Failure

 Tom Schactman, an Eric Hoffer biographer, on Page 76 of his biography about Hoffer (American Iconoclast The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer) wrote that: " Hoffer's exaggeration quotient was more obvious in such lines as, 'Failure in the management of practical affairs seem to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs . . .'"

I have two reactions. I have very mixed feelings about Shactman. I do not trust him completely, He understands Hoffer to some degree, and to some degree I dislikes him and does not understand him. He admires Hoffer, but in part disapproves of him.  I sense that Shactman thinks Hoffer is racist, or not a good man, not as wise or truthful or original as he claims. I deny all these assumed accusations of Hoffer's character and nobility. Shactman misconstrues Hoffer's exaggerating as lying and self-indulgent ranting, and it is neither. Part of what seemed to offend Shactman about Hoffer may have been Shactman's recoiling against Hoffer's extroverted, sometimes loudmouthed, bombastic expression of opinion.

Hoffer exaggerates (not in truth content) but his exaggeration is more a rhetorical device to drive home the point that he is making, for the sheer artistic expression, and somehow Hoffer moderate ontology requires paradox (expressed as exaggeration) to capture how complex life is.

My second reaction is to pinpoint Shactman's own example of Hoffer's distorting the truth or exaggerating: "Failure in the management of practical affairs seem to be the qualification for success in the management of public affairs."

Dennis Prager and many modern conservatives decry public experts (Well-credentialed and specialized so everyone assumes they are the educated elite to run every aspect of society, allowing citizens increasingly little freedom to manage their own affairs in their own bumbling, amateurish way.)--public employees and their consultants--for wrecking everything they touch.

Somehow their failure or lack of experience, skill, competence, and success in practical matters and in the world of business makes them fit to run society. Common sense would seem to indicate that if one cannot even run one's own affairs well, that should be the red flag for one's inability and unworthiness to run society. It is not: these fools are running society into the ground through their control, operating and directing the public institutions. They are stupid, arrogant, dishonest, mean, evil and arrogant. 

That is the gist of what Hoffer was describing above with his exaggerative tone, words, and prose.