delanceyplace.com 07/12/05 - the ideal political official

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In today's excerpt - Tony Lake, White House staff member, lays out his view of the ideal characteristics in an ideal political official:

"Once, back in late 1992 when Tony Lake was working on the foreign policy transition team with Sandy Berger, just before the Clinton people took office, they had discussed qualities that made the ideal public official. They divided potential candidates into four essential categories: talented but high maintenance, talented and low maintenance, not very talented but low maintenance, and not very talented but high maintenance. The rarest person of all, the perfect specimen, was high value, low maintenance. These were talented people with great ego control and a shared sense of common purpose. What they did was not about getting publicity, but about the value of the act itself."