Having avoided making any real contribution to this debate for a while, as a past U21 coach I'd like to make a couple of points:
First, the term 'succession plan' has been thrown around far to loosely. I am not aware that there actually has ever been a succession plan, other than encouraging managers who are interested in taking on the gig in the future to take an active role in assisting the current U21 coach. And certaintly anyone is welcome to come on board to help out with the team if they wish.
I am certaintly also not aware of a clique of managers who conspire to vote for a certain person. If there is, where is my invite?
People base their voting decisions on a range of factors, and the NT speech/debate thread I think forms a small part of that. Mostly, I base who I vote for (and I imagine many others do) on how they have managed their own team, my interactions with the manager in the past, and what I have seen them write on the forums (both on here and the offsite). That stuff is all I really have to go on when decide who would make a good manager.
Basically, if I've never heard of you before, and your own team hasn't been that successful, then you are going to have to write one heck of an election speech to get my vote
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I think getting people involved in the team prior to actually taken on the gig is more of a screening device rather than a 'sucession plan', and its worked pretty well so far - the Aus NT and U21 teams have generally punched well above their weight, largely due to getting the right managers to run them.
This has probably all been said so far though, since I'm to lazy to read the thread fully word for word