In public relations, you live with the reality that not every disaster can be made to look like a misunderstood triumph.
From Christopher Buckley
With real estate, it's location, location, location. In public speaking, it's acoustics, acoustics, acoustics.
Coming to terms with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee is like being told you have Stage 1 or Stage 2 cancer. You know you'll probably survive, but one way or the other, there's going to be a lot of throwing up.
I'd worked at the White House for two years, and I'd read a bunch of White House memoirs because everybody who works at the White House, even for five minutes, writes a memoir usually not less than 600 pages long - and never without the word 'power' in the title.
I had some adventures at the White House, but hardly enough to fill a full memoir.
I spent, whether consciously or unconsciously, most of my career trying to be something other than William F. Buckley's son.
It was a mistake to think that my views would have been taken on their own terms. It was a mistake to think that my last name wouldn't be a factor.
As for the financial world - I've been working in the Forbes building for eight years. You soak up a little bit of ambient stuff about all this - I know what a gold straddle is, what the Lombard rate is.
The first novel I wrote, 'The White House Mess,' was a comic novel. It came out in 1986. It was a parody in the form of a White House memoir.
I had worked for George Bush as a speechwriter, and I read a lot of White House memoirs. They all have two themes: 'It Wasn't My Fault' and 'It Would Have Been Much Worse if I Hadn't Been There.'
4 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives