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Until recently, I never thought of myself as material for a high-level federal appointment. For one thing, the background investigation would be embarrassing, and for another, I'm like most Baby Boomers in that I find it impossible to believe that anyone my age could hold a position of responsibility.
But then I read an article about some of George Bush the Younger's cabinet appointments, and these men had arrived with collections of maxims and rules.
There are 154 of Rumsfeld's Rules
that have been
collected and distilled by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, among them it's easier to get into something
than out of it,
and If you develop rules, never
develop more than 10.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill puts his principles into
three questions about how people are treated in the
workplace, and Secretary of State Colin Powell has lessons
like You don't know what you can get away with until you
try.
Over the years, I've come up with my own collection, and in the hope that it might get me a cushy government job, I now offer these gems of wisdom to the public:
Quillen's Law of Public Meetings: The amount of time that a public body spends discussing an issue is in inverse proportion to the importance of that issue.
This arose about 20 years ago at a Salida City Council meeting, where a multi-million dollar budget was passed without discussion, and then they took more than an hour talking about where to get the best deal on new light bulbs for the water-treatment plant.
This also applies to private sessions, like business
meetings. But in those circumstances, there's a reason --
if it was an important matter, like money, the boss would
have already decided it before the meeting. So all that's
left to talk about is the high-fritter-factor stuff, like
the limits on dress-down Friday
and whether the
telephone should be answered, on those occasions when the
voice-mail-from-hell-system isn't working, with Good
morning
or Business Name. How may I direct your
call?
Quillen's Principle of Automotive Operation: The water pump in your vehicle will always wait until the first really cold night in October to go out, so that you'll get miserably cold and wet when you open the hood to see what's wrong. To put this another way, water pumps never die on warm summer evenings.
Quillen's Maxim of Automotive Repair: No matter how you position yourself when you're bleeding brakes, some hydraulic fluid will squirt into your eye, and you'll spend at least 15 minutes writhing in pain.
Quillen's Rule of Filing: If you just throw it away, you'll need it on the day after the trash is picked up. If you file it, then it's 10,000 to 1 that you'll never need it, but if you do, you won't be able to find it even though you know you filed it.
Quillen's Standard for Computer Software: Any time that you are comfortable with a program and intimately know its command syntax, short-cuts, bugs, work-arounds and the like, then it will either be upgraded in fundamentally incompatible ways, or the company that made it will go out of business.
First Corollary: The software upgrade, to function properly, will require that you buy new hardware, which has its own set of bugs and quirks.
Second Corollary: If you try to get around this by just using your old familiar programs indefinitely, as I have with WordStar 7.0C since 1992, people will mock and deride you. Learn to recognize their scorn for what it really is -- a mask for their jealousy.
Third Corollary: When there are problems, the computer maker will say it's a problem with the operating system. The operating system people will say it's problem with a peripheral. The peripheral people will say it's a cable problem. Always have a lot of spare cables at hand, because sometimes they're right.
Quillen's Method of Predicting Jurisprudence: Read the briefs and arguments, and interview the lawyers if possible. Come to your own conclusion about what is just, fair and reasonable in this case. And then, if you want your prediction to be accurate at least 90 percent of the time, predict that the court will rule exactly opposite of what seemed just, fair and reasonable to you.
Quillen's Law of Intoxication: Sober people never tell you how sober they are. It's always the guy who's three sheets to the wind who insists that he's capable of driving.
Quillen's Principle of Plumbing: Your toilet will clog and overflow at 5:30 p.m. on the Friday before a three-day weekend when you have a lot of company arriving, and every plumber in town isn't answering his phone.
If these don't get me at least a deputy assistant secretary appointment, that's probably just as well. After all, there are Quillen's Three Historical Reasons Why Journalists Should Not Hold Public Office: Warren Harding, Benito Mussolini and V.I. Lenin were all in journalism before they went into politics.
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