Early in my career, I worked on Capitol Hill as a speechwriter for then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid. My colleagues and I would marvel at Reid’s stubborn insistence on zigging when others zagged.
Countless times, when the right decision seemed obvious to us, he would do precisely the opposite. On one infamous occasion, I huddled with him in the Senate barbershop before he was slated to give a speech at a ceremony to open the new Capitol Visitors’ Center. While he was getting a haircut, I walked him through the (probably boring) remarks I had drafted for him. He let me finish my briefing and then told me, “I think I’m going to talk about how smelly the tourists get in the summer.”
