Tonight, I caught up with Utah Governor Gary Herbert’s chief of staff, Mike Mower, at a Salt Lake County Young Republican meeting. Mower had a few simple pieces of advice that I thought were interesting.
Rather than push conservative talking points or take the opportunity to push the Governor’s agenda (ok, other than a plug for Governor Herbert’s main goal to create jobs and grow the economy, but that was about it), Mower shared three pieces of advice that, really, are good common sense and could apply in almost any career, not just in politics.
They could all be summed up in one word: tact.
1. “Be nice” was Mower’s first piece of advice. If you want to succeed in politics, realize that you will occasionally disagree with people with whom you must later cooperate. It is one thing to disagree on policy, Mower said. It is another thing altogether to attack someone personally. I might also call this the golden rule: treat others as you would have them treat you.
2. “Network,” or connect with others. Engage others, build relationships, and grow your network. “There is energy in interconnectedness.”
3. Last, be knowledgeable. It’s one thing to have an opinion–it’s another thing to have an informed, rationed, and educated opinion, said Mower. When you are knowledgeable, you’ll be more persuasive and people, including policy makers, will listen to you.
Tie these together–the golden rule, interconnectedness, and knowledge–and you might find something like tact: “a keen sense of what to do or say in order to maintain good relations with others or avoid offense,” according to Merriam-Webster. More important than any political philosophy, is how we treat each other, how we interact.
Publius Online is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, a month-long quest to post every day (I know…I’ve missed a few days). Each day should match a letter of the alphabet. Today is the letter T, as in Tact.
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Politicians should definitely be knowledgeable, sadly not all are quite as much as they should be. Being tactful is helpful but if they do a good job then perhaps that’s more important than a politician who tries not to offend in the way of doing his/her job in the best way.