From the perspective of someone who enlisted in 1967 and served alongside a bunch of WW II and Korea veterans, the slow slide into mediocrity of our military has been going on for at least the past 50 years. I'd set the "political promotion" bar quite a bit lower- - - - -somewhere around O-4 or O-5. Anyone who advances above about O-4 had better have a pair of lips that are an exact fit to the backside of the next guy up the chain of command! One of the big reasons I chose to leave the Air Force after two enlistments was the fact that a lot of the oldtimers were a bunch of drunks, and the new troops in the pipeline were a bunch of dopers. That left us lower level NCOs in a very bad position, unable to count on either our leadership, or the youngsters we were tasked with training and supervising. Being the meat in the sandwich was not a good place to be!
Jerry
