My father claimed that one of the early 20th century US Presidents had a ‘Misunderstander-in-Chief’ whose job was to preview various proclamations and put the worst possible construction on them - presumably so they could be edited for greater clarity. Just now I was reading in a biography of Heinlein’s early years of a class he reportedly took at the US Naval Academy in the late 1920s -
“One of the more interesting and thought-provoking courses given at the (US Naval) Academy was the class in writing orders—the most useful English Department course Heinlein ever got. Each midshipman was given a tactical situation for which he had to write an operations order. Then everyone in the class would pick it apart, trying to find a way to misunderstand the order. This process was called “Major-Browning,” after an officer in General Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War staff, whose sole duty was to misunderstand Grant’s orders. If the order got by Major Brown, Grant okayed it for release.”
It sure seems like a good idea - but also a good apocryphal story…
Could be both! I can’t find any better information, so I figured I’d ask here…
I can tell you that the investor relations department at one of my former employers (a German company) had a “stress test” process for all narrative in our quarterly results and annual reports. The aim was to make sure that anything we said could not plausibly be understood to mean something that wasn’t true.
At least two of my American employers took more or less the opposite approach, how much can we mislead while it being possible to interpret the words as something literally true. Of course both went bankrupt and one had several executives serve serious federal prison time for fraud.
A quick check online doesn’t find any other hits for “major-browning” used at the Naval Academy or elsewhere. I can’t find a Major Brown listed for Grant’s staff either, although his staff certainly varied almost from day to day. You are apparently the only one to refer to Heinlein’s paragraph since no other hits for it come up.
The subject of a general staff misunderstander is too general to search on. Of course, most authors have such a person: an editor (or copyreader). The position can be casual rather than professional: I pass my writing to my wife to ensure that I’m making myself clear at all times.
Heinlein may have taken such a class. He may have simply misremembered the name and substituted the anodyne Brown. Or someone else or made up the name or the officer. I’d definitely like to see evidence that Grant did something this sensible.
I have heard of one local politician, in our legislative Assembly, who would grill civil servants appearing in front of him on proposed bills.
He would say “I appreciate your explanation of what this bill does and how it will be used. But, I’m also interested in how it might be misused, and if changes are needed to prevent that.”
I’d like to see evidence that any of our Presidents did something this sensible.
Thanks for exploring. My Google-foo fails me on this - it’s almost like it’s deliberately misunderstanding my queries…
The Heinlein anecdote is from “Robert A. Heinlein In Dialogue With His Century - Volume 1”, by Wm. H. Patterson, Jr., 2010 - ebook version so no page number, but footnoted as “[Chapter 6] Note15. RAH, letter to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 06/20/73” so it’s entirely possible three accomplished tellers of tall tales were practicing on each other.
I wonder how much law and departmental regulation is deliberately vague and ambiguous in order for “weaponized incompetence” to be used as a political tool.
[I only know of this via World War Z - I have no idea if it is true] According to the book + film the Israeli govt had a policy after Yom Kippur to have someone designated to consider the opposite perspective of the group think - the professional critic / naysayer who tests the idea that the consensus view is flawed and that the opposite is possible.
The other is training for lawyers usually requires you to study a case or position and work out how to advocate it, and then approach it from the opposition perspective.
This is exactly the function of the Devil’s Advocate in the Catholic Church. His job is to challenge all proposals for beatification and sainthood and make the case against the proposal.
Essentially this is supposed to be a big part of my job as a patent examiner. One principle of writing a patent claim is that it should be free of “avoidable ambiguity”, so that someone reading the patent can honestly determine if what they want to do will infringe or not.
I think it is almost certain this is true - but suspect your father was hyping the idiosyncratic nature of the role. This precise task is routinely undertaken by political advisors, PR people, speechwriters etc.
Every careful politician is surrounded by such people whose job includes vetting pronouncements for clarity and (above all) to minimise the extent to which they can be twisted by the opposition. When I’ve worked with a high powered PR person, one of the key skills they brought to the table was the ability to apply their cynical ex-journalist skills to figuring out how what my clients said would be turned against them. Many of their colleagues and peers worked for government and politicians doing the same thing.
I can imagine he gleefully created many of them. As Ken Kesey, another great story-teller, had Chief Bromden remark in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “But it’s the the truth, even if it didn’t happen”
Ulysses Grant was a good character inside this probable urban myth. The clarity of his writing was legendary. Josh Marshall notes that his memoirs are, “likely the only great work of literature ever written by an American President.” Marshall continues:
Early in Memoirs Grant describes Zachary Taylor, the general who commanded him in the Mexican-American War and later a President who died in office. Comparing him with the more voluble and polished Winfield Scott, Grant writes this.
Taylor was not a conversationalist, but on paper he could put his meaning so plainly that there could be no mistaking it. He knew how to express what he wanted to say in the fewest well-chosen words, but would not sacrifice meaning to the construction of high-sounding sentences.
Grant here could have been talking about himself. Perhaps he was. The sentence has all the lucidity and concision it describes. The point is important. Especially before the advent of electronic communications, a General must be clear in his communication and commands. “He could put his meaning so plainly that there could be no mistaking it.” This is something we can all aspire to and a goal few of us realize. Again, for a general of that era who must send precise instructions and commands out into the hands of messengers and couriers and sometimes spies and have them understood in their specifics and understood in the same way by different people – this is critical. Grant thought Taylor had this ability. Grant did as well. He must have cultivated it in a similar fashion since this was Grant’s only true experience as a writer: as a writer of reports, commands, dispositions and so forth. Again, the need for clarity, the ability to see all the moving parts, to think through their interconnections and then communicate about them clearly.
