It is extremely normal for upper management to receive briefings well in advance to review them and pre-submit questions to the briefers to be ready to address. This sounds like Nate confessing that he’s the shittiest boss in the world.

Nate Silver of all people should understand the concept of “no surprises” when interacting with people at the top of any organization. Want to kill your career fast? Go into a meeting with your boss and people a few levels higher then do something they didn’t expect.

A well-known story to that exact effect about Bill Gates in the early days. www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/m...

My First BillG Review

In the olden days, Excel had a very awkward programming language without a name. “Excel Macros,” we called it. It was a severely dysfunctional programming language without variables (yo…

He‘s thinks it’s supposed to be all West Wing style walk-and-talks. I just know it.

God he’s annoying. Does he think Biden typically has three hour blocks of time to sit and spitball with the Undersecretary of aid to sub-Saharan Africa or some shit?

Wait until whatever dipshit wrote this learns about (1) every other cabinet meeting; (2) and especially the incredible scenes at Trump's (televised!) cabinet meetings.

 By a strange coincidence, he is!

I can't speak to the executive branch specifically, but in other parts of the federal government this is not only normal but documented and required. Like, if you have a project you want done or some kind of policy decision, you have to submit pre-briefings according a schedule and template

I wonder if he’ll need smelling salts when he finds out information gets filtered through multiple levels before it gets to him.

This is, sorry I'm going to use this word again, gaslighting. "I'm not the authoritarian, you're the authoritarian." Also, McKinsey has this entire procedure patented.

Jesus Christ, we learned this from the West Wing 20 years ago!!