LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE

You may know about this embodiment of the term "upward failure":

Home Depot Inc. Chief Executive Officer Robert Nardelli's $210 million severance package drew criticism as an "outrage" and threatened to escalate the debate over whether U.S. executive pay is excessive.

Nardelli, 58, was ousted after Atlanta-based Home Depot's shares dropped 7.9 percent and the company lost market share to Lowe's Cos. during a six-year reign in which he earned $225 million. Nardelli's exit pay includes $20 million in cash and compensation earned and not yet received....

Nardelli's separation package, called for in his contract with the company, also includes a $9 million payment for long-term incentive awards, $44 million in previously earned and vested deferred shares, $32 million in retirement benefits and $18 million in other compensation....

It probably won't surprise you that he's a big fan of another embodiment of the term "upward failure":

...So far this year [2003], Home Depot employees and the company political action committee have contributed $31,000 to the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

... Robert Nardelli ... who took control of Home Depot in 2000, has made at least three trips to the White House during the Bush administration. Most recently, Nardelli was recognized at a November ceremony honoring eight companies for supporting workers who had been deployed in Iraq. In December 2002, Nardelli accompanied NASCAR champion Tony Stewart -- who drives a car sponsored by Home Depot -- to the Oval Office. A few months earlier, Nardelli attended a White House conference on volunteerism, an event that led to his appointment to Bush's Council on Service and Civic Participation....

More, from 2004:

...Tonight, Bush headlined a fund-raiser at the Atlanta home of Robert Nardelli, chief executive officer of Home Depot Inc., the world's largest home-improvement chain. The $3.2 million raised will go to the Republican National Committee, Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

Nardelli gave $25,000 to the Republican National Committee and $2,000 to the Bush campaign in the past year. The Home Depot political action committee, to which Nardelli contributed $5,000 last year, gave 78 percent of its donations to Republicans, according to the nonpartisan tracking group PoliticalMoneyLine.

Four of Nardelli's family members in Atlanta have given a combined $8,000 to Bush, according to Federal Election Commission records. Last Dec. 5, Nardelli closed a Home Depot store to the public in suburban Baltimore for a few hours so Bush could visit the store and tout his $1.7 trillion tax cuts.

Well, they should be a mutual admiration society -- they've both got theirs, and that's all they care about. Competence is for suckers.