Picking Leaders: II

Comment by a reader on my post about how China selects its leaders:

I do not think any political system is designed to select the most competent leaders. The best they can get is the most accepted leaders by ALL PARTIES who has a say at the time. Look at Bush. It is pretty hard to find a more incompetent leader than him. AND he got re-elected!

Good point about no political system being designed to select the most competent leaders (except Singapore, but that's another story). My point was that the Party does a huge amount of assessment purportedly based specifically on performance and that's what is supposed to be considered when cadres are promoted. But in fact, when push comes to shove, it's who you know not how you did running XYZ province.