The only part of the outcome of debt ceiling debacle that surprised Lawrence O'Donnell was that President Obama got Eric Cantor to agree to $800 million in revenue increases.
Which is kind of amazing. Except when you think about how out-matched Eric Cantor is and how much he doesn't realize it.
He's exactly like President Bush and so many of these freshman Republicans. Unskilled and basically incompetent but without the experience to realize it or the cognitive ability to recognize greater competence in others.
It is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, and we have all seen it. Fresh out of college, job candidates and entry-level employees grossly exaggerate their skills, and do you know why? Because they have no idea the level of skill, the set of competencies, the depth of knowledge, the sheer ability actual work requires. They write college papers and think they are experts at Microsoft Word and research. They take a management seminar and think they are ready to run Human Resources. Their knowledge of the world, and the way world works, is so shallow that they can only recognize basic maneuvers and have no idea of the level of strategy and brinksmanship going on around them.
To this day, and until the day he dies, President George W. Bush will always think he did a heck of a job, because he never actually did the job; he did the bare minimum and will never know the difference.
Links:
Dunning-Kruger effect
Lawrence O'Donnell, The Last Word, July 22
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