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January 30, 2003
Style
Style
It's no secret I'm a big fan of Donald Rumsfeld...one of the last of the old style boys. Blunt and to the point. I've liked him since the first press conference I saw, in which he interrupted a press member to explain that no, "the White House," being an inanimate object, did not say anything. People speak, houses don't. I love a man who believes the precise use of words matter. It seems however, that not everyone admires his style....he's hurt their wittle feewings."Please pull together a list of all of those documents we talked about yesterday that the Joint Staff, the chairman and the vice chairman seemed to think they have to put out on vision, strategies and all that stuff," Mr. Rumsfeld wrote in the Jan. 3 memo. "We ought to get our arms around them, compare them with what we put out overall and get a single [Department of Defense] document rather than a Joint Staff document. It is just a lot of people spinning their wheels doing things we probably have to edit and improve."
So what's the problem?
The Times quoted two Pentagon employees as saying the memo revealed the secretary's true feelings about their work.
"It's an indication of what he really thinks of us and the work we do and the quality of it," said one employee, who asked not to be identified.
Well, boo-hoo, let's all cry a river for the poor mistreated Pentagon employees. Granted while it's not very pleasant to be told what you've written is worthless drivel & needs to be re-done, it's even less pleasant to receive badly written documents...you know, the ones that you have to re-read 4 or 5 times to determine what, if anything, the person is trying to say.
Mr. Rumsfeld said, "It's no fun for somebody to have their work sent back four or five times, six times, seven times, and if that disturbs people, and their sensitivities are such that it bothers them, I'm sorry. But that's life, because this stuff we're doing is important. We're going to get it done well. We're going to get it done right."
Doing things until they're right. What a concept! Hint: if you do something right the first time, you don't have to do it over. It's call "constructive criticism" people...it's not personal. There's this thing called "being professional" which means that you understand the separation between doing your job and your precious little ego. It's how we lawyers will fight each other to the death in the courtroom, and then go have lunch together.
"We have done so much in the last two years," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And it doesn't happen by standing around with your finger in your ear hoping everyone thinks that that's nice."
What's wrong with that?
Posted by Rita at January 30, 2003 07:52 AM