I have mentioned here many times how often a writer hears people say wistfully, “I can SAY it, why can’t I WRITE it?”

My reply would be, “Can you fix a television set?”

They would say no and I would go: “If you can’t just go and fix a TV set from natural talent, why do you think you can write without learning how?”

But, as has happened so often in my life, maybe my perfect reply was wrong, or at least incomplete.

Most who say they can say it really can’t say it. What I mean is that what they know is what would pass on an exam. But saying something so that someone, who doesn’t already know it, can understand it is a whole different ball game.

Expertise gets you a job, but explanation rules the world.

I have also talked a number of times about the creation of the Federal Senior Executive Service, which put all grades above GS-15, army colonel level, into a single category. It abolished the old “supergrades”, GS-16 to GS-18. Formerly one began as a specialist down on the bottom rungs and then got promoted, inside the same specialty, all the way to GS-18.

Meanwhile, back on planet earth, real businesses would hire a successful big bakery executive to run a publishing firm. At a certain point the point is not how many kinds of bread you can name, but how you can manage a large group of people.

So in the real world executives cease to be specialists.

Which brings us back to explanations.

In the big leagues you are dealing with a congressman who has stuff going on in two committees and on the Floor at the same time. You cannot deal with somebody on that level by delivering a lecture.

The moment Ron Paul found out I had been a senior staffer, his whole attitude changed. The whole talk took about three clock minutes.

We talked about John Ashbrook’s murder, his own prospects and a couple of other things.

Until you learn explanation, you stay way down in the chain of command.