Mardy Grothe - Neverisms

What followed were ten rules that have come to be known as “Richard Nixon’s Ten Commandments of Statecraft .” Five were expressed neveristically:

Never be belligerent, but always be firm.

Never seek publicity that would destroy the ability to get results.

Never give up unilaterally what could be used as a bargaining chip.

Never let your adversary underestimate

what you would do in response to a challenge.

Never lose faith.

Faith without strength is futile, but strength without faith is sterile.

Nixon wasn’t the first U.S. president to be intrigued by the idea of compiling a list of ten guiding principles or ethical imperatives. As a student of history, he was certainly familiar with Thomas Jefferson’s efforts to do the very same thing. Jefferson worked on his project over the course of many years, tinkering with the items on his list as he got new ideas from his reading of ancient Greek thinkers, like Epictetus, or more contemporary European writers. He eventually pared his list down to ten, which he called his “Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life.” Here are the first three:

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

Never spend your money before you have it.

Some of the items in the Decalogue were copied directly from other sources (like that first one, from Lord Chesterfield), while others appeared to be his own creation. Jefferson viewed the sayings as an important set of moral and ethical guidelines, and he recommended them to family members and friends as well.

While people from every walk of life have formulated rules of life, politicians have especially favored the approach. In 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward arranged for the purchase of Alaska from Czar Alexander II of the Russian Empire. The acquisition, which added nearly 600,000 square miles to the territory of the United States, cost the U.S. Treasury $7.2 million (about 1.9 cents per acre). It is now considered one of history’s shrewdest real estate deals, but at the time many American newspaper editorials described Alaska as “a frozen wilderness” and decried the purchase as “Seward’s Folly.” Seward was unruffled by the intense criticism, though, and forged ahead resolutely until the deal was done. After his retirement, he was asked by a friend why he did not respond to the vicious attacks. His reply was immortalized in a 1910 New York Times article titled, “Mottoes That Have Guided Prominent Men to Success”:

Early in my life I made it a rule

never to reply to personal criticisms,

never to defend myself from political attacks.

Seward said he was inspired by a quotation originally authored by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “Never complain, never explain.” About Disraeli’s saying, which we discussed in the classic neverisms chapter, he said:

That rule I have followed faithfully.

I never complain and I never explain,

and I feel that my adherence to this rule has made me what I am.

Many U.S. presidents have cited neveristic rules of life and conduct. After he retired, Martin van Buren was asked what rule he had found most important in all his years of political life. He almost instantly replied:

It is a very simple rule. You can put it in three words:

“Never write letters.”

When politicians put things in writing, he explained, the documents have a way of coming back to haunt them. To guard against the possibility of leaving potentially damaging evidence behind, Van Buren conducted almost all of his political affairs in private conversations. He added: “I would rather travel a hundred miles by stagecoach or packetboat than write one political letter.”

While not putting things in writing has been preferred by many politicians, there are even more subtle methods of conducting political affairs. Some classic ones were articulated by a Boston politician named Martin M. Lomasney, who said:

Never write if you can speak;

never speak if you can nod;

never nod if you can wink.

In the early 1900s, Lomasney was the most powerful politician in Boston, often called “The Czar of Ward Eight” and “The Boston Mahatma.” He didn’t like the description of “political boss,” though, once saying: “A boss gives orders. I don’t. When I want something done, I ask for it. Just before the election we send out suggestions to the voters. We don’t tell ’em how to vote. We just suggest.”

Nearly a half century after Lomasney offered his three neveristic rules, a similar thought was attributed to Earl Long, the younger brother of Huey Long, Jr. Older brother Huey served one term as governor of Louisiana in the 1920s, and Earl was elected to the first of three nonconsecutive terms in 1939. As governor, Earl said:

Never put anything in writing

that you can convey by a wink or a nod.

And when he was serving as the attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer updated these legendary rules of political life:

Never talk when you can nod.

And never write when you can talk.

My only addendum is never put it in an e-mail.

In addition to formulating rules of life for themselves, politicians have also employed them as weapons against their opponents. In 1933, after Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover in the presidential election, leaders of the Republican Party attempted to blame the Great Depression on the Democrats. The attempt failed—largely because the Wall Street crash occurred four years earlier, when Hoover was president. But FDR didn’t just sit idly by as GOP leaders made the charge. In a 1933 speech, he said he had rubbed his eyes in disbelief after reading that a Republican leader said, “It was not a Republican depression but a Democratic depression.” He added:

Now, there is an old and somewhat lugubrious adage that says:

“Never speak of rope in the house of a man who has been hanged.”

In the same way, if I were a Republican leader speaking to a mixed audience,

the last word in the whole dictionary

that I think I would use is that word “depression.”

In the rest of the chapter, we’ll continue our look at political neverisms. As in preceding chapters, I will provide commentary about many of the quotations in an attempt to enhance your enjoyment or deepen your appreciation of them.

Never answer a hypothetical question.MOSHE ARENS

Arens was Israel’s minister of defense when he offered this thought in the early 1980s. The saying has been repeated by scores of politicians—including at least three U.S. presidents—and is now routinely described as a cardinal rule of politics.

Never let the other fellow set the agenda.JAMES BAKER, his rule for a negotiation

As secretary of state during the Reagan administration, Baker was on a diplomatic mission in England when London’s Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying this in 1988.

Never display agony in public in an opinion.HUGO L. BLACK, to Harry Blackmun

Black said this to fellow jurist Blackmun in 1970, shortly after Blackmun had been sworn in as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Black added: “Never say that this is an agonizing, difficult decision. Always write it as though it’s as clear as crystal.”