Thomas Schweich (who has come up on TAPPED before) gets a bit ridiculous today while writing about young people. His basic point is quite sound: Qualified people should work in government offices that handle important business, and political appointees should never be chosen as rewards for campaign donations. All fine and good.
But Schweich frames this as attack on "twenty-somethings," writing about how young people in the Bush administration were known for their incompetence, and therefore all young people are incompetent. I would note that it was mainly people over thirty who, I don't know, launched the Iraq War, which was a terrible mistake. But I would not make the mistake of conflating the category of incompetent Bush administration officials and people over the age of thirty, and I would encourage Schweich not to conflate the categories of patronage hires in the Bush administration (wonder how many went to Regent University?) with people under the age of thirty. The real critique here is of administrative incompetency, not young people, and Schweich's decision to combine the two makes him come off as a humorless curmudgeon who's a bit out of touch. Which, being over the age of thirty, he probably is.
--Tim "obviously in his twenties" Fernholz
