When you raise issues with the President, try to come away with both that decision and also a precedent. Pose issues so as to evoke broader policy guidance. This can help to answer a range of similar issues likely to arise later.

If you are working from your inbox, you are working on other people’s priorities.

Don't 'over-control' like a novice pilot. Stay loose enough from the flow that you can observe it, modify, and improve it.

There are a lot of things that are said by people in the military, or civilian life, or in the Congress, or in the Executive Branch, that are their views. And that's the way we live. We're a free people. And that's the wonderful thing about our country.

Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.

Five days or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last longer.

What will follow will not be a repeat of any other conflict. It will be of a force and scope and scale that has been beyond what has been seen before.