- “Major policymaking episodes repay the closest possible examination. Only such examination can reconstruct key judgments within the little worlds in which they are made. Only be penetrating these worlds can we truly understand and evaluate that extraordinary human faculty that we label ‘judgment.’ And only by doing that can we learn to do better.” (449–50)
Lesson: The best way to understand and assess the judgments made by policymakers of the past is to consider those judgments in light of the most detailed and seemingly insignificant historical information available.
Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, concise edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002).
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