The first speech I wrote on Capitol Hill involved a lesson. I was explaining a contact I had made and what I had found out, and I didn’t know how to describe it. I put in “a member of my staff.” I learned the first rule of senior staff: The staff IS the congressman.

This also saved me a LOT of trouble. This was the first time my congressman heard about it, but the speech said, “I,” the congressman, made the contact.

On Capitol Hill, the only time staff is mentioned is “staff error,” just as a good CPA always tries to convince the IRS that what you did wrong was his own “accounting error.”

The payoff for this anonymity is HUGE. First of all, your job as a staffer does not depend on reelecting YOU. All credit goes where it MUST go if you are to survive with your boss. Secondly, you are constantly reminded that your boss takes full responsibility for what YOU do, and the more senior you become the more responsibility for HIM you take on.

It also means you have to withhold your own admiration for your boss. His speeches cannot say flatly what a wonderful guy HE is.

Now let’s get to your seminar leader here. Let us begin with a basic that no one who has not devoted his life to a cause will not normally think of, but is obvious ONCE YOU THINK OF IT. That fact is that you don’t make these kinds of sacrifices for praise. If you go this far for praise, you are not only an egomaniac, you are a CLINICAL egomaniac.

Like Mar[wins]ing and Grizzard, the very idea of being thought queer makes my insides icy, but it is not even on the scale of our cause. My name is useful to us, so we need to defend it. I am a major part of our PRODUCT, so I need defending in the right places. But this is not for ME, though I am human enough to admit I prefer praise to UNFAIR criticism.

But you are not going to get people into a group like BUGS or Bob’s Blog, which begin with the word “Bob’s” if said “BOB” is a total winkout.

On the other hand, one of my BRAGS is that I make mistakes and I expect you to point out not only my factual errors but when I am making an ass of myself. In our Wordist age, this is a total contradiction. How can you unstintingly praise Chairman Bob and at the same time CORRECT him?

This is a total contradiction to the Wordist because a Wordist is a volunteer idiot. An idiot looks on this as a contradiction. To a non-idiot, it is a BALANCE. I wrote speeches for my boss admitting errors I made in his name. Sometimes it goes too far to be blamed on the staff.

Bob is not that worried about Bob the person. I am not a clinical egomaniac. I AM worried if someone is allowed to attack OUR good name and I have to do the contradicting. It is NEVER as good for one to defend oneself as for someone else to do it.

And NO, do not look for some recent incident that made me say this. You are doing a fine job in this area, both here and on SF. I just think this points up some good lessons.