do with such an exemplary employee? You promote him again, according to the Washington Post,
Philbin’s last scheduled day at FEMA was Thursday. He has been named as the new head of public affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines said.
Doesn’t this sound more than a bit strange to you? If you had hired someone and you found out that he had faked a national news conference for a federal agency, wouldn’t you fire him?
Now move up the management ladder a rung. If you found out that one of your managers had just hired Philbin and had retained him on the payroll under such circumstances, what would you do? Wouldn’t you fire Philbin and discipline the manager? How high does the mismanagement have to go before Philbin gets to keep his job because no one cares enough about this behavior to “dump the chump?”
Oh yes, remember to take everything you hear for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with a large grain of salt.
