Leadership Quote by Frank Carlucci

Carlucci’s line is a masterclass in bureaucratic self-protection dressed up as sober realism. “Have to” signals inevitability: policymakers aren’t choosing freely, they’re compelled by circumstance. That framing matters because it quietly relocates responsibility from the decision-maker to the informational weather system around them. If the outcome is ugly, the implication is that the inputs were at fault, not the judgment.

“Judgments” is doing strategic work, too. It sounds modest, almost judicial, as if policy emerges from careful weighing rather than power, ideology, or institutional incentives. The word invites us to respect the difficulty of the job while making the job harder to audit. A “judgment” can be defended even when it’s wrong; it’s inherently subjective, a call made under pressure.

Then comes the crucial phrase: “the best intelligence they get.” It’s both a claim of diligence and an escape hatch. “Best” doesn’t mean complete, unbiased, or unpoliticized; it means best available through a particular pipeline, in a particular moment, often filtered by agencies with their own agendas and by leaders who may prefer certain answers. “They get” is passive voice with consequences: intelligence is received, not shaped, cherry-picked, or ignored. Anyone familiar with late Cold War and post-Vietnam governance hears the background hum: scandals, covert operations, and the constant effort to rebuild credibility by insisting on process.

The subtext is a plea for public tolerance of uncertainty. It asks citizens to judge leaders not by outcomes, but by the apparent reasonableness of their inputs. In democratic politics, that’s an attractive bargain for officials and a risky one for everyone else.