Impeachment witnesses say they are “demoralized”; America’s teachers: “First time?”
As a career teacher, watching the House impeachment hearings has been a sort of “out of body experience.” Like the rest of America, I’ve witnessed a parade of brilliant, highly-educated, dedicated foreign service diplomats deliver eloquent, insightful testimony under the most pressure-packed circumstances they’ve ever experienced, and do so with grace, elegance, and professionalism.
At the same time, reports have surfaced that the State Department is experiencing unprecedented levels of dysfunction and demoralization, due in large part to employees feeling a lack of support from their boss, the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo:
Revelations that Pompeo was unwilling to defend career State Department officials under political attack have damaged his standing within the Department and devastated morale there, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.
To be sure, this phenomenon began under Sec. Pompeo’s predecessor, the supremely and almost comically unqualified Rex Tillerson, plucked from his comfy CEO’s perch at Exxon Mobil to set up shop at Foggy Bottom.
From the beginning, it was clear that Tillerson was ill-suited to the job, seemingly more focused on the perks of the position than he was qualified for the…um, responsibilities of the office (Narrator: “It did not go well.”):
But even before all that, sitting in a silk-upholstered chair in front of a fireplace in his office, CONTINUE READING: Impeachment witnesses say they are "demoralized"; America's teachers: "First time?" | Eclectablog
