The Peter Hegseth Principle

There’s an old business term coined in the late 1960s called the Peter Principal. Laurence Peter, who co-wrote the book by the same name, used the term to describe the phenomenon in hierarchical organizations whereby employees are eventually promoted to their level of incompetence.

Watching the fallout from the incident in which highly sensitive Department of Defense planning was leaked to the media, I wonder if we should rename it the Peter Hegseth Principle.

By now, I’m sure most of you know what I’m referring to, specifically the group chat on the encrypted Signal messaging app among Defense Secretary Hegseth and other cabinet members as they mapped out their plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen. One member of the group mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic, who went on to write about the chat in several installments, calling into question the wisdom of using an unsecured communications method for planning a highly sensitive, if not classified, military action.

Of course, the predictable left-right semantic debate played out about whether the group was chatting about “war plans” or “attack plans” and whether or not the level of detail in the chat would typically be considered classified.

What most everyone agrees on, however, is that it was a careless and colossal screw-up that could have potentially put pilots’ and others’ lives at risk had the information been inadvertently disclosed to our enemies prior to the mission. 

Even Republicans, not quick to get crosswise with the administration these days, admit as much. 

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “The information as published recently appears to me to be of such sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified.”

Rep. Dan Bacon (R-Neb.), himself a retired Air Force brigadier general, wrote on the social media platform X, “Intentionally putting classified info on an unclassified application is the real crime here.”

He also told a reporter, “The White House is in denial that this was not classified or sensitive data. They should just own up to it and preserve credibility.”

The only problem is that Defense Secretary Hegseth isn’t showing much of an appetite to “own up to it.” Asked directly at a press conference on March 28 in the Philippines about whether he should be held accountable for the misstep, he dodged the question completely. 

When President Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made the equally egregious error of failing to promptly disclose his hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery to either Biden, most of his staff or the public, he accepted responsibility, releasing a statement saying: “We did not handle this right, and I did not handle this right. I should have told the president about my cancer diagnosis. I should have told my team and the American public. And I take full responsibility. I apologize to my teammates and to the American public.”

Hegseth only continues to deny and deflect that any mistakes were made, but the fact is, he is the one who should be held accountable. He’s the leader of the Department of Defense, which planned and carried out the strikes – successfully, by the way – and the buck stops with him.

Our nation’s Secretary of Defense simply should have known better about how to securely plan a coordinated attack on an enemy and communicate those plans with the appropriate members of the cabinet in a way that didn’t put lives at risk. 

Or maybe he shouldn’t have known better.

As a general philosophy, I think presidents should be given the leeway by Congress to nominate and seat the cabinet selections they choose, barring any previously undisclosed controversy rendering them unfit for the post. President Trump won the election, and he deserves to surround himself with the team he believes will best execute his vision for the country. 

Secretary Hegseth faced a fair degree of controversy himself during the nomination process, specifically around allegations of past alcohol abuse, threatening behavior toward a spouse, and public conduct that some described as offensive. He adamantly denied the allegations, much of which were made by anonymous sources, and Republicans rallied behind him to secure passage of his nomination.

So, in practice, those controversies did not derail his nomination.

What should have, however, is something unrelated to those allegations, namely, that he is completely unqualified for the job.

The Department of Defense, according to its website, employs more than three million service members and civilians, has a budget of nearly one trillion dollars, and operates across nearly 5,000 sites in more than 160 countries. 

In other words, it’s literally one of the largest organizations in the world.

And what makes Pete Hegseth qualified to lead such an organization? A look at his resume says not much.

Granted, the 44-year-old Hegseth is a smart guy. He was the valedictorian of his high school class, has degrees from Princeton and Harvard, and has published five books.

He’s also a decorated U.S. Army war veteran, having served in Iraq and Afghanistan and ultimately attained the rank of major, which would theoretically have put up to a couple hundred soldiers under his command.

Hegseth spent several years running Concerned Veterans for America, a small nonprofit group. According to its 2015 990 form filed with the IRS (the latest I could find), they had about 160 employees at the time, a revenue of about $16 million, and made just over $100,000 in grants. Their website currently lists the bios of just under 40 employees.

He also ran a small political advocacy group called Vets for Freedom for a couple years. It doesn’t appear to still be functioning. During his confirmation hearings, there were multiple allegations raised about his financial mismanagement at both organizations.

Hegseth ran for one of Minnesota’s senate seats in 2012 but lost in the primary after raising about $160,000 for his campaign.

Of course, most Americans know Hegseth from his roughly ten years of national airtime as a Fox News contributor and host.

So, to sum it up, he’s smart, he’s a patriot, he’s run a couple small organizations with not much impact or managerial responsibility of scale, hasn’t held elected office, and presents well on TV. 

And now he’s leading a workforce of nearly three million people, a budget of nearly a trillion dollars, and has the safety and security of our entire country in his hands. 

What could go wrong? 

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former leader of the Senate, thought that a lot could go wrong and voted against Hegseth’s nomination, one of three senate Republicans to do so. In his statement about his vote, he said that leading the Pentagon presents “a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests. Mr. Hegseth has failed as yet to demonstrate that he will pass that test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.”

On Sunday, May 30, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) joined fellow Republican Senator Wicker in calling for the Pentagon’s Inspector General to investigate the matter, a good first step. We’ll see where it goes.

When news broke about the Signal leak, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), an Army veteran who sits on the Armed Services Committee, posted online: “Only one word for this: FUBAR,” using the acronym favored among the military when describing an undeniable screw-up like the leak. “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition” is the polite version of FUBAR. I prefer the alternate F-word version.

FUBAR indeed.