[Mouton]

They won't give her any accolades.

My favorite story about her was she traced the decline of the British Empire to the invention of the telephone. According to her theory, when those in the field operated on their own with no quarterbacking from Whitehall on a minute by minute basis, everything worked very well.

From personal experience in our federal bureaucracy, I know that story to be right on the mark.

[mrsmel]

My favorite is her theory of the “ratchet effect” . I have never heard a phrase which so aptly and succinctly describes the push-pull between left and right, and how the advantage goes to the left. Her description of this effect has never been more relevant than it is now, when the effect has been “ratcheted” up even more than in her political day. She had intelligence and vision, unlike the apparatchiks of both left and right these days.

[Yossarian]

My favorite story about her was she traced the decline of the British Empire to the invention of the telephone. According to her theory, when those in the field operated on their own with no quarterbacking from Whitehall on a minute by minute basis, everything worked very well.

Can you give the source for this? I like the story and would like to repeat it to others, but in basic poking around the internet, I haven't seen a source for it yet.