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

[Nigel Roberts]

Eschew obfuscation!


On 20/01/17 07:05, Greg Shatan wrote:
> 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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