Practical Wisdom from a Politician

James Baker, civil servant
photo credit: Wikipedia

​It’s actually from a statesman, but that’s not as alliterative. The politician/statesman in question is James Baker, who was White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and Chief of Staff and Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush. This isn’t a political post; I do puh-lenty of that sort of thing over on my “Personal and Political” page. That’s not this.

So I was listening to a new podcast called “The Global Politico” in which Baker was being interviewed. (I have fallen off the cliff about reading/listening to books these days; I’ve switched over almost totally to podcasts and news articles. I’m sure at some point I’ll get back to books. Follow the link if you’d like to listen to the podcast episode and/or read the accompanying article.) Anyway, he’s a wily old fox, I must say, and a fascinating person in his own right. He started out with a bang, discussing some recent controversies, and had this to say:

“Prior preparation prevents poor performance.” Great, great line. Should be framed and on the wall of every officeholder.

“People are policy.” This principle goes along with a statement that comes from many sources: “Character is destiny.”

“If you want people to be in on the landing, they need to be in on the takeoff.”

“The way you do it is so very important.”

These are lessons that I’m still struggling to learn, and it’s always good for me to be reminded of them

On a much smaller scale than the geopolitics of the day, I’m trying to be a little more administratively organized than usual in my leadership of my BSF group. I recently dropped the ball on a minor matter, but this flub showed me that I’m still a ways from where I need to be. Each group serves as auxiliary help in the children’s ministry, usually twice per year. I knew that my group had done this early in the year before I came on as leader, and every week when the announcement was made about whose groups were up I’d listen and think, “Huh. I wonder when it’s going to be our turn? Maybe I’m wrong and it’s only once a year.” It never occurred to me to ask! Somehow I missed that we were up last week. I didn’t hear the heads-up from the previous week, and I guess I deleted the weekly announcement e-mail in a big inbox cleanout. So, suddenly last Tuesday morning, the children’s leader was saying, “And this week we’re having Debi Simons’ group to help” and I said, “Wh-a-a-a-a-t?” I needed to get in touch with them, and not everyone read her e-mail, and some people came and were sort of confused. It was no big deal. But it was easily avoided.

So, I’ll end this post with further words from James Baker: “The important thing is to learn from your mistakes.”

What mistakes could you learn from today?