B. U. G. S.

Your doctor, your preacher, your lawyer and your accountant are in a position to give you orders. So is your “superior.” No one gets all his orders obeyed.

On an organization chart, the guy two ranks up routinely calls a “subordinate” to find out what should be done in a particular area. My boss — note the lack of quotes — John Ashbrook, was called for an interview by his state’s largest newspaper — the Plain Dealer.

He told the writer that I would call with what he had to say, gave me the number, and he had no idea what he had said until the the Sunday paper came out.

Hindenburg was commander of the German forces in World War I but it was pretty well know that Ludendorff ran the show.

It is understatement to say that an organization chart doesn’t tell you the real story. Everybody says he knows that, but I notice that every succeeding Administration in Washington, no matter how militantly it goes in, is tamed in each Department by the career staff getting them all tied with a “reorganization” instead of with changing policy.

In other words, as usual, everybody KNOWS the chart doesn’t tell the truth, but when faced with a situation where this fact is crucial, he hasn’t THOUGHT about it.

I keep telling people that “the President really doesn’t have any power.” He is so tied down by fiscal reality and election reality that his opinions don’t really make that much difference.

Real power is the ability to make the world the way you want it. How much does the president have that ability? He is only able to balance considerations. He even gets those balances from his advisors.

No matter whether they are called monarchies, anarchies, democracies, or dictatorships, all real governments are oligarchies.

Reagan was criticized for working forty hours a week. He had stepped into the presidency after governing the largest state in the country for eight years, and he knew the limitations of a chief executive.

When asked about Reagan’s forty hours, I would say, “When a hand reaches for the Red Phone at three o’clock in the morning, I don’t want that hand shaking with fatigue.”

I knew a self-made multimillionaire who said, “If I HAVE to work more than forty hours a week, I fire somebody.”

Ben Franklin has been quoted down through the centuries as the ultimate advocate of hard work, “early to bed, early to rise” and so on. If you actually read his short autobiography, it sounds startling modern.

Franklin said, yes, he got a reputation for hard work by waking everybody up in Philadelphia pushing his wheelbarrow down the street at six o’clock in the morning.
He points out that what was important was not being there at six, but that “ I became KNOWN for it.”

It was public relations. If anybody THOUGHT about it, why the hell would a PRINTER need to be pushing a loudly rattling wheelbarrow down the street to work every morning?

But Franklin knew damned well that, then or now, no one who wanted to preach would THINK about it.

They didn’t.