As I get older and sometimes wiser, I gain a better understanding of the basic psychology of why people want to put jerks in charge. Essentially, people believe the jerks will go kick some asses - the right asses - and make things better. In politics this is about jerks not giving all of those undeserving people your hard earned tax dollars. In universities it's about making sure your lazy colleagues, who most certainly don't do as much or as good work as you do, stop getting coddled.
Of course jerks aren't necessarily competent, and they are, well, jerks. They don't necessarily have a good sense of just which, or how many, asses to kick.
