May 15, 2025

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

Dean Acheson (1893-1971), American government official, The Cynic’s Lexicon, Jonathon Green, ed. (London: 1986), p.1

Does this sort of ass-covering only go on in government bureaucracies?

Politicians as a rule are much more averse to putting things on paper, if only because it may come back to bite them in the ass. Yet few have ever met a microphone they didn’t love. Hence the skill needed to decode what they pitch to the public.