10 tips for Barak
Some advice to our next defense minister, in the hope he won't let us down
1. Shady deals are indeed a challenging matter, particularly for an analytical mind such as your own. They may have brought you to where you are right now, yet this is precisely the moment to bid them farewell. Overdoing it when it comes to shady deals would take you back to where you were six months ago. As you recall, you weren't satisfied there.
2. The Defense Ministry is a good springboard to the Prime Minister's Office, but not only. There is plenty of work there that must be done. Remember it when you plan your schedule.
3. Appoint good people, based on their skills. You know how to do it, and you also know what it looks like when you don't do it. Even someone like you can't do everything on his own.
4. The Defense Ministry is not your personal headquarters. Don't invite your buddies to come over. You know what, take a timeout and don’t invite them at all.
5. Set up an organized, orderly office. You don't need 17 spokespeople, for example. There is nothing more exhausting than calling one of them and later being yelled at by the 10 you didn't call.
6. The notion of "divide and conquer" has been passé for a long time now. Recall the children's tale about the twigs that are broken when they are separate but stronger than iron when they are joined together.
7. Don't be late; it was never graceful. It will never be graceful. If you refrain from calling people at 2 AM, unless a war breaks out, you will be able to wake up on time in the morning.
8. On the same issue, don't let people wait for you for two hours outside the door. That's really despicable.
9. Keep cutting-edge technology for your guests at home. The same is true for your cigars. No serious journalist is really impressed by a cellular phone the size of a pin hidden between your toes.
10. In a short while you will be appearing at cemeteries to mark one year to the Second Lebanon War. Read carefully what Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz said there on the last Memorial Day – and don't say anything they said.
And now, for the bonus: You were not the initial or natural choice of a large part of our people, but now you are everyone's hope. You have all the skills to realize at least some of the expectations. Don't disappoint us. Not because you cannot afford to, but rather, because we cannot sustain it anymore.
