[Ws2-jurisdiction] Advice from Winston Churchill and Joe Biden

[Greg Shatan]

I came across two pieces of advice which I pass on for your edification and
amusement.

The first is a World War II memo from Winston Churchill on Brevity.  A copy
is below and attached.


​

The second is an anecdote told by Joe Biden that just appeared in the New
York Times, which I've excerpted below.  The article is at
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/magazine/joe-biden-i-wish-to-hell-id-just-kept-saying-the-exact-same-thing.html

"Biden referred to a well-worn story about how, as a freshman senator, he
saw Jesse Helms, the archconservative North Carolina Republican, ripping
into a piece of disabilities legislation. Biden was furious about it and
began attacking Helms to Mike Mansfield, the Democratic Senate majority
leader. Puffing on his pipe, Mansfield asked Biden if he knew that Helms
and his wife had adopted a disabled 9-year-old boy no one else would
take. “*Question
a man’s judgment, not his motives*,” Mansfield instructed.

Biden, who was invited by Helms decades later to give his eulogy, is
convinced that absorbing Mansfield’s advice is what allowed him to work
with Senate Republicans during the Obama years, to negotiate the approval
of the New Start nuclear-arms-reduction treaty, the end of “don’t ask,
don’t tell” and the expansion of the earned-income tax credit, among other
accomplishments. His approach to Trump, he said, wouldn’t be fundamentally
different. “It falls in that category,” Biden told me. “It’s one thing to
say: ‘I think the proposal on the following is a serious mistake. I think
it’s gonna do the following damage.’ It’s another thing to say, ‘The guy’s
a f___ing idiot, and he is an egomaniac who’s a whatever.’ ”

Greg
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