John Lombardi was recently fired from his position as president of the LSU System. The firing, orchestrated by Gov. Piyush Jindal, was primarily the result of Lombardi’s refusal to parrot the party line on funding and because he insisted on being his own man. Whether Lombardi’s management style was best for LSU or not, his firing was just another in a long line of dismissals of anyone who dared think or speak for himself – something simply not allowed by Tsar jindal.
This piece, a classic parody, was written by Lombardi and posted on his blog Inside Higher Ed. Critics say this piece has no moral, no point. We couldn’t disagree more. Only the staunchest Jindal loyalist or someone who has no sense of Louisiana political history could make such a claim.
While we offer no opinion on Lombardi’s tenure at LSU, we nevertheless feel this should be required reading for not only Gov. Piyush Jindal but members of the Legislature as well. Accordingly, we offer it for your edification.
By John V. Lombardi
Imagine a small, developing country of perhaps 3 million people. Like many other small developing countries, our imaginary nation is rich in natural resources, its economy has prospered on the export of agricultural crops and benefited from the revenue generated by petroleum production, refining, and support services. Its history, like some of its counterparts in the developing world, reflects a constant structural economic weakness covered by a colorful culture, truly creative and charming people, and an often dramatic sequence of past events. Civil wars, civilian uprisings, and the failure to compete with more dynamic and successful nations have left our country with a small, wealthy, interbred, and interconnected elite, a growing entrepreneurial middle class, and a large much less prosperous population of rural residents and urban poor.
Riven by cultural conflicts generations old and struggling with an archaic political system, the country periodically falls into the hands of populist demagogues and petty tyrants. In between, often when prosperity strikes, the country’s significant group of responsible leaders seeks to enhance legal and institutional structures to improve its ability to attract and retain internationally competitive economic enterprises, but the periods of responsible leadership fade fast, and the nation reverts to a pattern of clientele government, backroom deals, and populist rhetoric.
Over all, its population remains significantly less educated relative to its peers in nearby nations, although a structure of incentives and subsidies support good education for the children of the growing middle class and the political and economic elite. Other groups of citizens struggle through underfunded and inadequate schools, and those who survive often find themselves excluded from post-secondary opportunities by weak academic preparation and high cost.
Periodically, reformers achieve significant positions, supported by responsible citizen leadership, and demonstrate major improvements in translating the nation’s extensive resources into true economic change and transformational progress. Their efforts, often promising at first, can collapse when confronted with a structure of privilege, relationships, and politics that remains powerful in spite of the considerable achievements of reform-minded citizens. The reformers, confronted by a resurgence of clientele politics, leave the national stage and return to private life, sometimes abroad in more receptive national climates.
In its current incarnation, this small republic operates with a populist authoritarian government led by individuals in search of advancement to more prosperous and internationally significant posts. Their skillful combination of populist rhetoric, economic manipulation of a state dominated economy, and first-world media management has maintained them in power. The regime has taken every opportunity to create illusions of progress by continuously bleeding the nation’s treasury to buy the participation of foreign companies that receive tax-supported subsidies. Their arsenal of management also includes the use of state resources to conclude beneficial contracts with favored national business interests.
When confronted with opposition, the regime mobilizes its sycophantic adherents and paid partisans to discredit, isolate, and eventually drive out any people with an ability or opportunity to address the real issues and consequences of the regime’s behavior. The technique, developed with great political skill, involves three fronts.
The first is the effort to co-opt anyone with an independent perspective. These individuals receive coveted appointments to government boards, association with the regime’s powerful people, and assurances that the regime will protect their business and personal interests. This works quite effectively with some people, although others choose not to participate, and normally responsible individuals become dependents of the regime, bound to provide whatever support the regime requires.
When this strategy fails, as it often does with independent agency officials of some visibility, the regime turns to a form of more direct engagement. In this second mode, representatives of the regime explain to the official that the better tactic for success during these years would involve a collaborative arrangement with the regime. That collaboration would provide support and regime protection for the official, permitting continued leadership of the agency. But to achieve this protection and collaboration, and to ensure that the agreement to work together is of substance, the regime requires a test of loyalty. This loyalty test requires the official to dispose of close associates whose work the regime dislikes. Absent those associates, the regime’s messengers promise but do not guarantee the official a secure role as a significant leader under the regime’s protection.
This message of threat disguised as offer is usually delivered by reputable business leaders associated with the regime who also maintain a relationship with the non-conforming official. Should the official appear at all reluctant, the regime then reinforces the message by mobilizing their most trusted direct political operatives to echo the message.
When this second more direct approach fails, the regime moves to the third stage and mobilizes its dependents, especially those connected in one way or another to the non-conforming official, and identifies a method to remove the dangerous behavior of regime independence. This involves a conspiracy to exile the offending official, preferably to another nation. Recognizing the transparency of this maneuver, the regime activates its media experts and develops a slanderous rationale for the forced exile. A few courageous people object, but others fall silent, for the price of failing to cooperate with the regime is now clearly revealed.
Once the offending official goes into exile, the regime moves quickly to place a reliable regime loyalist in the agency’s leadership role to consolidate control over the formerly independent entity. Its purchased adherents, careful of their economic and personal relationships with the regime, cover the transactions with bureaucratic formalism while creating opportunities for regime favorites to find a home in the now domesticated agency. This completes another cycle of institutional failure.
In the end, of course, the regime’s time is finite due to national restrictions on re-election, and the regime leadership seeks elevation to more significant and visible international settings. However, to make the move to international position, the regime’s key members must desperately manage to cover over the impact of structural inequality, the destructive effects of mismanaging the economy, and the constant need to feed the purchased business and other elite participants who live from government subsidies and contracts.
The challenge is one of timing. Will the regime escape to higher international office before the consequences of their bad management crash the state?
Such fables as these may not match any known reality, but the moral of the story may well be real.
I see our state leadership as the offending official and his regime is the sold-out members in our state who are supposed to be representing their constituency.
In nations, the answer is usually revolution to get a change that will represent the people.
Could there possibly be a better description/definition of “Teaguing” than this seminal line in Lombardi’s fable?: “When confronted with opposition, the regime mobilizes its sycophantic adherents and paid partisans to discredit, isolate, and eventually drive out any people with an ability or opportunity to address the real issues and consequences of the regime’s behavior. “
Incidentally, the English translation of the Hindi name “Piyush” is “Pius”, aka Pope, who as we know are all infallible.
I don’t know John Lombardi’s record at LSU, but I will tell you that I am a FAN after reading this. Very well written. Thanks for sharing Tom!
John Lombardi was likely the most progressive President LSU has had and that was his failing. Those who have succeeded in that position understood that in the past as well as now they were expected to cater to the big donors and a few powerful legislators. Most Governors stayed away for the most part and only stepped in when confronted by those powerful benefactors. Governor Jindal has gone back to tactics practiced by Huey Long, but without the benevolence. Long built an institution of lasting value through his tyranical methods. Jindal is distroying that same institution through his tyrantical methods. Well done John Lombardi. Thank you for your work.
Sadly, history shows that people like Jindal begin to accrue power this way, by dismantling a struggling system even further, and when they tear it down, the power is totally conssolidated around them and no one can dispute them. This is more akin to the methods used with the rise of Lenin or Stalin, or today, Putin, than the tsars. The tsars ruled by divine right, not by the kind of carnivalesque smoke and mirrors slight of hand used by our governor.
I was going to make the same call — totalitarianism and “The banality of evil.”
… but equally like Nazi Germany — most everyone “just doing as the Furher would have them do” and failing to do any real “thinking” that might put them in some incongruent stance with… well…. their lives. Its one way to avoid any real accountability for the Hell on Earth created but with the price of losing one’s soul – being dead to oneself.
I live in Az. and I don’t know which state has the worst governor!
We’ll take our chances – Wanna trade ?
Trade? Piyush for TanningMom’s older sister? It wouldn’t get better.
One cannot deny the truth of the analogy so well written by Mr. Lombardi. Quite frankly, I would have preferred had it been penned by the hand of another. Does no one else find it hypocritical of Lombardi to speak in criticism of Swindle’s administration and the political elite because he now finds himself as the newest member of the “Teague League?” How can we forget the self-serving email that he sent to his department heads in advance of the 2012 Legislative Session; the one in which he directed them to support Swindle’s pension reform? (See https://louisianavoice.com/2012/02/10/the-plantation-overseer-has-spoken-there-shall-be-no-words-of-discontent-about-the-budget-from-college-administrators/)
Let us remember that Lombardi expected his people to remain silent in the face of education and pension reform. He urged them to “thank” the administration for allocating the proposed 3% increase in LASERS employees’ contributions to the state general fund. He expected them to show their appreciation for placing a burden on a select group of state employees so that cuts to higher education would be avoided, despite the fact that the measure is unconstitutional. He publicly supported the unlawful reform because, in its simplest terms, it would have made his life so much easier. Now that he’s dispossessed from his lofty position, he criticizes the current regime, and effectively indicts the political elite, yet he was as complicit as any in the behaviors that have turned on its ear the noble cause of ethics and transparency in Louisiana government.
Notwithstanding such a fine essay, Mr. Lombardi might have taken a public stand against the administration and its dishonest agenda from the outset. He could not do this, of course, because in his high profile position he must give the appearance of support for his boss’ policies. He chose, however, to be an active player, and that decision is at the root of his hypocrisy.
@ AdvocateforTruth. Just so everyone is aware. Lombardi was “directed” by the governor’s staff to get the word out to LSU faculty and staff to basically shut-up and support the adminsitration’s controversial proposals going through the legislature. That’s exactly what he did in his own style and wit through a sarcastic letter written to faculty (asking them to “thank” the guv’ i.e. please pass the vaseline) while actually directed at the governor’s administration. This was just another nail in his coffin that didn’t go unoticed by the powers that be.
Regarding your last paragraph, Advocatefortruth, I seem to remember that soon after Dr. Lombardi arrived on the scene here in our fine third world state he did hold a news conference expressing concern about what would happen to LSU and all of higher education if the repeal of the Stelly plan advanced.
This most irritated Bobby and his relations with the administration suffered for it. Needless to say, I believe LSU and all of higher education would be better off today if the state had not repealed the Stelly plan. That $300 million sure would come in handy, eh?
I’m glad Lombardi penned this gem. It should be a slap in the face to all of us who have complacently given over our state to Baby Huey.
Per Wikipedia: Fable is a literary genre. A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities such as verbal communication), and that illustrates or leads to an interpretation of a moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be added explicitly in a pithy maxim.
If this really fit the definition of a fable, what animal role would best characterize you-know-who? Several come to mind…