{"id":465,"date":"2010-01-22T12:36:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T17:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/?p=465"},"modified":"2010-01-22T12:36:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T17:36:53","slug":"something-not-to-say-during-a-job-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=465","title":{"rendered":"Something NOT to Say During a Job Interview…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal<\/em>, January 11, 2010<\/p>\n

So after the attempted bombing of the Christmas day Northwest flight to Detroit, Pete Hoekstra — a US congressperson from West Michigan — had an error in judgment. And I\u2019m going to call it an error in judgment because, given the circumstances, I think — I hope — that that was all it was.<\/p>\n

Circumstance #1: Pete Hoekstra is the ranking member (leader of the minority party) of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which means he is privy to all sorts of information on international terrorism and what is going on behind the scenes. That makes him something of a go-to guy when it comes to these issues. For intelligence matters, Pete Hoekstra is somebody. For other matters, Pete Hoekstra is a congressy something or other from one of those states nobody cares about. So \u201cterrorism-related\u201d is right in Hoekstra\u2019s wheelhouse, and when it happens, he\u2019s gonna be swinging.<\/p>\n

Circumstance #2: Pete Hoekstra is running as a Republican candidate for Michigan this year. There are lots<\/strong> of Republican candidates, and they all profess their strong dissatisfaction with the current governor (a Democrat) and president who either have already ruined everything or are in the process of. It\u2019s a good strategy. Really good. (Think of how well \u201cI\u2019m not George W. Bush\u201d worked in 2008.) So it\u2019s difficult to tell the candidates apart. Hoekstra is in big need of an issue to differentiate himself.<\/p>\n

Interesting Side Note: Why is Pete Hoekstra running for Governor when he could have easily gotten himself re-elected to the US House in a prestigious committee position? I don\u2019t know. Guilt I think. In 1992 Hoekstra got himself elected largely on the populist promise of self-imposed term limits. A fellow Republican, Guy Vander Jagt, had held that particular West Michigan seat for 26 years and fully intended to hold it for life. Hoekstra said that if he won, he would serve for no more than six terms. But when 2004 rolled around, he ran. It was fine with me. I think term limits for congress folks are stupid, short-sighted, and liable to either be ignored or broken if at all possible. So I hold no animosity toward Hoekstra for that.<\/p>\n

Error in Judgment: Hoekstra (or more likely, his people) saw the Christmas underpants bomber as a golden opportunity — an issue very clearly his own that would set him apart (and raise money!). Soon after the event, the Hoekstra campaign sent out a fundraising letter saying, essentially, \u201cif you hate terrorists like I do and are afraid of the Obama administration allowing them to fly to your house willy-nilly, then you should elect me governor (no, wait!, first send money, then elect me governor) because I know whole bunches of stuff about these things that you wouldn\u2019t understand and they hate you, so, um, yeah, I should be governor. Don\u2019t forget about the money thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kind of hard to follow the logic, huh? Ahh, I\u2019ll let this one pass. But no money for you, Mr. Hoekstra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 11, 2010 So after the attempted bombing of the Christmas day Northwest flight to Detroit, Pete Hoekstra — a US congressperson from West Michigan — had an error in judgment. And I\u2019m going to call it an error in judgment because, given the circumstances, I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-business-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}