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Why Bad Directors Aren't Thrown Out
An anonymous reader writes "For publicly-owned companies, the CEO gets most of the spotlight. If the company is successful and the stock goes up, the CEO gets the credit. If the company stumbles, the CEO gets the blame. But an article at the NY Times points how the board of directors for most companies seem to get a free pass, even when their decisions or their CEO selections consistently go wrong. 'Last year, there were elections for 17,081 director nominees at United States corporations, according to the service. Only 61 of those nominees, or 0.36 percent, failed to get majority support. More than 86 percent of directors received 90 percent or more of the votes. Of the 61 directors who failed to get majority approval, only six actually stepped down or were asked to resign. Fifty-one are still in place, as of the most recent proxy filings.' The article uses Hewlett-Packard as an example; the past several years have seen poor CEO choices, the abominable Autonomy acquisition, and billions in write-offs for other failed endeavors. Yet HP's directors were all re-elected."
Sure, corporate interlock isn't as bad as it once was (don't believe anybody who claims it doesn't exist anymore) but the real reason is that the whole system is an asshole club based on friends and schmoozing. We don't have a mechanism to put good people in charge, and the people running things don't want it that way.
There isn't much social mobility in this country. Directorships and positions like them are just part of a big scam to perpetuate dynastic transfer of wealth.
The system is rigged.
... and this differs from the US political system ... How?
Director elections are stacked in favor of the incumbents due to the way the elections are structured. The directors nominate candidates for the board, usually through their governance or nominating committee. It's in their interests to keep the status quo and nominate themselves to be the only choices on the ballot. Nearly every corporate ballot (proxy ballot) has just enough director nominees to fill the available slots so there really isn't a choice. Corporate governance is a slow process and companies don't really want a lot of turnover on the board. In most situations this is a good thing, for investors and for the company as a whole.
However, this process does have the effect of protecting directors when things go south as it takes a real grass roots movement from stockholders to get other names nominated for the director slot. Most commonly you'll see this when a large holding company decides to pool their stocks and distributes an alternate proxy.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
I read the first sentence and I immediately thought, "You mean like HP?"
Cut-n-paste just makes it way too easy to be a vanity paranoid psycho cluebie.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is in fact the real questions:
* How the Nokia board slowly changed to the point it elected a CEO that bring Nokia to his fall.
* How can the board allow disruptive and destructive action from the CEO without limitation or even a reaction ?
Could it be because capitalism is just an excuse to get the idiots at the bottom to think that Aspiration Will Get You Up There while those at the top are just a bunch of layabouts scratching each others' backs and mostly giving not a fuck about anything beyond making enough money to buy another yacht before they receive their golden parachute?
The world runs thanks to careful centralised regulation and provision of education and research combined with small, agile businesses - and in spite of behemoth corporations.
In what parallel universe is this true?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
they're your ruling class silly. Your masters. They own you. Sure, you could do something about that. But you'd need a lot of power. Somethin' like a government body. And that'd be socialism (cue dramatic music).
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Worst. Director. Evar.
http://www.mediamikes.com/2010/03/interview-with-director-uwe-boll/
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
This sounds a lot like why corrupt politicians who impose bad policy constantly get reelected and appointed to office. For instance, we still have people like Rumsfeld, Kissinger, and the rest of that wrecking crew exerting their influence, damn near fifty years on. Must be a psychological issue.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ostensibly we live in a free society, but that doesn't meant that our elites, with the connivance of Hollywood, propagandize to suit their elite interests. The stories they tell always fit an elite, self-serving narrative.
The greatest lie of our age, is that hard work is rewarded. So when things are unfair, we blame ourselves for not working hard enough, which is convenient for the rich, who are born into power, marry into it, or at least make the right friends.
This also explains the existence of the Tea Party, and why stupid and gullible people fight so savagely for the interests of the elites, and against their own -- they've drunk the Kool Aid, and honestly believe that each and every one of them are potential future billionaires, if it weren't for teh liburls, gays and leftists.
We do NOT live in a meritocracy -- far from it.
In The Trial of Socrates, I.F. Stone wrote, "The "destruction" Socrates predicts for the bad ruler is little or no consolation to the ruled." All you have to do is recall the destruction of Germany, first at the hands of the New York Fed and the Versaille Treaty, then at the hands of the Nazis, to know how true this really is. After WWII Germany was in ruins... but hey, they we were rid of Hitler!
Stop investing in feudalism and start leading your life like it mattered, and you wouldn't have to listen to the inevitable crap as if it were news. We don't have to continue to swallow the same old crap from conservatives whose paramount consideration is there own wealth & power.
This isn't news, it's history repeating itself in the endless loop of greed, avarice and will to dominate rather than learn. Apparently, glory is a concept that reincarnates itself to the detriment of most anyone who thinks they deserve to live more grandly than the previous asshole.
Normally what one does when confronted with bad corporate governance is to disinvest. But Hewlett Packard is in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, so "index funds", which are popular because they extract minimal fees, are obligated to invest in HP.
Activism, it seems, is not in an index funds nature, and so the proxies are routinely signed, keeping bad board members on the job.
Fixed that for you.
well... we all BLAME Steve Ballmer. Doesn't mean there are any consequences.
Yes. The idea that "If the company stumbles, the CEO gets the blame" IS news.
If the company does great, the CEO gets a bonus for having made great decisions.
If the company does poorly, the CEO needs a bonus to make the touch decisions.
If the company does about even, the CEO needs a bonus 'to retain top talent'.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
No, it's not news. Directors don't even hire the auditors as they once did to keep tabs on the executives.
They provide introductions at dinner parties and siphon money off the top to repay them for the investments they made long ago.
http://exiledonline.com/failing-up-with-citigroups-dick-parsons/
captcha: disgust
Some needs to dump out kim jong before they all get nuked.
But even when some like this is down at the smaller companies level and you don't risk a public execution some people are ifly about makeing a move.
The problem is that most investment these days is done on a short term basis, people rarely hold their shares long enough for more than the next quarter to matter. I personally hold for much longer, and I refuse to buy into a company where the people running it need to be replaced. If I lose faith in them, then I sell my shares.
I suspect that's a lot of what's going on, if you don't have faith in the board of directors, chances are you sell your shares. And as such, it would be expected that in the overwhelming majority of cases the board would get to keep it's job.
For people who aren't in it for the long term, I'm sure they're even less likely to care much less vote the bums out.
Of the 61 directors who failed to get majority approval, only six actually stepped down or were asked to resign. Fifty-one are still in place, as of the most recent proxy filings.
61 - ( 51 + 6 ) = 4
The other four were dragged out and burned at the stake by irate shareholders. Encourage this response and I'm certain the other BoD members will straighten their acts out. You only need to make a few examples.
Have gnu, will travel.
So I make a very ordinary salary as a software engineer, but could probably raise it by 25% by changing jobs but not venturing too far outside my comfort zone.
However, I've got friends who went from earning roughly as much as I did, to quadrupling what I'm making, simply because they play fast and loose: lying about past salaries, standing job offers, etc, to get raises; and taking jobs they're not always qualified for, simply because they're good at bullshit.
What this is REALLY saying, is that they're doing well because the free market values liars and bullshitters. The people who are the most profitable to employers however, are the people whose personalities and personal moral code precludes them from earning too much, allowing employers to get a bigger spread between 1) what they pay employees, and 2) what those employees contribute to their bottom line.
The reality is a bit more complex than I make out (bad directors persist, because big institutional investors want stability and don't want to rock the boat; nepotism (sometimes a good thing!!); information asymmetries everywhere, etc., etc.). Simply put, being a slimy, lying cunt pays -- and not everybody can be a director, because not everybody has the stomach to do what they need to do to get there.
It was a dynamic market, and they didn't see Smartphone Apps becoming the driving force. He was doomed before the board chose him.
Maybe if they weren't so convinced in the primacy of hardware they would have been better able to compete.
Corporations are just like Congress they swap out the incompetent moron every few years or so, but the people pulling the strings are still around. Also just like Congress the Directors answer to Billionaire smucks who want them to vote a certain way, so they can keep their jobs.
You make the article's point - after all that has happened at HP over so many years as close as they got to consequences for the board was "cam (sic) very close to being thrown out" (your words).
Nothing else needs to be said, I rest my case.
People who go through a series of marriages and divorces to the same dysfunctional, destructive types of spouse, and wonder why things never change
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
... they're just credited as 'Alan Smithee.'
I can see the fnords!
The thing that this story misses is that directors are elected by large shareholders not the business management. For example, almost a quarter of HP stock is owned by the ten largest institutional or mutual fund holders and almost 80% is held by institutional investors in general.
It stretches credulity to claim that these powerful investors can't get the directors and the control over the company that they want. Instead, I believe what we're seeing is exactly what they want. It's worth remembering that virtually all of these institutional investors are holding other peoples' money.
So in HP's case, we have a considerable supermajority of the shares of the business controlled by people who don't own those shares. I believe this leads to a massive conflict of interest between the institutions (who control the voting for HP directors) and the actual shareholders.
There are mechanisms in the marketplace that tend to select out bad directors over time or at least put them into marginal and less profitable firms:
The first line of defense against bad management and bad directors are the shorts. I presume that most of you know what I mean when I say that but for the benefit of those who don't a short is somebody who, in exchange for payment of a fee to the owner, borrows shares with a promise to return them at a future date. In the meantime the short controls the shares. This means that the short can vote the shares at the annual meeting, receive any dividends paid on the shares and the like. However, in practice the borrowed shares are immediately sold with the expectation that the future value of the shares will decline and the short will profit from this decline when they buy back shares to return to the original owner at a lower price. The professional shorts are merciless and seek out bad directors and bad management just like sharks seek out blood in the water. So bad management is discovered and punished by shorts who are rewarded for their efforts by profiting on the sales. This works best with small or medium sized companies whose share prices can be utterly smashed by the shorts.
With larger companies there are independent investor activists who make a career of acquiring minority stakes in badly managed companies and then leading the common shareholders in an organized campaign against management. Even if the activists cannot secure enough votes to actually replace directors or force the issues outright, management can often be pressured into concessions by the prospect of a knock down drag out fight in public with these famous activists. Carl Ichan is prominent amongst these types of activist investors.
Finally, the major institutional investors, including hedge funds, wealth management firms and pension funds keep dossiers on corporate directors and actively vote against those whom they don't like or in whom they have low confidence. Eventually these bad directors get a bad reputation and their careers as corporate directors are effectively ended.
Employees aren't fired because they're perceived as being valuable to the company interests in spite of their poor behavior. In my case the employee was willing to do what ever it took to advance the company interests, even when it was immoral or illegal to do so.
well, we used to blame Microsoft before Ballmer and there were no consequence, either.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I work for a S&P mid cap company, heavily into science and engineering. I am not doing bad myself, holding on to a tiny fiefdom in the corporate empire. But my batch mate in my college went into academics, the usual Ph D, post-doc, tenure-track professorship. Did some serious original research, published some good papers and made a name for himself. Surprised to see him appointed as a director to my own company. So it is not all nepotism and dynastic mutual back scratching societies there. This Indian immigrant with absolutely no connections made it to the lofty realms of directorships.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The one where people doing the work do not get laid off before "the CEO gets blamed". The one where the workers designing/developing the companies products and future are not alienated, pissed off, or bullshitted out, by someone's brother in law getting hired.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Changing directors is very disruptive and risky. New people in a role, even if they performed well in similar roles, is an uncertainty and a risk.
Also, the performance of a company (or sports team, etc), might depend on internal and external factors which are either unpredictable to even the most diligent and perceptive people, or are inevitable or unavoidable. Should a director be fired when 9/11 happens and the economy tanks, taking all company stocks with it? That's an extreme example, but there are numerous other situations in the market which can affect the profits of a company, such as surprise advances by competitors, or changes in laws that no reasonable person would have predicted, or fickle consumer choices, or tsunamis which affect suppliers of crucial parts, or oil platform explosions which claim lives and make worldwide headlines, or insane patent lawsuits with billion-dollar awards or injunctions against selling products, or crazy IP/libel/pro-surveillance laws in England, France, Germany, USA, or China making business suddenly impractical...
The more powerful the regulators become, the more it is in the interest of those regulated to control or influence the regulators.
The incumbent regulated then use the regulators they influence or control to exclude competitors, fatten their profit margins, or extract subsidies.
Obviously some regulation and the accompanying trade offs are necessary for a well-functioning society, but the abuse I just described happens every single day in the United States.
I find it appalling that you wish to expand the corrupt system.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Look at Netflix for example. No matter how many stupid failures their CEO stumbles over.....It's because Netflix is barely a public company where most of the stock is held by a tiny group of 3 or 4 hedge funds. Each of which is run by ONE guy. So most of the voting shares are held by a half dozen people who all know the board personally.
You do the math.
Not in my experience... The last three companies I've been with have either gone under or been bought and sold off (yes, it sucks to be ME!!) and the CEO took no blame at all in any case. In fact every one of them moved on to similar or better positions at similar or larger companies. Primarily because they were gone before disaster set in.
In my opinion that's why you see so many 4 year CEO's now. They come in, raise the stock price by any means necessary (layoffs, cut backs, no overtime pay but no schedule cuts, cut everything to the bone), and skedaddle before the chickens come home to roost. You can bring about short term gains in market price pretty easily if you don't care about the long term viability of the company and that seems to be the game I've seen several times. Not always the case of course but it's not uncommon.
My personal view is that CEO's should have more liability in their contracts concerning the long term viability of the company's they run. But, of course, boards of directors are usually made up of CEO's from other companies and they don't want that liability on them so they're not likely to ask for it on anyone else....
It does matter - Nokia, Australia's Telstra, HP - the directors got to choose a CEO without a good track record that then failed in a spectacular way (though less so for HP).
Yes, and they are the last generation you'll see like that as the US right is pushing hard for the old English class system and a lot of barriers step on the fingers of those climbers. "I've got mine" is their major policy.
Got one? A strong central gov't seems to be the only thing that can stand against banking trusts. Worst case scenario the jack boots are publicly owned, so I'll take my chances with the gov't.
Besides, there's plenty of ways to regulate a government. That said, it is a complex problem. You don't get to throw up your hands and say "The Free Market (tm) will take care of it!" and call it a day. Also, you have to be willing to accept the idea of elitism. e.g. that some people are better at some things than you, and that running a country is one of them.
Both of these tick Americans off. We like to believe in the myth of the Renaissance Man, and we all like to believe we're that man.
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There are typically a lot of shareholders and even those that may hold relatively large blocks of the voting stock are still typically in a minority position. So it is hard to mobilize them to do anything in concert, such as rejecting a corporate nominee.
The Board Of Directors Need the CEO to maintain their cocaine and prostitute stables and international slavery profits.
The CEO Needs the Board to approve laundering cash in Banks Offshore and to keep 'his' cocaine fund and male prostitutes budget in a happy state.
Why restrict this to "publicly-owned companies" - the same concern applies to ANY type of corporation with a board of directors. It is a particular problem for non-profits whose board of directors are often are appointed for their poltical/social connections rather than any substantial business or organization expertise. A good example is that as information technology becomes increasingly critical in the operations of many non-profits, their board of directors are often ill-equiped to understand what is going or needs to go on with the non-profit they are supposed to be watching over. Undoubtedly millions of dollars are being squandered in inefficient if not completely ineffective IT operations run by incompetent CIOs/CEOs appointed by these boards. Who is actually watching over these non-profit board of directors and the operations of the organizations they are in charge of? Considering that public funding is often involved and certainly donor contributions/fees, more scrutiny ought to be in be required.
For the larger companies that require employee drug testing, shouldn't they be posting the drug test results for the officers and board members? After all, there have been some mighty poor decisions made by businesses lately, and it would only be prudent to verify that those decisions haven't been made under the influence of drugs.
Corporate boards glad hand the execs for the same reason as boards and executives in utterly unrelated lines of large businesses hang together as a lobby if one is threatened by labor/regulation/public vilification that would help the others: class solidarity. They by-and-large see the interests of their peers as identical to their own, even when they're objectively not. An excellent recent example, fighting attempts by the US Federal government to bring the major banks to heal after they nearly dragged the world economy into a depression.
Luke, help me take this mask off
doing t1 support for five different clients at the same time. Right now they are implementing the LEAN methodology, but so far haven't told us what exactly this means. Well, we where told no more overtime. The only info I've been given is this ridiculas print out comparing our new policy to "lean meats, such as chick, turkey, pork, and fish." Luckily for me, there IS a question on it "What is the LEAN process?", however the answer is describing how an employee will come around to my desk "wearing squeaky clown shoes" to bring me meat. We're all hoping that this is just a joke, but these days one never knows. Maybe the meat comes from the former employees downsized via LEAN.
...when it's traditional to use pH?
tone
1000+ years of little or no progress. Do you not understand what conservationism is? It's keeping things the same because if you're rich, hey, everything's fine.
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but you're just being naive. There's a million reasons why it doesn't work. For one thing, you're ignoring how horrible things were 250 years ago for everyone except a lucky few. For another, America won it's revolution with lots and lots of French help, and countries don't do that any more. The rulers work together. If you want a future, the working class have to work together sensibly for it. That means using the only tool with enough power to stand up against old money: Government.
Sure, you might screw up and create the same sort of beast. But you're not going to make a worse beast. It's the same demon by a different name. Meanwhile at least you have a CHANCE of a better world. I'll take a one in a million chance against hopelessness any day. And I don't think they odds are nearly that bad.
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CEOs have a lot of experience at driving companies in the ground and asking for bailouts.
And unfortunately innovative bail-out strategies are more important skill for US business than running a company that actually invents cool stuff.
The detroit automaker bailouts proved that. Rather than let them fail so the dozen small US automakers with near-production-ready electric cars and motorcycles could compete (and buy the factories and hire the talent they need in the big-3-bankruptcy sales), the government keeps bailing out the "too-big-to-fail" automakers who proved they can't invent a decent car if their very existance depends on it.
Good thing (for them) that it doesn't. Bailouts are a far easier way to get big bonuses than doing actual good work.
Actually, the interesting thing is that if the Government hadn't bailed out the Detroit auto makers, Ford would be the only one left intact. They didn't take a bailout and were able to ride out to the storm. GM and Chrysler would have had to go through the Bankruptcy process.
What you have failed to point out is that the lesser known and much smaller vehicle manufacturers in the US which could have benefited from the demise of Chrysler and GM are again, left out in the cold because the biggies are getting all the attention from the government
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This is much like English football managers. They lose 20 games on the trot, come under fire from the fans and press and eventually get the sack 'cos they are shite.
Then 3 weeks later another team hire them on 100's of 1000's of pounds a year - eventually it all happens again in one big merry-go-round.
I never could understand that.
Here the political system is not so much a complicated game for the rich with everyone else left out so the "forcing to vote" is far less of an imposition than it would be in the US, there is more point in voting and it's not inconveniently on a weekday. Since the polling booths know roughly how many people are going to be there beforehand it does not consume a lot of time like what I've heard of insane multi-hour waits in US elections. In my case last time it was a case of walking down to the local school hall on a weekend morning, a five minute wait, get my name crossed off the list, vote (two simple ballot papers), then buying a sausage with onion on bread and a can of drink from the school's fundraising BBQ on the way out.
if you're a shareholder, next time you vote for the board try this little trick: only vote for those with one or no other job for another company.
Can't be done.
Seems like about five is the minimum.
So if the company goes COMPLETELY tits up, they have lost 20% of their pay.
They have absolutely no care whether the company works or not.
Yep, this was one of the major points in "the" corporate governance code in the UK.
It's a problem from two directions and costing the consumer/taxpayer both ways. Cane sugar was protected by trade barriers so the price didn't have to compete with imports (and thus you got blatant price gouging) and then corn syrup is a little bit cheaper than elsewhere thanks to government help - thus relatively expensive corn syrup gets used instead of the cheap sugar that the rest of the world has.
The extra downsides are that a lot of corn syrup needs to be used to match the sweetness of cane sugar. Right on top of that is that fructose only gets metabolised in the liver. Corn syrup has twice the fructose of cane sugar by weight, and a bit more is used than the already unhealthy amounts of cane sugar that would go into drinks, so kids having small livers give it a hammering. Way too much corn syrup and they may as well be alcoholics as far as their liver knows.
That's a bit of an unexpected bad consequence of trying to protect cane sugar farmers that's turned up only in the last couple of decades.
It's something to think of whenever people pretend there is a free market, and yet another of the many examples since 1204 as to how artificial trade barriers can backfire.
Unless you are some kind of majority shareholder, what kind of voice do you think you really have? Usually, the board elections are something like this: ...
The board has nominated the following candidates. The board recommends approval of all x candidates.
x1: approve, decline
x2: approve, decline
No write in votes are allowed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo
Casteism
THIS is why he's doing it & proof of it, here -> http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3585927&cid=43295193 when others pointed out Jeremiah Cornelius forgot to submit one of the "first post spams" masquerading as myself as AC, & mistakenly submitted one of the impersonations of myself as his registered 'luser' name here on /. forums.
Pretty pitiful actually, but like every up to no good idiot does? He screwed up & submitted it under his registered 'luser' name here.
* Jeremiah Cornelius: DO YOURSELF, and the rest of us, A GIANT FAVOR MAN: Seek professional psychiatric help!
(Since Jeremiah Cornelius obviously can't get over the fact he made a spelling error on what it is HE ALLEGEDLY DID FOR A LIVING? That's not MY fault... it's HIS!)
APK
P.S.=> I seriously must have dusted JC (in his mind @ least) for his BAD spelling error & it "got his goat"...
I.E.-> Catching what he claimed to do as a job, for YEARS he left "PENETRATION" (correct) spelled as "PENTRATION" (incorrect) on his resume on LinkedIn & I pointed it out as he & his friends trolled me as usual (webmistressrachel, gmhowell, & crew (probably ALL JC no doubt using alterate emails or TOR to do it as a possible - I've caught "them & theirs" doing it before, ala Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person))).
So THAT is what has gotten his goat in a technical debate & his "geek angst" could only come up with *trying* to "impersonate me" in every news thread on /. for the month of March 2013 so far!
(Just to attempt to 'discredit me' as a spammer here obviously)
Doing so, by posting that "$10,000 challenge" &/or reposts of my old posts on hosts file value to end users into EVERY SINGLE NEWS ARTICLE POSTED on /. ...
It's all I can think of that *might* cause such a mentally troubled 'reaction' like the Jeremiah Cornelius is doing & there's NO QUESTION he's the one doing this spamming of nearly every posted article masquerading as myself...!
... apk
I've been investing for 40 years, and I've never known who is on the board of directors of a stock I own, other than for exceptions like companies I worked at. I guess most folks are like me, rather than like you. So, the fact that CEOs get attention makes their tenure attract or repel shareholders, whereas who is on the board has no such effect (except for perhaps day traders and other nuts).
Now, why boards don't fire directors is another matter. I guess they don't fire them because they would have to take time out of their golf games and counting their millions of dollars to find a replacement. Also, due to the regression to the mean effect, most bad directors will do better next period, so it probably makes sense. With that effect in mind, the right thing to do is fire the successful directors...
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
You're all a bunch of socialist communists.
Certainly the power of the invisible hand of the free market will ensure that CEOs are paid correctly. Since every employee of a major corporation is bombarded every couple of years by HR studies financed by management proving that the salaries in the organization are perfectly aligned with productivity and the employment market, it goes without saying that of course the corporate boards are commissioning extensive studies rating the effectiveness of each CEO candidate and detailing the difference in income the company would experience if it picked one or another, and thus calculating the scientifically most accurate salary for them. I mean, given our unshakable faith that the free market provides optimal results and that here in the US, which is beyond any doubt the finest country in the world in terms of all parameters, the free market functions perfectly unless the government gets involved; well then anything other than that kind of perfect alignment of salary with results would be unthinkable.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
As with Nixon and baby Bush (all voted in comfortably for a second term), things fell apart later and almost all respect was lost even within their own party (Reagan is seen almost as a saint now looking back at both terms but they wanted him gone then). The last days of Reagan were just watching the clock and waiting for somebody, anybody else - they just wanted him gone and Bush Senior to take over. The Doonsbury cartoons of the time sum it up pretty well - just waiting behind a wall and not much going on. His health was poor which may have been the whole problem, thus a "lame duck president" before the end of his second term that was a liability to his own party - the sort of thing the Pope resigned to avoid.
Actually someone as popular as Reagan was when first elected demonstrates a flaw in your electoral system - even with a larger voter turnout than normal and such a huge landslide that Carter conceded defeat before the polls even closed in California not even a third of US citizens eligible to vote had actually voted for him, the other two thirds didn't even bother to get off their arses to vote. So two thirds didn't vote for Reagan or Carter, they voted for not giving a shit about how their country is run.
I really know when I've hit home when someone downmods a comment and the next five comments. Thanks for the confirmation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What have they done other than give some votes to a joke candidate and thus, by accident or design, created a stalemate that benefits nobody except Burlesquecrony?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."