Hi everyone,

I have decided to share some thoughts inspired by current political issues that may be relevant to professional issues, since that's my focus and I feel like writing on the internet a little bit right now.

Say what you will about frequently embattled Democrat political personality Hillary Clinton and both her good and (very) bad choices, and I have, she does have some significance in our political establishment. In particular, although her husband Bill Clinton deserves plenty of criticism that can be saved for another time, I argue that to liberals, he was the only very good somewhat liberal President of my lifetime (I was born in 1986). Other than Al Gore and Katie Hill, Clinton's husband is the only serious high-level elected political leader of my lifetime who was any good at all (aside from the truly wonderful fact that America said "yes" and caused Barack Obama to win a US election as a black man--frankly, sadly, it's about as good to liberals like me at this point in retrospect as having had O. J. Simpson win the White House (which is of course still very much better than Donald Trump's win)) that I can think of.

In this article, she shares some thoughts:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/clinton-time-careful-thinking-wins-194643770.html

Clinton seems to be arguing for some moderate compromises, and included this thought-provoking sound-bite-like quote for the article:

"I understand why people want to argue for their priorities. That's what they believe they were elected to do."

My political beliefs are not a secret, but I don't want to focus on them too much right now. Instead, I'd rather discuss some strategic implications that one could think of from analyzing these two sentences a little bit. Here are two questions inspired by this, which I'll discuss in a political context first:

1) When should anyone who is debating ever argue for something other than his/her priorities?

2) Assuming that political leaders are in part elected to argue for their priorities that they've discussed clearly and loudly with voters, what else might political leaders need to do beyond that and perhaps in resource-wise competition with that priority?

Here are my answers:

1) The number one interference with any leader's political priorities is going to be DEALS. In the case of Clinton's election, I believe she failed to participate in one other priority which she mistakenly rejected as not part of her role: Educating average American viewers, condescendingly or not, on why it is important to embrace tolerance of all different kinds and reject prejudice. Other than that, to my mind, the only reason to walk back argumentation in support of the priorities of you and your key backers ("clients" in a sense) is to support these priorities with deals instead--agreements, hopefully binding ones, that involve exchanges that are ideally going to be non-outrageous, not extreme sacrifices (ask yourself: Leaving aside the existence of currency for a moment, since there are no allowed bribes in politics: What have you got in abundant supply that you could trade without regret for something you really want politically? (Emails? Changing your mind? Critical advice? Support for a harmless law or cause? Forgiveness? Emotional self-control or a change of tone or message?)), and, I assert, theoretically unassailable from a "good form" perspective to hypothetical educated privacy invaders who might theoretically somehow discern what your deal was even if it was a secret--the deal should be as much of an "academic masterpiece" as possible and one that you would never be ashamed of no matter who knew about it. In short, when it's important, make the "perfect masterpiece deal" every time, time permitting, especially when that's your job. If you give away any resources or are "too generous or sloppy at negotiating," make sure that it is your own personal resources that you have given up, not someone else's.

2) Quite simply, the main thing a political leader might to do is temporarily entertain someone else's axioms and assumptions, and clearly articulate the case to one's own group of key supporters for making a certain deal or compromise. I.e., you might have to argue for someone else's perspective--without lying, betraying your base, or saying or promoting anything unethical or non-beneficial to your base. If you can't reconcile your base's interests with basic ethics and human decency, you should immediately resign. In short, the notion that any leader might have "betrayed" his or her base is pretty much the epitome of a failed career in politics if it is true, according to me. Betrayal and unethical behavior should be literally impossible for you, even if you have a heart attack while speaking in public.

To map both of these things to professional life, just consider the idea of "your clients or customers" as "your base." You should be willing to consider making fair and ethical deals to help your customers--without betraying them or damaging their interests at all--that might devote some resources to a cause you don't care about all that much, or maybe even one that you are not too pleased with. The core principle, again, is: If you were to fall victim to 100% "subtlety and secrecy failures," you should still have nothing at all to be ashamed of, including with respect to your deals and your refusal to betray your clients and customers. In fact, at any "level" of understanding--if someone knew a certain 10% portion of the details of your secret deals as opposed to all of them, for example--no appearance of you betraying anyone should ever appear to an onlooker. This is true because in fact, you do not know how you are analyzed by potentially millions or more individuals who might be aware of you and your professional activities--some of your closely-held secret ideas might have already been reverse-engineered to exactly what you had in mind when you thought of them, or something else very smart that is closely related to what you were thinking and thus quite revealing about, e.g., how much power you put behind a certain initiative that you may have been known to have championed. In short, I assert that true betrayal, even subtle betrayal, is a form of weakness; even if you never feel the cost, the metaphorical knife in retaliation for your betrayal (especially on a grand scale) is in you somewhere, courtesy of the economy. The same thing holds true for (serious) illegal activity, also according to me.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. As you can see, I didn't put a ton of effort into "perfect writing" of the above, but I hoped to take a little time to convey some exposition about some of my core philosophical ideas about professionalism, ethics, and secrecy. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts regarding these ideas if you would like to!

-Philip White (philipjwhite@yahoo.com)