How to Get Ahead in Washington: Lessons from the Renaissance and Baroque Eras

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in two parts in 2022.

In the winter of 1935, a freshman senator from Missouri arrived in the District of Columbia after having driven cross-country for over 1,000 miles. With almost no legislative experience or friends in Washington, he was, in his own words, “green as grass,” and as “timid as a country boy arriving on the campus of a great university for the first year.” One day, shortly after the nervous Missourian’s arrival, J. Hamilton “Ham” Lewis of Illinois ambled across the Senate floor and sat down next to his junior colleague. The flamboyant, pink toupee-wearing Democratic majority whip then proceeded to dispense a welcome piece of advice: “Harry, don’t start out with an inferiority complex,” he said. “For the first six months you’ll wonder how the hell you got here, and after that you’ll wonder how the hell the rest of us got here.” Truman never forgot this initial act of kindness and seems to have taken the advice to heart. He approached his positions as a senator, vice president, and then as “accidental president” with gravity and dedication, yet always managed to maintain a certain ironic detachment from the seedier aspects of domestic politics. Occasionally, the genial, bespectacled Midwesterner would startle his acquaintances, jesting that, had he not opted for politics, one of his only other options — given his atrocious eyesight — might have been to be a piano player in a Kansas City whorehouse. Maybe this would have ultimately proven to be a more rewarding profession, he would then ruefully mutter.

The 33rd U.S. president’s mixed feelings with regard to life in Washington would no doubt be familiar to anyone who has worked in our nation’s capital — or indeed in the sphere of policy and politics more broadly. For all of its deeper meaning and sense of purpose, working in government can often be exhausting, disappointing, and unedifying. The world of politics has ever been one of muddy compromise and rugged imperfection — something of which Truman, a voracious reader of history, was well aware. Whereas Truman, like many other of his fellow presidents, frequently turned to the writings of the founding fathers or ancients for moral solace and intellectual guidance, this essay will seek to prize open another, less regularly consulted treasure trove of insights for War on the Rocks readers — the large, heterogenous body of works which fall under the “mirrors for secretaries” tradition of the late Renaissance and early modern periods. Topics discussed will range from the importance of discretion, to knowing how to balance expertise with pragmatism, guard against flattery, and deal with a difficult boss. And for those readers who remain convinced that their brilliance and relevance will shine eternal, it will relay 16th and 17th century advice on knowing when to retire. There are few richer — or more enjoyable — periods than those two event-packed centuries for contemporary policymakers to explore. Strewn across these works of darkly humorous genius, we can all recognize, to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “our own rejected thoughts, coming back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

Self-Help for Policymakers: Treasure Troves of the Post-Renaissance

The period stretching from the late Renaissance to the early Baroque era was one of enormous political, intellectual, and diplomatic upheaval. The increased sophistication of the early modern state, its growing centralization, the heightened intricacy of its bureaucratic apparatus — complete with its teetering mounds of paperwork and endless reams of epistolary exchanges — all of these developments required chronically overworked rulers to find safe and effective ways to delegate their authority, administer their newly sprawling domains and implement their increasingly far-reaching reforms. Institutionally, this led both to the mushrooming across Europe of small governing councils composed of tight cadres of ministers and royal counselors, each often operating at the heart of their own webs of patronage and clientele, and to the rise of the figure of the secretary — the discreet and dedicated public servant who acted at the heart of the sprawling new “letterocracy” which had extended its dry tendrils across the chancelleries, ministries, and embassies of the continent. Paperwork, rightly notes historian Paul Dover, had become “the demon of early modern statecraft.” Kings, popes, and doges — all found themselves gasping for air under a veritable deluge of memorandums and correspondence. Philip II, as Geoffrey Parker has shown in his vivid study of the Spanish monarch, was frequently driven to despair by “these devils, my papers”, with up to 16,000 separate petitions being sent to his desk over the course of a single year. Within this newly saturated information environment, the role of the secretary, ambassador, or counselor was not only to filter, distill, and interpret these incoming torrents of data, but also to provide clear and actionable guidance to their overwhelmed rulers.

This was particularly true with regard to statecraft. The conduct of diplomacy had undergone a series of profound transformations over the course of the Renaissance, as the practice of establishing permanent embassies — which first took root in Italy in the mid-15h century — progressively spread across Europe. With the generalization of these more elaborate forms of diplomatic machinery, resident ambassadors, nuncios, and intelligence officers, finely attuned to every minor geopolitical tremor or subtle shift in the balance of power, had begun to feed a continuous flow of information back to their capitals — an intensified bureaucratic process which, in turn, greatly accelerated the rhythm of state-to-state interactions. As the great 20th century historian Garrett Mattingly notes in his landmark study of Renaissance diplomacy, the sensitivity with which these new resident ambassadors, “servants of the sacred egoism of their respective states,” monitored their continent’s fluctuating diplomatic weather patterns, both helped preserve a delicate equilibrium and induced a climate of general apprehension, one of beady-eyed “mutual watchfulness.”

Being an ambassador, secretary, or advisor in this brave new world was no easy task. All these early modern operatives understood that the preservation of their privileged positions was not only subject to the whims of their patrons — it was also contingent on their mastery of the complexities of the arcana imperii (the mysteries of state) and on their practical wisdom, or prudence in the classical, Aristotelian sense. Their political, and often physical, survival also hinged on a grubbier set of skills — how to navigate the treacherous shoals of court politics, skirt snake pits of deadly intrigue, and choose the right faction. The excitements and dangers tied to such a high-stakes existence helped spawn a new literary genre: the self-help guide for government secretaries and counselors, whether in the form of short treatises, satirical texts, neat compilations of maxims, or recommendations nested within larger, more philosophically-minded essays. Earlier generations of political theorists, from Xenophon to John of Salisbury and Christine of Pizan, had churned out “mirrors of princes,” elegantly crafted treatises which sought, by drawing on religious, philosophical, and historical lessons, to shape and guide the actions of a just monarch. These new works were different — they were aimed not so much at rulers as at those toiling underneath them, the ink-stained hands scribbling away at the frontlines of power and policy — from the impecunious young secretary to the conniving cardinal or esteemed ambassador. Less formal, more irreverent, and often deeply insightful, they constitute a veritable wellspring of worldly wisdom — albeit one that remains sadly underexplored by contemporary policymakers.

Here follows a small sampling of this wry wit and what it can teach us, with choice excerpts from Italy, France, Spain, and England, ranging from Francis Bacon’s Essays (1597) to Cardinal Richelieu’s Political Testament (published posthumously, in 1688), Giovanni Botero’s The Reason of State (1589), Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (1528), La Rochefoucauld’s Moral Maxims and Reflections (1665), Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647), Jean de la Bruyère’s Characters (1687), Francesco Guicciardini’s Maxims and Reflections (circa 1530), Philippe de Béthune’s The Counsellor of State (1633) Michel de Montaigne’s Essays (circa 1580), and Pierre Charron’s Of Wisdom (1608). Each of these writers, having attained a certain level of prominence in their field — whether secular or religious — was intimately familiar with the trials and tribulations of public office and the vagaries of court politics.

On Balancing Expertise With Pragmatism, and Thoughtfulness with Decisiveness

For all these writers-cum-statesmen, there was little doubt, first of all, that experience and expertise were the most invaluable attributes in government; indeed only the harebrained and foolhardy would think otherwise. “Let no one trust so much in native intelligence that he believes it to be sufficient without the help of experience,” warned Francesco Guicciardini, for, “no matter what his natural endowments, any man who has been in a position of responsibility will admit that experience attains many things which natural gifts alone could never attain.” In addition to a rich and variegated life experience (which could be further enriched by travel and military service), policymakers should be able to draw on a deep reservoir of learning — one which could then irrigate their everyday decisions, helping fertilize a carefully cultivated long-term vision. As Bacon observed, “expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one, but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned.” The ever-caustic Gracián, for his part, asserted that the only opinion any practiced government hand should fret about was that of the qualified expert. “Half the world is laughing at the other half, and all are fools,” the Jesuit dismissively sneered,

Either everything is good or everything bad, depending on people’s opinions. What one pursues, another flees. Whoever wants to make their own opinion the measure of all things is an insufferable fool. Perfection doesn’t depend on one person’s approval: tastes are as plentiful as faces, and as varied. There’s not a single failing without its advocate…. The measure of true satisfaction is the approval of reputable men who are experts in the relevant field.

Yet while all these early modern commentators concurred on the value of learning and experience, they were also quick to point to the need to balance this same thoughtfulness with a capacity for pragmatism and decisiveness. Unfortunately, they remarked, the ideal scholar-practitioner was exceedingly hard to find. Instead, a whole medley of bookish attributes — from an excessive fondness for theoretical abstractions to a tendency to get lost in the weeds, or harbor a roseate belief in the power of human rationality — often proved to be ill-suited to the more fast-paced, rough-and-tumble world of policy. Bacon thus hastened to caveat his earlier observations on the importance of contemplative study with the following cautionary statement: “To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar.”

In this, he was joined by Richelieu, with the redoubtable French chief minister inveighing in his Political Testament against the risks tied to hiring scholastic pedants,

The qualifications for a [royal] counselor do not include a pedantic mind. There is nothing more dangerous for the state than those who wish to govern by maxims they have learned from books. They do, indeed, often ruin countries this way… The counselors require only goodness and firmness of mind, stable judgement, true source of wisdom, a reasonable acquaintance with literature, a general knowledge of history and of the organization of existing states around the world, especially including the home country.

Guicciardini also warned of the perils of trying to superimpose one’s idealized intellectual standards of rationality onto one’s opponent. The Florentine noted that during the fierce wars which had devastated the Italian peninsula over the course of much of his life, he had witnessed his fellow statesmen succumb to this intellectual fallacy time and time again,

In discussions of state, I have often seen men make mistakes when they judged what this or that prince will do according to reason, and not what he will do according to his nature of his character. If you want to judge, for instance, what the King of France will do, you must pay more attention to the nature and customs of a Frenchman than to how a prudent man should act.

This critique remains more than relevant — indeed it could no doubt apply today, to those who believed, according to their favored preconceptions or disembodied conceptions of rationality that Vladimir Putin could never “logically” take the fateful decision to launch a full-scale invasion of a country as large as Ukraine.

More broadly, Guicciardini suggests, even the most brilliant of counselors should retain a certain degree of intellectual humility, remaining mindful of the role of contingency, of the power of fortuna, and of the nigh-impossibility of accurately predicting certain developments. “The things of this world are so unstable, and depend upon so many accidents,” he sighs, that “it is very hard to form any judgment concerning the future,” before adding, “We see from experience that the predictions of wise men are nearly always wrong.” In some instances, history might seem to suddenly accelerate, with events unfolding at an alarming pace, outrunning a policymaker’s ability to understand them. In many other cases, however, “things destined to die not by a single blow but by gradual decay last much longer than people believe at first.” This was particularly true, he posited, when over the course of a protracted war statesmen held out hopes for an adversary state’s general collapse. Similarly, while some regimes subject to severe internal strains may, on occasion, appear on the verge of crumbling overnight, in reality — as contemporary Iranian, Venezuelan, and North Korean examples sadly show us — their dogged survival can often last far longer than anticipated.

Finally, it was possible for someone overly enamored with the snaking subtleties of their own intellect to lose themselves in trifling nuances, or to spend too much time locked in idle cogitation. Over the course of his storied career, Richelieu came to the conclusion that some temperaments, while brilliant, were simply not suited to diplomacy. Like the current, highly cerebral French president with his confusingly labyrinthine statements on Russia and the war in Ukraine, these brainiacs’ fondness for dialectic and complexity, regardless of the goodness of their intentions, ended up diluting the clarity and effectiveness of their overall message,

Just as dimwits are not good negotiators, so there are certain minds so finely drawn and delicately organized as to be even less well suited, since they become overly subtle about everything. They are, so to speak, like those who break the points of needles by trying to make them too fine.

Botero was of the same opinion. When it came to the formulation of grand strategy, the Savoyard observed, a certain degree of austere simplicity was to be welcomed. Needlessly intricate strategies he noted, had the disadvantage of presenting more potential points of failure:

Counsel ought not to be valued because they have more of the subtle and the shrewd; for the most part these do not succeed because inasmuch as their subtlety is greater, their execution must be more rightly on the mark. This cannot ordinarily be achieved because grand projects require for their execution many means and, as a result, meet with many unanticipated situations. And so as the more intricately a clock is put together and assembled, so much the more easily it fails to work and to tell time accurately, so designs and projects that require a minute subtlety for the most part do not succeed.

Inordinately ruminative intellects, which obsessively weighed the pros and cons of every decision, could end up pursuing foreign policies that were too reactive and cautious. After all, prudence as it was then universally understood, was the commanding virtue, at the heart of a philosophy of political action. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his hugely influential discussion of the cardinal virtues, had argued that the act of command — which followed the acts of deliberation and judgment — was the chief raison d’etre of practical reason or prudentia. Dithering indecisiveness was a form of negligence — quite literally of not (nec) being able to choose (eligens) — and was thus a sin “belonging to imprudence.” It was therefore vital, emphasized Gracián, to learn how to balance reflection with speed of execution, primarily through a mental sorting process which he and others termed “diligence,”

Diligence carries out quickly what intelligence decides upon slowly. Fools love haste; since they never see any difficulty, they act without reflecting. In contrast, the wise are often too unhurried, for scrutiny gives rise to reflection. The ineffectiveness caused by delay can ruin the accuracy of any judgment. Promptness is the mother of good fortune. An august motto: make haste slowly.

In short, it was necessary to find individuals who could be detail-oriented while not losing sight of the big picture, who were academically trained but not overly wedded to abstraction, and who were capable of combining careful reflection with prompt decisiveness. Not an easy task, confessed La Rochefoucauld, yet “when these two qualities are united in the same mind, they raise it infinitely above others.”

On the Pitfalls of Flattery and the Dangers of Group Think

All of us are dangerously susceptible to flattery. The desire for adulation and glory, griped Montaigne, was one of the most universal and contemptible traits in his fellow man. Comparing our inner lust for approbation to the songs of the Sirens seeking to lure Odysseus to his doom, Montaigne argued that “there is nothing that so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.” Guicciardini, for his part, admitted that he never ceased to be amazed at the ease with which his contemporaries succumbed to unctuous bootlicking. “Men should look at the substance of things and not at their appearance or surface,” he admonished, before adding,

Nevertheless it is incredible what favor you will gain among men by using gentle words and bestowing compliments. The explanation, I think, is that every man thinks he is worth more than he really is. And therefore, he will be annoyed if he thinks you are not taking the account of him that he believes he deserves.

Flattery, he cautioned, was a double-edged sword. For while honeyed words could potentially be deployed for personal gain, they could just as easily be employed against us, and especially by manipulative or exploitative superiors:

Those who deal with the great must be careful not to have their heads turned by the blandiloquence and blandishments such people generally employ to choke men with favor and make them jump when they want. The harder it is to resist, the more you must try and control yourself, to keep a cold head and not to let yourself be easily swayed.

The shallowness and desire for public approval that expose us to flattery also render us more prone to intellectual conformism, preventing us from judging things on their own merit. It can be difficult, especially in the early stages of one’s career, to go against the tide, or to openly disagree with renowned figures in the field. It might also appear simpler, in some instances, to disparage an unfashionable book without having fully read it, or to refrain from voicing an opinion on a complex foreign policy issue until some form of a fuzzy group consensus has been reached. Such craven behavior, La Bruyère complained, was rife in the gilded corridors of Versailles, and had led to a steady dilution of the quality of public debate in the France of Louis XIV:

Many people perceive the merit of a manuscript which is read to them, but will not declare themselves in its favor until they see what success it has in the world when printed, or what intelligent men will say about it. They do not like to risk their opinion, and they want to be carried away by the crowd, and dragged along by the multitude. Then they say that they were amongst the first who approved of that work, and that the general public shares their opinion.

Reason alone, “wherever she appears and from whatever side she comes”, should govern our opinions, concurred his contemporary La Rochefoucauld — and in extenso the advice any decent counselor should provide to their government.

This scenario may sound immediately familiar to War on the Rocks readers: In the midst of an animated discussion at a work function, your interlocutor’s gaze suddenly begins to wander, slowly sweeping around the room, logging faces and names, scanning for someone potentially more useful to talk to. Subtle changes begin to slowly unfold. Your colleague’s expression gradually grows more vacant, their conversational fillers increasingly robotic. And then, in the blink of an eye, they have swept with unsuspected grace and celerity across the windowless conference room to greet the tardy assistant secretary. Hovering around the visiting potentiary with a nervous grin, they nod profusely, laugh loudly, and strategically position their body in between the target of their solicitations and the closest exit. Slowly but surely, a bunch of fellow fawners begin to clot around the hapless guest, who glumly abandons one of the main objects of their visit — the complimentary stale cookies placed near the registration table.

The methods deployed in such an instance may seem hopelessly transparent, but they are also wonderfully timeless. In Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, the diplomat Federico Fregoso describes such oleaginous displays of naked careerism with bemusement, relating how, in his more sartorially-fixated era, grasping courtiers would immediately latch on to those who seemed more visibly wealthy and powerful,

There are some fools who, even if they are in the company of the best friend in the world, upon meeting with someone better dressed, attach themselves at once to him; and then, if they happen on someone better dressed, they do the same again. And if the prince should pass through the square, church or some other public place, then they elbow their way past everyone until they stand beside him; and even if they have nothing to say to him, they insist on talking, and hold forth at great length, laughing and clapping their hands to make a show of having important business, so that the crowd might see they are in favor.

Equally, there have always been compulsive name-droppers, those who pepper every other sentence with a reference to some bigwig with whom are supposedly on close, nay, friendly terms. In these instances, the individual in question should be simply mentioned by his or her first name — thus reinforcing the sense of casual familiarity and forcing dazed conversation partners to meekly seek confirmation of the illustrious contact’s identity. If a little bit of mansplaining and/or general pontificating can be sprinkled into the conversational stew, so much the better.

La Bruyère, one of the 17th century’s most brilliant satirists, famously portrayed such a pedant — whom he called Arrias — in his wildly popular and controversial Caractères — with a biting vignette that is worth quoting here in full:

Arrias has read and seen everything, at least he would lead you to think so; he is a man of universal knowledge, or pretends to be, and would rather tell a falsehood than be silent or appear to ignore anything. Some person is talking at meal-time, in the house of a man of rank, of a northern country; he interrupts and prevents him telling what he knows; he goes hither and thither in that distant state as if he were a native of it; he discourses about the habits of its court, the native women, the laws and customs of the land; he tells many little stories which happened there, thinks them very entertaining and is the first to laugh loudly at them. Somebody presumes to contradict him, and clearly proves to him that what he says is untrue. Arrias is not disconcerted; on the contrary, he grows angry at the interruption, and exclaims: “I aver and relate nothing but what I know on excellent authority; I had it from Sethon, the French ambassador at that court, who only a few days ago came back to Paris, and is a particular friend of mine; I asked him several questions, and he replied to them all without concealing anything.” He continues his story with greater confidence than he began it, till one of the company informs him that the gentleman whom he has been contradicting was Sethon himself, but lately arrived from his embassy.

We’ve all met Arrias, that fellow who has more of a comment than a question, or who derives his authoritative insights on complex foreign societies and their atavistic “ancestral hatreds” from deep discussions with local cab drivers. The eerie familiarity of La Bruyère’s character is a valuable reminder that, whether in17th century Paris or 21st century Washington, foreign policy establishments are smaller than they seem, and what goes around often comes around.

Indeed, one of the most important character traits for any secretary, innumerable Renaissance and early modern texts argued, was that of discretion. After all — the very etymology of the word — derived from the Latin secretum (meaning a secluded, hidden place), implied that the secretary’s role, first and foremost, was to be a tight-lipped custodian of state secrets. This natural predilection for discretion, it was emphasized, should ideally extend to every aspect of a high-ranking public servant’s social interactions. Thus, noted Gracián, one should constantly strive to conceal one’s ambitions and control one’s outward display of emotions:

Passions are breaches in the mind. The most practical kind of knowledge is dissimulation; whoever plays their hand openly runs the risk of losing. Let the reserve of caution compete against the scrutiny of the perceptive; against the sharp eyes of the lynx, the ink of the cuttlefish. Don’t let your desires be known so that they won’t be anticipated, either by opposition or flattery.

Moreover, he suggested, familiarity often bred contempt. One should avoid confiding in someone one doesn’t fully trust; it was often more judicious to hide the full measure of one’s capabilities and bide one’s time, “The circumspect man,” he ventured,

If he wants to be venerated by everyone, should prevent the true depths of his knowledge or his courage being plumbed. He should allow himself to be known, but not fully understood. No one should establish the limits of their abilities, because of the dangers of having their illusions shattered. He should never allow anyone to grab everything about him. Greater veneration is created by conjecture and uncertainty over the extent of our ability than by firm evidence of this, however vast this may be.

Guicciardini was less bleakly misanthropic in his outlook, but nevertheless stressed the importance of learning how to keep one’s mouth shut, especially when tempted to talk ill of other people within one’s professional network:

You should guard yourself against doing anything that can bring you harm but no profit. And so you should never speak ill of any man, absent or present, unless it be advantageous or necessary. For it is madness to make enemies without reason.

“I remind you of this,” Guicciardini hectors his reader, “because nearly everyone is guilty of this sort of levity.” The Florentine fully recognized that making enemies was sometimes simply unavoidable, especially if one was a person of principle, and that “in this world, unless you are dead, you cannot avoid doing things occasionally that will offend someone.” Nevertheless:

If either necessity or contempt induces you to speak ill of another, at least be careful to say things that will offend only him. For instance, if you want to insult a particular person, do not speak ill of his country, his family or his relatives.

On Managing Up and Working for Difficult Individuals 

We are all fated, at some stage in our careers, to work under a difficult supervisor. He or she may be erratic, temperamental, or display a tendency to micromanage. They may be emotionally abusive, absent-minded, or overly susceptible to flattery. Or perhaps they have succeeded, at long last, in rising to their level of incompetence. From the tales of baroque dysfunction leaked by disenchanted congressional interns on Dear White Staffers, to the anecdotes furtively shared by wide-eyed young think tank employees nervously clutching at their happy hour pints, DC’s foreign policy trenches overflow with tales of mercurial senators, eccentric appointees, and megalomaniacal pundits. More grizzled Washingtonians have long learned the importance of “managing up,” and of working to immediately establish a stable and productive working relationship with their hierarchical superior. This issue was also at the heart of many early modern manuals of statecraft, with long-suffering advisors and secretaries readily sharing their insights on the art of providing good counsel under imperfect leadership. Of course, the stakes for them were often far higher — thankfully we no longer have to worry about banishment, destitution, summary execution, or posthumous dismemberment.

Gracián characteristically took a somewhat fatalistic approach to the issue of managing up, with the sardonic Spaniard advising that one “should get used to the bad temperaments of those you deal with, like getting used to ugly faces.” He then goes on to suggest that this is “particularly advisable in situations of dependency,” before adding,

There are horrible people you can neither live with nor live without. It’s a necessary skill, therefore, to get used to them, as to ugliness, so as you’re not surprised each time their harshness manifests itself. At first they’ll frighten you, but gradually your initial horror will disappear and caution will anticipate or tolerate the unpleasantness.

Signor Ottaviano Fregoso, a former Genoese doge and a lead interlocutor in the fictionalized dialogue of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, is altogether less blasé. Stressing the moral responsibility of the advisor to steer their wayward or inattentive prince in the right direction, Fregoso emphasizes the need for tact and finesse — or what he somewhat patronizingly terms “salutary deception,”

The courtier will be able to lead his prince by the austere path of virtue, adorning it with shady fronds and strewing it with pretty flowers to lessen the tedium of the toilsome journey for one whose strength is slight… beguiling him with salutary deception; like shrewd doctors who often spread the edge of the cup with some sweet cordial when they wish to give a bitter-tasting medicine to sick and over-delicate children.

In short, the patriotic public servant should not hesitate to engage in a certain measure of careful edulcoration if not outright manipulation — particularly if the leader he or she serves is inattentive, inexperienced, or inadequate to the task at hand. Think, for example, of the elaborate and by now well-documented methods concocted by despondent National Security Council staff in their bids to get former President Donald Trump to pay attention during his daily intelligence briefs.

Other writers, however, were less comfortable with such finespun and gently insinuating efforts. To the contrary, argues Francis Bacon in his Essays, one must avoid sterile sycophancy, and labor to constantly provide the most honest form of counsel — even if that means voicing unwelcome truths, irritating one’s superior, or momentarily forestalling a popular course of action. “The greatest truth between man and man,” he solemnly avers, “is the trust of giving counsel,” before noting that,

Things will have their first, or second agitation: if they be not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, they will be tossed upon the waves of fortune; and be full of inconstancy, doings and undoings, like the reelings of a drunken man.

The key, he adds, is not to overthink things — and mentally exhaust oneself by constantly seeking to put oneself in the advisee’s headspace. “Counselors should not be too speculative into their sovereign’s person,” he thus cautions, “The true composition of a counselor is rather to be skillful in this master’s business than in his nature; for then he is like to advise him, and not feed his humor.” Conversely, he later observes, good decision-makers should remain mindful of the fact that many of their advisors will be overeager to please them, with professional obsequiousness warping their policy prescriptions. Thus, a good king, when presiding over a council meeting, should initially hold his cards close to his chest, and let conversations between his lead advisors flow freely, taking care not to “open his inclination too much, in that which he propoundeth; for else counselors will but take the wind of him, and instead of giving him free counsel, sing him a song of placebo.”

On Knowing When to Retire

And what happens when counselors and ministers get too comfortably entrenched in government? When they begin to bloviate on issues on which they have little to no expertise, or gluttonously accumulate too many portfolios that combine great prestige with frustratingly nebulous boundaries? As world-weary operatives have long acknowledged, we are all at risk of professional hubris, of overstaying our welcome and not knowing when to retire, and of thereby tarnishing our own legacy. Gracián thus bluntly warns his readers,

Don’t hang around to be a setting sun. The sensible person’s maxim: abandon things before they abandon you. Know how to turn an ending into a triumph…  Someone sharp retires a racehorse at the right time, not waiting until everyone laughs when it falls in mid-race.

Unfortunately, however, our own susceptibility to blandishments and lack of self-awareness tends to work against us. Over the course of a long and distinguished career, vernal confidence slowly calcifies into senescent self-satisfaction. And under the moist, palliative warmth of public approbation the accuracy of one’s perceptions of one’s own capabilities can easily begin to molder and crumble. As La Rochefoucauld noted, all too frequently,

We are elevated to a rank and dignity above ourselves. We are often engaged in a new profession for which nature has not adapted us. All these conditions have each an air which belong to them, but which does not always agree with our natural manner. This change of fortune often changes our air and our manner, and augments the air of dignity, which is always false when it is too marked, and when it is not united and amalgamated with that which nature has given us.

Some writers, such as the supremely capable Philippe de Béthune, who enjoyed an unusually long and distinguished career as a diplomat under three successive French rulers  — Henri IV, Marie de Medici, and Louis XIII  — suggested that as a matter of national policy, higher levels of administration should be age diverse. Older, more experienced ministers would thus help temper the ardor and callowness of more youthful royal council members, while the latter would keep their “colder and slower” older colleagues on their toes and prevent them from slipping into sleepy self-satisfaction. Francis Bacon, in his essay “Of Youth and Age” largely came to the same conclusion, observing that ideally one should “compound employments of both” (younger and more senior officials), “because the virtues of either age may correct the defects of both.” In a characteristically eloquent passage, the Jacobean statesman observed that,

Young men, in the conduct and management of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown conveniences; use extreme remedies at first, and, that which doubleth all error, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

These observations and staffing proposals failed to address, however, the more fundamental underlying issue La Rochefoucauld alluded to — the ubiquity of what we now term the Peter Principle — i.e. the fact that individuals tend to get promoted to a level of “respective incompetence.” Moreover, as revered Roman historians such as Tacitus had long contended, power and prominence not only corrupts, it also liberates and exposes — unveiling and unleashing previously recessed character traits. Thus, lamented Ottaviano Fregoso,

The office shows the man: for just as vases that are cracked cannot readily be detected so long as they are empty, yet if liquid be put into them, show at once just where the defect lies — in like manner corrupt and depraved minds rarely disclose their defects save when they are filled with authority; because they are unable to bear the heavy weight of power, and so give way and pour out on every side greed, pride, wrath, insolence, and those tyrannical practices which they have within them.

On Not Losing One’s Sense of Self

How, then, could one ensure that one rose in the service of one’s country without succumbing to hubris, vanity, or one’s own rank ineptitude? Primarily, argued Montaigne, by engaging in an effort of continuous introspection and ruthless self-assessment. All too often, he observed, he had witnessed talented, idealistic individuals be irredeemably transformed over the course of their ascension, unable to recall the “distinction between the symbols and the office, and the ordinary man who fills it.” The earthy essayist and politician quipped that he had thus seen,

Some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as many shapes and new beings as they undertake jobs, who carry their honored condition with them to the very privy… and who swell and puff up their souls, along with their natural way of speaking.

One should remind oneself of one’s humbler beginnings, he advised, avoid completely losing oneself in one’s work, and continue to cultivate many sources of moral and intellectual influence. Try to be more like Brutus, he offered, who, Plutarch tells us, took time to work on a study of Polybius on the eve of the battle of Philippi. This bout of intense inner reflection may not have helped him avert his tragic fate, but it did showcase his intellectual and moral worth for posterity. For only “little souls, buried under the weight of affairs,” did not know how to occasionally detach themselves from the present to look beyond the pinched horizons of their own daily existence. Engaging with the timeless beauty of art and literature helped nurture empathy and nourished the soul, while studying the lessons of history helped foster humility, put the mundane humdrum of the present into perspective, and honed political judgment. During the challenging period of his exile from Florence, a disgraced Machiavelli — who was himself desperate to reenter public life — had famously described how he found a measure of comfort in the company of great poets, authors, and historians from bygone eras,

On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day’s clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them.

Writing a half-century later, Montaigne could only approve of this ritualistic act of silent communion. Indeed, in one of the most famous and stirring passages of the Essays, he remarks that every human being, regardless of his or her responsibilities and/or station in life, should seek to preserve for themselves “a backshop” of the soul, “wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat.” Self-reflection, he was convinced, could exert a welcome restraining effect on one’s petty ambitions, allowing one to slowly reacquaint oneself with what made a life spent in government genuinely meaningful and worthwhile: the quiet dignity of public service, the uplifting grandeur of civic patriotism, the wholesome pride tied to enacting positive change. After all, he added, greatness of the soul is “not so much in pressing upward and forward as knowing how to govern and circumscribe oneself.”

Despite its gallery of slimy sycophants and haughty hypocrites, and notwithstanding its winding maze of moral snares and personal hazards, there remained a vital, even noble, aspect to entering government service. As Montaigne’s intellectual fellow traveler and close friend, the theologian Pierre Charron stated, renouncing all participation in public life through a bloated sense of high-mindedness was simply another form of pridefulness parading as virtue, which deserved, therefore, to be “rigorously condemned.”

To flee the world and hide oneself, for whatever private or individual motive, while we have the means to profit another person, and aid the public, is to become a deserter, to bury one’s talent, to hide one’s light.

Instead, with a stoic measure of self-discipline, one must repeatedly remind oneself of one’s intellectual limitations and moral imperfections, and of the need for continuous self-improvement. “We must always know how to distinguish and separate ourselves from our public charges,” he urged, echoing his friend from Bordeaux, before reminding his readers that,

The skillful man will perform his office well but never forget to judge clearly the folly, the vice, the knavishness he finds there. He will exercise his charge because this is the practice in his country; it is useful to the public and can also be to himself; this is the way the world runs and he should do nothing to damage it. One must make use and avail oneself of the world as one finds it; but nevertheless consider it a thing alien to oneself, know how to enjoy oneself apart from it, commune confidently with one’s own inner goodness, and at the worst walk by oneself.

Pierre Charron, like all the other weathered policymakers cited in this essay, was under no illusions as to the difficulties tied to such a delicate internal balancing act. Nevertheless, he and his counterparts in early modern England, France, Italy, and Spain all deemed it necessary to put their detailed recommendations in writing, not only for the benefit of their contemporaries in government, but also for that of their successors. Their vibrant discussions of the ethics and challenges of working in policy are not just deeply soulful — they are also often mordantly witty and surprisingly relevant.

So next time you are browsing through a second-hand bookstore, feeling downcast after the most recent bout of bureaucratic wrangling or professional backstabbing, veer away from the self-help and business psychology aisles, with their brazen lettering, blunt recommendations, and catchy titles. Instead, pick up a musty, dog-eared copy of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Montaigne’s Essays, or Baltasar Gracián’s Art of Wordly Wisdom. After all, as Harry Truman famously said after departing the “great white jail” of the White House, “the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”

Iskander Rehman is a Senior Political Scientist at RAND, where he focuses on applied history, defense strategy and Asian security.

Image: This is a faithful photographic reproduction of Andrea Mantegna’s Court of Gonzaga, accessed via Wikimedia Commons