How to kiss up in Washington? Clinton e-mails offer guidance

[Valin]

Boston Globe:

Provide a primer in how D.C. works

Annie Linskey Globe Staff

September 02, 2015

 

WASHINGTON — The correspondence arrived as Hillary Rodham Clinton was preparing for a trip to Prague. It read as if it were penned by a paramour.

 

“I love you,” wrote ad guru Roy Spence. “I respect you. I miss you. I cherish every moment of our remarkable journey together.”

 

But it wasn’t evidence of some inappropriate dalliance. Far from it. The message was just part of the daily Washington game of seeking attention from important people.

 

And, shocker, it worked. Clinton asked a staff member to print it out.

 

Normally a thick layer of grime, applied by this town’s legions of image-makers, prevents the public from seeing through the windows of Washington’s most important offices and obscures the kissing up, fawning, and groveling that occurs daily in the capital. But a federal judge’s order forcing the State Department to release Clinton’s e-mails has, like a spurt of Windex, cleared a little corner of the pane.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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If I may paraphrase Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince

The Prince may be feared, may be loved, but must never be mocked, or he is doomed.