April 8, 2006, Saturday talking dog blogging (7th edition)
And so we come to the third leg of the iron triangle of the great GOP Big Tent coalition, the "corporatist" wing (the other two being the "law and order" and "religious right" wings), as epitomized by the corporatist paradigm, in his own case, frequently as a consultant (which, as you know, begins with "con"), Dogbert, purportedly the pet but actually the master of Scott Adams' comic strip's title character, Dilbert.
Originally named "Dildog", a high risk name vis a vis the religious right wing, Dogbert, like many in the corporatist wing of the GOP, is obsessed with his own power; interestingly, Dogbert is reminiscent of a character in Family Guy, the megalomaniac infant Stewie, rather than the talking dog Brian Griffin. Unlike the other extremely intelligent member of the instant genre, Hector Peabody, Dogbert does not use his power benignly. Further, while Peabody doesn't mislead anyone about his relationship with the boy Sherman (Sherman is Peabody's pet, whereas Dilbert is, officially, Dogbert's master), Dogbert, like the Republican corporatists, insists that his accumulating of wealth and power somehow inures to the benefit of others, even when the accumulation is at their very expense.
(Unlike, say, Dick Cheney or Tom DeLay, Dogbert isn't all bad, as he frequently does intervene to save Dilbert from various situations from time to time. Of course, he often also intervenes to steal any woman in which Dilbert is even marginally interested as well, just as the rich kid in high school or those fraternity assholes you know used to do... hey... nobody's perfect.) Anyway...
We as a nation can now bask in the glory of having elected an M.B.A. president (and corporate executive vice-president), which means, per se, that we have competent managers who are careful stewards of the business of our government, so we needn't give the management of our government another thought.
Of course, once in a while, we have to stop and take a look at just what it is that it really takes to make it really big in American business, or for that matter, American society. Our elected leaders... or Dogbert... give us a pretty good idea.