A Focused Discipline

President Obama and President Clinton had some things in common, but they also had respects in which they were very different. President Clinton was unlikely to begin a meeting on schedule, but he was even less likely to end it on schedule, so you were likely to get a little more than your allotted time. President Obama, meetings could begin early and so you needed to be in your office and ready to come downstairs in case he wanted to begin a meeting early. You had better be pretty sure that you were able to say what you had to say quickly because when your time was over, your time was over, and he was going to move on.

President Clinton was less than 100 percent certain to have read your memo. But if he hadn’t read it he would read it as you summarized it for him, and he would master it very quickly. President Obama was virtually certain to have read your memo and to have read it extremely thoughtfully.

President Obama brought a focused discipline. He didn’t want to talk about things that the President didn’t need to get involved in. If his economic advisor couldn’t figure out the difference between subordinated debt and preferred stock, he certainly didn’t think it was his job to help. President Clinton was prepared to try to do his job, but was also prepared to offer you a tremendous amount of advice on how to do your job.

President Obama was focused on how, whatever particular issue was being discussed, related to the rest of the issues in his Presidency and the rest of the factors that were present in any political situation. President Clinton was focused on those things, but was likely also focused on things he had read somewhere or conversations he had had at some point in the past. I remember his once telling the Secretary of the Transportation at substantial length about new developments in environmentally friendly concrete and how that needed to be considered. President Obama’s approach was a more sharply focused approach.

Conversations with Bill Kristol: Larry Summers

"He is thoroughly predictable in having gone through every piece of paper that he gets,” said Tom Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser from 2010 to 2013. “You’ll come in in the morning, it will be there: questions, notes, decisions.”

"Obama After Dark: The Precious Hours Alone"

You have to exercise,” he said, for instance. “Or at some point you’ll just break down.” You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.” The self-discipline he believes is required to do the job well comes at a high price. “You can’t wander around,” he said. “It’s much harder to be surprised. You don’t have those moments of serendipity. You don’t bump into a friend in a restaurant you haven’t seen in years. The loss of anonymity and the loss of surprise is an unnatural state. You adapt to it, but you don’t get used to it—at least I don’t.”

"Obama's Way" by Michael Lewis

Standing in his favorite classroom in the austere main building, sharp-witted students looming above him, Mr. Obama refined his public speaking style, his debating abilities, his beliefs.

“He tested his ideas in classrooms,” said Dennis Hutchinson, a colleague. Every seminar hour brought a new round of, “Is affirmative action justified? Under what circumstances?” as Mr. Hutchinson put it.

"Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart"

Addendum: Letters to President Obama + Obama's class Current Issues in Racism and the Law ("Taking Professor Obama's Class") + "Breaking the War Mentality" by Barack Obama (1983)

The Most Complete Man

[Obama] was certainly one of the most complete man I'd ever met.

Junot Diaz

For me, particularly at that time, writing was the way I sorted through a lot of crosscurrents in my life — race, class, family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I was able to integrate all these pieces of myself into something relatively whole.

People now remark on this notion of me being very cool, or composed. And what is true is that I generally have a pretty good sense of place and who I am, and what’s important to me. And I trace a lot of that back to that process of writing.

[I started to read Shakespeare] tragedies and dig into them. And that, I think, is foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings. It gives me a sense of perspective.

I think Toni Morrison’s writings — particularly “Song of Solomon” is a book I think of when I imagine people going through hardship. That it’s not just pain, but there’s joy and glory and mystery.

I think that there are writers who I don’t necessarily agree with in terms of their politics, but whose writings are sort of a baseline for how to think about certain things — V. S. Naipaul, for example. His “A Bend in the River,” which starts with the line, “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” And I always think about that line, and I think about his novels when I’m thinking about the hardness of the world sometimes, particularly in foreign policy, and I resist and fight against sometimes that very cynical, more realistic view of the world. And yet, there are times where it feels as if that may be true.

Transcript: President Obama on What Books Mean to Him

A dark view of humans, a certain resignation to the imperfectibility of things, is what marks literature out from the idealistic arts [...] It is there — more than anywhere else — in Naipaul, whose circuitous route to Britain via India and Trinidad does not show up in cosmopolitan pieties but almost the opposite: an unsentimental attitude to developing countries, a commitment to the culture he has fought to join.

Graham Greene detected a “splinter of ice” in the heart of a writer. There is sometimes a shard of the cold stuff in an immigrant, as well. To endure the upheaval, to brave the new, to make a success of it all requires (or inculcates) some of that sub-zero Naipaulian attitude. They cannot allow themselves to become nothing. This sentiment is not always captured by the immigrant fiction of the past decade or two, which comes in jaunty multicoloured dust jackets and seems to showcase diversity as an end itself, as if any actual migrant ever has that in mind.

For more than a century, anglophone literature has thrown up masters who look slightly askance at the modern world and its sensibilities. It is not a political conservatism, as such [...] It is something more like a sceptical habit of mind and a preference for dismal truths over well-meaning lies (which is what political correctness often amounts to).

[A] writer must believe that human nature is universal and more or less unchangeable. Most non-conservative schemes — social-democracy, the wilder edges of identity politics — are efforts to refine or deny that nature through bureaucratic tinkering.

As the arts despair of the world, it may fall to novelists to do more than vent. Theirs is the only medium with the scope to air complex ideas, which is why film adaptations feel so diminished. It also has unique conservative pedigree. Do not wait for a film, album or image to do justice to our times. A novel might.

"In praise of literary conservatives" by Janan Ganesh

When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.

[...] Occasionally, you’ll be disappointed, but more often than not, your faith will be confirmed.

President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation—II

Whatever our current travails, we now have a literate president capable of coherent discourse, but too many other politicians are devoid of syntax and appear to have read nothing. Aggressive ignorance in aspirants to high office is another dismal consequence of the waning of authentic education.

"Get Lost. In Books." by Harold Bloom (2008)

Addendum: Every book Barack Obama has recommended during his presidency

The Mistakes We Have to Make Up

Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else.

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p.3

I was born in a house my father built.

Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p.1

Dream that is Very Real Nevertheless

A national dream need not, indeed may not be clear-cut and exact. [...] For Americans too the wide and general dream has a name. It is called "the American Way of Life." No one can define it or point to any one person or group who lives it, but it is very real nevertheless, perhaps more real than that equally remote dream the Russians call Communism. These dreams describe our vague yearnings toward what we wish were and hope we may be: wise, just, compassionate, and noble. The fact that we have this dream at all is perhaps an indication of its possibility.

from John Steinbeck's America and Americans, p.41

Tuesday Morning Blues

"Only the question of Outer Mongolia remained"

The Qing state continued to grant Chinese merchants licenses to trade throughout Mongolian territories, and this trade continued to be dominated by several large firms based in Shanxi province that manipulated exchange rates between Mongolian raw materials such as fur, hides, and wool, and Chinese finished products such as tea, house wares, and luxury goods. Their control over these rates allowed them to claim that with each transaction, the Mongolian purchasers had acquired further debt. This drove down the cost of the raw materials, while simultaneously increasing Mongolians’ debt. Debt was commonly distributed throughout the banner, causing many Mongolians to submit petitions to Qing officials pleading for the reduction of their financial burdens.

Sara L. Jackson and Devon Dear. "Resource extraction and national anxieties: China’s economic presence in Mongolia." Eurasian Geography and Economics (2016): 1-31.

What the Mongols fear most is the attempt of the Chinese to colonize their country, and they see with alarm how the tilled fields of these thrifty agriculturists are already encroaching on the steppe.

“The People of the Wilderness: The Mongols, Once the Terror of All Christendom, Now a Primitive, Harmless Nomad Race” by Adam Warwick, National Geographic Magazine, 1/1/1921, Volume 39, p. 551

Энэ бол мөн л онц сонирхолтой торгон агшин. БНМАУ-ын Ерөнхий сайд Ю.Цэдэнбал БНХАУ-ын үндэсний баярт ганцаараа хүндэт (дээд) зочноор очоод цэргийн парад хүлээн авч байгаа түүхэн зураг. Мао Зэдун, Жоу Эньлай нарын дунд ёслон зогсоо бүрх малгайтай цэл залуу Ю.Цэдэнбал. БНМАУ-ын тусгаар тогтносон улс болохыг Хятадын ДИУ 1945 онд манай бүх ард түмний санал асуулгын дараа арга буюу хүлээн зөвшөөрөөд 1946 онд дипломат харилцаа тогтоосон бол 1949 онд түүний халааг авч шинээр байгуулагдсан БНХАУ нь БНМАУ-ыг шууд хүлээн зөвшөөрч Элчин сайдын хэмжээнд дипломат харилцаа тогтоогоод удаагүй байх үеийн гэрэл зураг энэ байна.

Д.Баярхүү - "Хоёр их хөрштэй тэнцвэр тогтоосон торгон агшин"

During the same conversation Liu Shaoqi added that the Chinese people allegedly are very deeply pained by the fact of Mongolia's secession from China. He noted that when the Soviet Union was celebrating the 300-year-anniversary of reunification of Ukraine with Russia, [some people] said in China that 300 years ago Mongolia already was a part of China and asked the question whether it could be re-united with China. The Chinese, Liu Shaoqi continued, consider Mongolia, like Taiwan, a part of their territory.

"Information Memorandum, 'About the Claims of the Chinese Leaders With Regard to the Mongolian People's Republic'," January 30, 1964, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive.

Chairman Deng: Yalta not only severed Outer Mongolia from China, but also brought the Northeastern part of China into the Soviet sphere. [Now] only the question of Outer Mongolia remained. We raised the question of Outer Mongolia, but the Soviets didn't respond [...]

Mr. President [George H. W. Bush], you are my friend. I hope you will look at the map to see what happened after the Soviet Union severed Outer Mongolia from China. What kind of strategic situation did we find ourselves in? Those over 50 in China remember that the shape of China was like a maple leaf. Now, if you look at a map, you see a huge chunk in the north cut away; the maple leaf has been nibbled away. I hope Ambassador Lord will show the President a map of China. It's very interesting.

"Memorandum of Conversation between George H. W. Bush and Chairman Deng Xiaoping in Beijing," February 26, 1989, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive.

Хамтдаа түлээ цуглуулбал гал өндөр бадарна. Хятад улс Монгол Улсыг оролцуулаад хөрш орнууддаа хөгжлийн боломж, хөгжих орон зайг олгоно. Та бүхнийг Хятадын хөгжлийн галт тэргэнд суухыг урьж байна. Галт тэрэг хурдан ч бай, удаан ч бай бид Та бүхнийг урьж байна. “Ганцаар явбал хурдан явна. Олуулаа явбал хол явна” гэж үг байдаг.

Монгол Улсын Их Хурлын хүндэтгэлийн хуралдаан дээр БНХАУ-ын дарга Си Зиньпиний хэлсэн үг. 2014 оны 8 дугаар сарын 22-ны өдөр.

This could well be just another period of Chinese charm that will be followed by another round of coercion. That’s certainly been the pattern of Chinese behaviour before, and it is difficult to see why Beijing would change now.

"China tries chequebook diplomacy in Southeast Asia" from Financial Times, Monday, November 7, 2016

That is Teaching

My greatest debt, though I did not fully appreciate it at the time, was to Dunn, then a very young college Research Fellow, now a distinguished professor emeritus. It was John who--in the course of one extended conversation on the political thought of John Locke--broke through my well-armored adolescent Marxism and first introduced me to the challenges of intellectual history. He managed this by the simple device of listening very intently to everything I said, taking it with extraordinary seriousness on its own terms, and then picking it gently and firmly apart in a way that I could both accept and respect.

That is teaching. It is also a certain sort of liberalism: the kind that engages in good faith with dissenting (or simply mistaken) opinions across a broad political spectrum.

from Tony Judt's “The Memory Chalet”

Prayer is Not an Option

My advice, minister, is that you:

■ Disregard any debt sustainability analysis that assigns a greater than 50% probability to the occurrence of the second coming of Christ before the next bond maturity.

■ While avoiding unrealistic optimism, do not careen to the other extreme of soul-destroying despair. A request for financial assistance addressed to the executive board of the IMF should not begin with the sentence: “The last camel died at noon.” Panic is as infectious as yawning. So, however, is a sense of composure and control.

■ Once it becomes clear that the debt stock must be addressed, get on with it. Creditors may not like the prospect of having to write off a portion of their claims or defer repayment dates, but they positively loathe prolonged periods of indecision and dithering. Efficiency, discipline and fairness, even in carrying out a disagreeable task, will be remembered by markets long after the financial pain of a sovereign debt restructuring has been forgotten.

A sovereign debt crisis is just that: a crisis. It does not have to become a catastrophe.

"An open letter to the minister of finance of Ruritania" by Lee C Buchheit

Only one idea per article

I once offered an editor an 800-word article. I told him various brilliant points I wanted to make. He pretended to listen patiently, and then said: “Most readers can remember only one idea from an article.” Just make one good point, he said, and buttress it with facts and anecdotes. If an hour later the reader can remember your point, that’s a triumph. Since then I have tried to make only one point per article, though not today.

Simon Kuper - Lessons from the Field

An Existing Niche Where they Overlap

It’s not whether you get knocked down, but how — or whether — you get up. In today’s professional environment, you can’t just be smart and driven. You need to be flexible and resilient too.

So the question is: do you go ‘deep’ and master a discipline, or ‘broad’ and take on a whole slate of pursuits?

In my experience, the answer is neither. It’s not enough to have a wealth of knowledge in one area, or to be a keen generalist with limited knowledge in many — it’s critical to establish multiple areas of passion and expertise, and find — or develop! — a space that combines them.

"If I Were 22: Apples or Oranges? Choose Both for a Creative Career" by Ian Bremmer

Embracing Buddhism as a Society

Claudia Dreifus: Many Westerners have wondered why it is that nations with such large Buddhist populations have so often had such terribly violent rulers--Cambodia, Burma, Tibet?

Aung San Suu Kyi: Sometimes I wonder if the countries that embraced Buddhism did so because they needed it: because there was something violent in their societies that needed to be controlled by Buddhism.

The Passion of Suk Kyi

Today's Free Lunch

As Paul Krugman taught us all more than 20 years ago, it makes little sense to apply the concept of competitiveness to countries, which can’t go out of business, unlike companies, which can. National prosperity depends not on competitiveness but on productivity.

from "Get real about competitiveness" by Martin Sandbu

High-Cultured Barbarism

Hans Hotter’s outstanding 1942 recording of Schubert’s Winterreise seems to call for an intentionally anachronistic reading: it is easy to imagine German officers and soldiers listening to this recording in the Stalingrad trenches in the cold Winter of 42/43. Does the topic of Winterreise not evoke a unique consonance with the historical moment? Was not the whole campaign to Stalingrad a gigantic Winterreise, where each German soldier can say for himself the very first lines of the cycle:

“I came here a stranger,
As a stranger I depart"?

[...]The obvious counter-argument is that all this is merely a superficial parallel: even if there is an echo of the atmosphere and emotions, they are in each case embedded in an entirely different context: in Schubert, the narrator wanders around in Winter because the beloved has dropped him, while the German soldiers were on the way to Stalingrad because of Hitler’s military plans. However, it is precisely in this displacement that the elementary ideological operation consists: the way for a German soldier to be able to endure his situation was to avoid the reference to concrete social circumstances which would become visible through reflection (what the hell were they doing in Russia? what destruction did they bring to this country? what about killing the Jews?), and, instead, to indulge in the Romantic bemoaning of one’s miserable fate, as if the large historical catastrophe just materializes the trauma of a rejected lover.

from "Lenin As a Listener of Schubert" by Slavoj Zizek

In my diary I called this phenomenon Goethe Oak, after the ancient oak tree on the Ettersberg, near Weimar, under which Goethe had supposedly written his sublime “Wanderer’s Night Song,” but which was then enclosed on the grounds of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Goethe and Buchenwald, the highest and the lowest in human history, together in one place. A place called Weimar. A place called Germany. A place called Europe.

from Timothy Garton Ash - "The File: A Personal History"

Addendum: Bach or Mozart? - a scene from Schindler's List

On Practical Political Reality

I had the sense that [Ignatieff] could not emphasize enough to an outsider—or, in another sense, entirely explain—how practicing politics was utterly unlike philosophizing about it at the front of a classroom or, for that matter, in the back seat of a car: there are no philosopher-kings, or even philosophical prime ministers. To praise something for being “undertheorized” was to address it in all its practical political reality.

“It’s a completely different role,” he said. “The thing that politics most strongly resembles is being on soccer teams and hockey teams when I was a child. It’s not a lonely writer in his den thinking thoughts. You’re mostly listening all day long to people, trying to take the measure of their personalities—their strengths, their weaknesses. It’s much closer to being a journalist. You sit with other politicians: what does this person really want? You hear what she’s saying. But what does she really want? That’s a political moment. You’re in a town hall with two hundred and fifty people, and you’re trying to get a sense of the room, of what makes these people tick. It’s a very different skill from being a writer. Isaiah himself was fascinated by the question: what is it that a great politician knows? What is that form of knowledge? Last night, Zsuzsanna and I were watching the Detroit Red Wings goalie, and he knows something: what is it that he knows? What is it that a great politician knows? The great ones have a skill that is just jaw-dropping, and I’m trying to learn that.”

Had it been a steep learning curve? I wondered out loud.

“Vertical!” He exploded in laughter. “Face of the Eiger!” Then he said, “As an intellectual, you can speculate, you can ruminate, you can muse about things. Can’t do that in politics. They want to know what you think, what you do. A lot of the time, intellectuals are engaged in the business of showing how clever they are. The public isn’t interested in how clever you are. It wants something very different, which is, Can I trust this guy? Does this guy understand me and will this guy be with me when times are difficult? There’s a totally different relationship between the politician and his audience and the intellectual and his audience.”

"The Return of the Native" by Adam Gopnik (the first article I read by him). And of course, let's not forget the "fire and ashes" that resulted from Ignatieff's leadership.

To Write History

To write history is to make an argument by telling a story about dead people [...] Historians tend to write in both expository and narrative modes. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Rarely does any historian choose one mode to the exclusion of another, but how to balance these modes is a crucial choice.

Jill Lepore - How to Write a Paper for This Class

This and That: Sovereign Defaults Edition

When a country goes bankrupt
When a country defaults
How Greece restructured its debt
How Jamaica turned its debts around

The Economist explains: What happens when a country goes bust

The Economics of Sovereign Defaults
Public finances: A world of debt
"Financial and Sovereign Debt Crises: Some Lessons Learned and Those Forgotten" by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff

"A New Approach To Sovereign Debt Restructuring" by Anne Krueger
"Too Little, Too Late: The Quest to Resolve Sovereign Debt Crises"
"The Costs of Sovereign Default" by Eduardo Borensztein and Ugo Panizza

Free Lunch: Flat-pack sovereign debt restructuring
"Revisiting sovereign bankruptcy" by Lee Buchheit
Sovereign debt: Curing defaults
How Hedge Funds Held Argentina for Ransom by Martin Guzman and Joseph Stiglitz
The clause that wouldn’t die

Цитаты дня

В разные времена настоящее выглядит по-разному.

Память - сеть, которую не следует чересчур напрягать, чтобы удерживать тяжелые грузы. Пусть все чугунное прорывает сеть и уходит, летит.

То, что не помнилось, переставало существовать.

Юрий Трифонов - «Дом на набережной»

Why America Should Become Great Again

SOMETIMES SMALL stories capture large truths. So it is with the fiasco that is the repair of the Anderson Memorial Bridge, connecting Boston and Harvard Square. Rehabilitation of the 232-foot bridge began in 2012, at an estimated cost of about $20 million; four years later, there is no end date in sight and the cost of the project is mushrooming, to $26.5 million at last count.

The Anderson Bridge is approximately one-sixth the length of the bridge Julius Caesar’s men built across the Rhine in 10 days in 55 BC. Caesar’s feat is admired not just for its technical mastery but also for its boldness. An allied tribe had offered boats to carry Caesar’s troops across the river, to avoid the difficult task of bridge-building. Yet Caesar rejected this offer, on the grounds that it would not be “fitting for the prestige of Rome.”

"A lesson on infrastructure from the Anderson Bridge fiasco" by Larry Summers

Peter Thiel pulled an iPhone out of his jeans pocket and held it up. “I don’t consider this to be a technological breakthrough,” he said. “Compare this with the Apollo space program.”

No Death, No Taxes: The libertarian futurism of a Silicon Valley billionaire.

There are ways that the government is working far less well than it used to. Just outside my office is the Golden Gate Bridge. It was built under FDR’s Administration in the 1930s in about three and a half years. They’re currently building an access highway on one of the tunnels that feeds into the bridge, and it will take at least six years to complete.

"A Conversation with Peter Thiel" by Francis Fukuyama

It’s hard to remember this, but our government was once high tech, too. When I moved to Cleveland, defense research was laying the foundations for the internet. The Apollo program was just about to put a man on the moon–and it was Neil Armstrong, from right here in Ohio. The future felt limitless.

But today our government is broken. Our nuclear bases still use floppy disks. Our newest fighter jets can’t even fly in the rain. And it would be kind to say the government’s software works poorly, because much of the time it doesn’t even work at all. That is a staggering decline for the country that completed the Manhattan project. We don’t accept such incompetence in Silicon Valley, and we must not accept it from our government.

[...] When Donald Trump asks us to Make America Great Again, he’s not suggesting a return to the past. He’s running to lead us back to that bright future.

Peter Thiel’s Speech at the Republican National Convention

You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.

Frank Sobotka from the Wire

In the United States, Federal Net Infrastructure investment last year, was zero. That was the lowest level since 1947 and it was zero. That cannot possibly be rational at a time of epically low interest rates.

"Reflections on the Productivity Slowdown" by Larry Summers

It's no secret that the MTA has been having some difficulty maintaining its century-old infrastructure—track fires, signal problems, and all-around calamity plague morning, evening, and off-hour commutes on a regular basis. And in a video released this week, the agency shows off just how horrifically ancient the machinery that runs one of the world's largest subway systems—most of the machines date back to the 1930s or before, and upgrades have been few and far between.

The NYC Subway System Is Controlled By These Vintage Steampunk "Interlocking" Machines

The MTA has a thankless and extremely difficult job: They have to keep the trains running. They have to do it with equipment from the 1930s, in a hostile funding environment, as administrations come and go, as public interest comes and goes, in the face of storms and accidents and pieces of aluminum foil. This they manage to do. 1.6 billion people every year take the New York subway.

Why New York Subway Lines Are Missing Countdown Clocks

Addendum:

The Straussian interpretation of the Republican Convention is the correct one, which is perhaps one reason why Peter Thiel will be speaking there. They are not saying what they are saying, in fact they are saying “the world is going to hell, and many of those amongst us have been traitorously disloyal. That is why we scream out stupidities, debase ourselves, and court attention by waving our arms in ridiculous ways. We are a small church seeking to become larger.” Is that not how many smaller churches behave? Is that not how some of the early branches of the Christian church behaved? Did they have any influence? See also the remarks of Cass Sunstein.

"Does Lucifer in fact inhabit the corpus of Hillary Clinton?" by Tyler Cowen

Contrasting Argument

In the UK, and other common law jurisdictions, the executive and legislature are closely entwined. The Prime Minister and a majority of his or her ministers are Members of Parliament and sit in the House of Commons. The executive is therefore present at the heart of Parliament.

By contrast, in the USA, the President may not be a member of the legislature (Congress), and is elected separately from congressional elections. This may result in the President being a member of a different political party from the majority of members of Congress.

The UK’s integration of executive and legislature is said to provide stability and efficiency in the operation of government. It has been described as “a system that intentionally promotes efficiency over abstract concerns about tyranny”. For example, the Prime Minister is usually both head of the executive branch and leader of the majority party in the legislature, which gives the executive branch much more freedom of action than a president usually enjoys in a presidential system of government.

Briefing on the separation of powers from the Parliament of the UK

The Wisdom of Larry Summers

Lessons from Government Service 

KRISTOL: Any special tips you would have for people? I was at a much lower level position of having been a professor and suddenly being in government and having to do things and take responsibility for things. Any advice anyone gave you that was particularly useful? Any book you read that you would tell some 35-year-old Harvard or anywhere else professor who’s now going into the next administration to think about? Or just your own advice?

SUMMERS: I’d say some lessons I learned, Bill, are people – you should maintain a very strong presumption that people are acting reasonably by their lights. And that if it seems to you that somebody’s taking a position that’s completely stupid or unreasonably, it’s probably not because you’re smart and they’re stupid and you should just explain it to them.

It’s probably because given where they sit, given where they sit as part of the government of Japan or given where they sit as part of the Department of Commerce, or given as where they sit as part of General Electric, or given where they sit as a person with responsibility for getting reelected in six months, and that you will achieve your objectives much more effectively if you try to understand why other people are taking a position different than yours. Rather than just simply tell then they should take your position and take more arguments.

That was probably the most important lesson that was uncongenial to me. That in academics what you do is your persuade people with intellectual argument, and what I realized was people probably were taking positions that corresponded to their interest and you had to figure out how to make it work given their interest. That was probably the most important initial lesson learned.