ProfessorHenn for Prime Minister 2

Elections Archive
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Holy mackerel, folks, what a term.

I’m ProfessorHenn, long time South Pacifican and incumbent Prime Minister. Most recently also served as Minister of Culture, and in times long past us Minister of Regional Affairs and Minister of the Army, as well as General of the South Pacific Special Forces.

We’ve certainly had a hell of a time over the past five months, from the end of the Great Council to the shift away from an elected Cabinet to foreign affairs incidents. Unfortunately these exciting moments haven’t translated into more meaningful and sustained activity both within the Assembly and throughout the region. RP continues on, albeit without much, if any, integration with government policy, and the RMB is as active as it usually is, causing problems for the Moderators at a reliable rate. It’s not ideal.

What is ideal is an active region with a strong political culture, through questioning the executive on actions it takes, teaching newcomers the finer details of TSP and interregional politics and that NationStates is more than a place to run your own nation through issues-answering, and encouraging vigorous legislative debate on reforms that might need to be taken. We are doing fine with the final point, and I’ve made one committee thread to help with the second, but these are still the collective responsibility of all of us involved in NationStates’ Oldest Democracy. So what am I gonna do to help?

The simple answer is continue work on the current integration overhaul projects, encourage a greater amount of lower-level participation in the community, and seek out new friendships with other regions that we can draw inspiration from.

Integration

We’ve already started some discussions about this, across various aspects to include Discourse and its Wizards and Dispatches and Telegrams, and we’ll continue on with this to completion. My philosophy towards this is to gradually ramp up the information presented, preferring to keep a minimum number of items to maintain regularly. Telegrams present a very small amount of information, pushing people to join the region/forum/Discord. Dispatches provide a bit more, offering a greater number of more specialized avenues to participate in. Discourse’s intro wizard is extremely short and simple, aiming to ask them a few questions to gauge their interests and desire to participate, and a second wizard includes the various applications for newcomers to apply to. Pinned topics include the most information that is required to be maintained more frequently to represent the minor details of policy. I’d also like to run a recruitment program, as another way to help offset the severe drop in nation spawns from the introduction of the Frontiers update, and continue working with SPROUT to bring in current South Pacificans to the forums.

Community Participation

This has, in a sense, also already begun, through Resident Spotlights, but wre absolutely need more for newcomers to get involved in before aiming for the higher-level aspects of TSP, like running for PM or Delegate. Smaller, lower-stakes events such as game nights and a “silly law” event can and should be common features. We’ve obviously had mixed success in maintaining these, and this is an area where I definitely want to encourage a larger sense of buy-in and ownership, so to speak. Submitting poll and radio ideas, encouraging non-government players to run events and shindigs, and more.

Foreign Affairs

This is the interesting one. The term has seen Aegis grow massively, with the inclusion of The League, The Order of the Grey Wardens, and Europeia, as well as the additions of Concord and The Amaranthine Isles being added as protected regions. We’ve also seen the dissolution of the Aurora Alliance, and a recent incident that was peacefully resolved with assistance from Amerion, our Minister of Foreign Affairs. Our current policy of favoring Aegis has not been a boon to our domestic side of the house, however, and we need a shift in thought to favor that. Our goal should be establishing and maintaining relations with regions with effective integration policy, active political cultures, and innovative organization and branding. “Surround yourself with good people”, in a nutshell.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

My WA nation is Sporaltryus, and I am the Foreign Councillor of Selene. I have no other involvements with foreign regions.

At this point, this is the first election for Prime Minister under our new appointed Cabinet system, and therefore is very influential in setting the standards of what we should expect from campaigns. With that said, I want to explicitly state that I will not be naming specific names of individuals I would like in my Cabinet or Advisory Councils, and that my intention is to set forth a vision of what I want to accomplish, encourage those who agree to reach out to me should I win, and reach out to others that I think can help with these goals to help fill in the gaps otherwise.

I also want to more aggressively promote SWAN, but that’s a matter to be made in lockstep with the next Delegate so that we can accomplish higher WA endorsements of the Delegate and SPCG, higher cross-endorsement rates among the region, and greater WA participation in the GA and SC as appropriate.

Thank you for reading. I look forward to your questions.

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Could you expand on this point a bit? In what ways has favoring Aegis been less than ideal domestically, and why? What specific shifts would you implement to address these issues?

Apologies if these points are obvious to more experienced foreign affairs hands; I’m still trying to get a grasp on the diplomatic landscape.

Would you be willing to share the Cabinet structure that you envision, without naming any candidates for individual posts? If I understand correctly, the Prime Minister can effectively restructure the Cabinet at will, by creating, merging, or abolishing Cabinet posts. I’m just curious what sort of ministerial positions you think are required in an effective Executive branch.

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Our prioritization of Aegis over other relationships was made in the belief of cooperating on cultural events, both big and small, and we’ve been left lacking in that regard. There hasn’t been a lot of bite from Aegis on trying to do anything with us, and while I’m not going to refuse a good offer, I’m also not going to hold my breath and wait for it when we could instead reach out to other regions, such as our current embassies or those who are friendly to us, and establish ties that way. Surrounding ourselves with good people is meant to give us the ability of seeing how they run things, learning what we can, and applying the better parts to TSP where reasonable and possible.

I’ll probably aim to appoint Ministers for:

  1. Foreign Affairs
  2. Roleplay
  3. Forum Activities
  4. Integration
  5. Defense

But I’ll consolidate and/or expand as appropriate, and to accommodate enough active Ministers, Advisors, or others to help execute the agenda. I do want to see a larger Foreign Advisory Council, so that we can implement the strategy laid out in the above question without overburdening me or the MoFA too much.

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During this past term, you abolished the staffer system. And if I may editorialize just a little, it feels like you’ve been encouraging people to speak up about their own ideas for ‘events and shindigs’ ever since. Aside from public encouragement, what steps have you taken and/or do you plan to take to incentivize or inspire this kind of community involvement?

I’m also curious about this because it feels like there were notable aspects of your policies this past term that were not pursued with this kind of community participation and buy-in but rather with top-down, centralized organization. You appointed a Minister of Regional Affairs who deputized work to the newly created positions of Mentorship Coordinator and Dispatch Rewrite Coordinator — roles that didn’t originate from some grassroots community project but rather from a top-down decree that we should have a mentorship program and a dispatch rewrite.

I mean, heck, HS laid out their vision as MoRA on May 16. I asked on June 9 if there were any plans to open up the dispatch project for public comment, input, or contribution. And we got a public forum topic to discuss dispatches and telegrams on… July 13. I couldn’t help but notice that you mentioned you wanted to “encourage a larger sense of buy-in and ownership” from the community when it comes to cultural events. Should this extend to integration projects as well — such as the telegrams, wizards, and dispatches that you mentioned? If so, what steps do you plan to take to help provide more opportunities for the community to buy in and contribute?

I think there’s a fair bit to unpack here, so bear with me:

  • What does “innovative organization and branding” mean to you? I have my thoughts on whose branding I consider more innovative, but really nothing to offer that isn’t just inherently subjective. Do you have any criteria or metrics that you look towards for this? Because, reading critically, it sounds a bit like whatever branding you like.
  • There are plenty of regions with effective integration policy and active political cultures. Heck, TNP comes to mind! Do you now feel that it’s worth pursuing a new alliance with TNP? Or are there other factors besides ‘effective integration’ or ‘active politics’ that might shape how much we have in common or how well we get along with other regions?
  • Why do you feel that our position in Aegis hasn’t helped the “domestic side of the house”? The Amaranthine Isles, Europeia, and Concord were the top three frontiers in terms of new nation spawns over the past week. The percentage of their WA nations endorsing their delegates are at 79%, 79%, and and 89%, respectively. We’re at 75%, and that’s with whatever residual advantage we had from running SWAN for years. Have you, for example, reached out to these allies to see what we can learn from their integration policy, before dismissing the potential benefits of our position in Aegis to our domestic affairs?
  • What role do you feel that cultural ties should play in our foreign affairs? For example, we wrapped up SeasPride with Europeia not too long ago, and #international-airport has been a nice addition to our Discord server. Do you feel these cultural endeavors are useful domestically as well and are worth pursuing?
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Where I’ve received community involvement, I’ve sought to act on it. Recent polls have been sent to me from several of our legislators, which I’ve either run or plan to run, and we’ve got 87.7 radio on the WFE as of today, which I fully intend to draw on from the community for so we’re not all subjected to synthpop. We can run more telegrams about our events we’ve got planned and ask for more involvement, and give credit (or cards if the program can be revived) where possible, but I can only ask so much so often before it becomes excessively annoying.

Mentorship Coordinator was created to continue the work Griffindor had started during his term as Minister of Engagement, since it was his project and we didn’t see the utility in killing it before seeing what results it could produce over a longer period of time. In this case, it would not be an official position I would maintain in the next term, and I’d likely recommend some changes to how the program should run, if it does continue in a formalized manner, but I also think that what it hopes to accomplish can be done through a different sense of communal responsibility that we might not have been encouraging as much as we could be.

Absolutely, I would want community feedback and involvement on integration projects. I’ve asked several prominent members of the region to start those topics on different areas, so that those who might have better ideas for a telegram can post in that topic without interrupting the flow of the wizard project. It’s on the forums so that we can have a more deliberative discussion, and for better archival purposes. To get more people involved, we can send out a regional telegram or a Citizens/Legislator ping on Discord. The topics are there, and they’re open.

At its core, yes, this is entirely subjective. But, I also don’t intend to approach regions on my whim, and not solely for their organization or branding. FAC’s goal is to discuss these potential regions and whether it’s worth the effort to reach out, and DAC’s goal is on discussing and thinking through these region’s policies, organization, et cetera, and whether it could fit within our region in one of its forms. Beyond what the PM could implement at their level, internal to the executive, these discussions would also include members of the segments of TSP where these changes could be made.

I don’t intend to pursue any new alliances this term. The goal is to establish relations with regions we might not have reached out to otherwise, and maintain them through cooperation and joint activites. TNP is still a friend of TSP, events of this year notwithstanding, and the door to future cooperation was not closed forever.

Those are the primary factors, but they’re not going to be the only ones. R/D alignment/relations with our enemies will be another big one, as well as any existing personal relationships that might exist that can lend us a better grasp of what to decide on.

I’m not dismissing Aegis or seeking to remove ourselves from it. My intent was to help provide a broader network of regions that we interact with, so that we can draw upon a broader depth of knowledge. We have the capacity to pursue both options at once, and we should.

Absolutely, I think they’re useful, and I’ve been pushing for #international-airport’s inclusion in all of our Aegis partners’ servers since the feature was added to Coco at my request. For my part, I think cultural ties are the strongest ties we can have with foreign regions. Military activities don’t reach as far into the community as a good game of Gartic or skribblio, and they’re much easier to run and operate without having to be in senior leadership to organize.

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Can you describe the time commitment you can comfortably make to being Prime Minister? Why do you believe that will be sufficient?

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The time I can spend during the next term is the same time I’m spending on being PM now. I check the forums and Discord daily, passively endotart every few days to maintain my levels. I do think this time commitment is fine, with a good enough team assembled to help keep track of and run everything planned or going to be planned.

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Howdy. You’ve had…I mean, you’ve had a term for the history books. Your term saw the conclusion of the Great Council, the first PM-appointed Ministers, the abolition of the Local Council, a complete turnover in Cabinet, the navigation of the first real challenges to the Aegis Accords, some of the best (and, admittedly, most mid) performances of the SPSF in its history, and the dissolution of the Aurora Alliance. To be fair, so much got done in part because continued legislative changes meant a three month term became a five month term, but it was also rather tumultuous, and you deserve credit for surviving it all.

The headline event of the term was certainly the dissolution of the Aegis Accords. You stated throughout the process that you did not want that outcome, and I know it was a disappointment when it did happen. I think you’ve already addressed this to some extent at various points, but what are your regrets about this process? What lessons will you take away and how will you improve?

I know I’ve spoken on this elsewhere, but I strongly agree with this and look forward to its adoption.

I think, in concept, encouraging community-members to host events is a good template. However, I feel we haven’t done a great job of it (some of the responsibility for which definitely rests with me as Minister of Regional Affairs). How will you change things to make this framework effective?

Why? I am not a strong proponent of either naming or not-naming, but am curious :stuck_out_tongue:

Would you have a legislative agenda as Prime Minister? If so, what is it? I’m not thinking “bills you personally want to proposal” but rather “bills that are central to accomplishing your government’s agenda”.

Your challenger has correctly pointed out the poor state of WA affairs in the latter part of your term, and you haven’t included a section on this in your platform. What would be your approach to WA matters in a second term? Why would Em’s approach not work?

Why forum activities specifically? Which portfolio will be responsible for RMB activities/events? Is that under integration?

I don’t think this is an entirely accurate characterization. Griffindor had designed the Mentorship program during his term as Minister of Engagement, so my retaining him to run the program was far more of an effort to continue a campaign platform piece of a departing Minister than it was a “top-down decree”. Similarly. Kris had long expressed ideas about the Dispatch program, so I brought him on to work on the project, which is also not a “top-down decree”.

tbf though, I will own this as being a product of inactivity/RL on my part, as well as Kris’ changing motivation/interest in the project. Of course, the buck stops with Henn, but it’s worth noting why there was the breakdown that you (correctly) point out

btw, I like this idea and would like to see it incorporated in either a Henn or Em administration.

I want whatever you’re smoking.

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Is there something you know that we don’t? :stuck_out_tongue:

Eh, fair point, let me rephrase. I don’t think setting up a mentorship or dispatch project is top-down per se, but they can still be carried out in a top-down manner. To Griffindor’s credit, he’s publicly commented, and invited public comment, on the dispatch project.

The point I wanted to make about the dispatch project, meanwhile, is that the project didn’t feel like it offered that kind of opportunity for community involvement. The work was centralized with a single coordinator, who worked internally within the ministry. So, given the talk about encouraging community members to host an event here or there… why not also encourage us to, say, share an idea about our dispatches?

I mean, I think that’s largely understandable and I’m didn’t mean to come across as being too worked up about it; but on the ‘buck stops with Henn’ part, I can’t help but note that you did also announce that Henn would be working directly with Kris on the dispatch project…

In any case, the point I’m trying to make is that people get busy, interests ebb, priorities shift, real life happens, and what not. I get it. So why not open up these projects to the community from the get-go? Why bother with the hurdle of making people ask what the work on the project looks like or if there are any plans to publicize that work? Why not let the community contribute, instead of centralizing all the work internally within the ministry?

What part of that was incorrect? All I said was that TNP seems like it has effective integration policy and active political cultures. And I think there are reasonable reasons to believe so! Since frontiers were introduced to the game and feeders’ spawns were cut in half, Gorundu’s endorsement count has fallen by 3.8%; in the same time period, Anjo’s has fallen by 19.0%. That sounds like pretty effective integration policy to me. And glancing through some of their recent election records, it seems like they had 61 votes in their recent judicial election, so it seems like there’s a decent amount of activity in their politics.

Admittedly, I neither have an account on TNP’s forums nor check them very often. Maybe appearances are deceiving. But is it really that unreasonable to say TNP has effective integration and political activity?

I’m not even saying I agree with their politics! In fact, the point I was trying to make was that I’d rather we have a more principled and culturally-grounded approach to our foreign affairs than just going around looking for whoever happens to have ‘effective integration policy’ and ‘active political cultures.’

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How do Frontiers factor into your plans with regard to military, FA, or the federation system put into practice by several regions, if they factor in at all?

Additionally, do you have any plans to work on unity within Aegis, which, to my understanding (I was inactive at the time so let me know if this is incorrect), was a significant problem in the recent FA incident with TNP? If so, what would that entail?

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The biggest regret, and the #1 takeaway, was control of the narrative. I completely bungled that aspect of FA at almost every step, which didn’t help our discussions with TNP’s team at all. I was still pretty new to what NSGP foreign relations really was, and I’d argue I’m still pretty fresh to it, but that experience was a pretty hard way to learn that. I still wish we hadn’t seen the dissolution of the alliance, and I hope to work with TNP again some day in the future as two old friends, but time and honest work will fix that relationship.

In terms of an actual lesson, getting out into GP and either pushing back on raider talking points, or getting our own out there is absolutely critical. At the very least, someone in Cabinet, preferably both, and then some others to help assist. Clarifying the role that Advisors play in FAC here in TSP has also been a sticking point, and that’s something we’ll need to keep working on moving forward.

In short, I think it mostly comes down to consistency. Keeping up the message of “hey, send us stuff, host some stuff, let us know what you want” wasn’t a strong suit of the previous term, and I’ll attribute that in part to my own hesitance in trying to send out a weekly telegram when, say, the Delegate is doing a twice-a-month (biweekly is too damn confusing) telegram, the Generals are sending out telegrams asking for liberation assistance, there are several culture events happening. I honestly don’t know if we should just stick to a regular schedule for all telegrams, barring liberations since raiders don’t usually keep to only doing major sieges on the same day of the week, but we can have that discussion with the next Delegate/Cabinet/General Corp. My reasoning is the same for Discord pings, since we all love to get those several times a week, but we can definitely run a few more mentions here and there.

Em’s reasoning for this is sound, although my biggest reasoning was a little more selfish. I didn’t want to promise a particular name, and then try to force an unintended participant into the position, possibly having to renege on a campaign promise. Without naming particular names, voters may not know who exactly I intend to appoint to be MoFA, which is particularly sensitive this election, but I tried to make that up by clarifying the FA agenda in this campaign, which I can then use to reach out to those whom I can work with, know can do the job well or well enough, and can pass the approval vote in the Assembly.

I tend to approach my legislative interactions from my position as a Legislator, and all other Assembly interactions as the PM (like with discussions on the TNP situation). For instance, I’m not supporting the Voter Registration reforms as the head of government, I’m supporting them as a legislator who believes it would be beneficial to our longer-term health, potentially with other reforms mixed in as they get introduced and debated in the Assembly. Same with discussions in Operations Center, those aren’t as anything IC, but instead my OOC thoughts on improving our community.

Aside from looking into way to automate OWL votes, or at least make them much less intensive to do compared to the current system, I don’t have much of a strong opinion on how I approach WA matters. The best case is someone approaching me, asking to run OWL/take the lead on TSP’s WA program, and then working from there to help build up our GA/SC competence. Otherwise, we’ll have discussions over approving/disapproving/ignoring certain proposals to maintain our foreign policy, and broadly let the Delegate vote in line with the region. Em’s approach isn’t bad, but it hinges on having someone who cares enough to do the tedious work, which is a very small list of people.

I had wanted to present it for public comment when we had gotten a bit further along in the rework, but that obviously didn’t happen. I did like where it was going when I saw the test screenshots, and I do want to keep working on that (and including that in the Dispatches and Telegrams thread as we go!), so I don’t want to leave that in the dark either.

My personal work philosophy (that has been beaten into me by RL work so take that how you will. . .) is to not only present a complaint about something, but also provide a possible solution. I try not to just make a topic that says “Let’s do this!”, usually I’ll ask that on Discord or in a PM, and then once we figure out some more details, I sit down long enough to pencil a solution together, it gets posted to the forums so that we not only have the overall topic to discuss, but a possible solution too, which can hopefully speed the process up ever so slightly. I’m fine with changing this for TSP, it’ll just require a more cognizant behavioral shift from me, but that’s largely why things get announced briefly, worked on privately, and then brought out for public comment.

We’re still a democratic region, we still maintain our principles. Those two points were meant to reflect the changes from our current policy that I want to make happen, not the only things we’d be looking for. My apologies for not providing more clarification regarding that.

At some point in the very near future, we, in varying spheres of influence, should have a discussion regarding how we should handle frontiers, at all stages. Aside from defending our allies’ frontiers in Aegis, what should we do when it comes to defending or participating with them? This isn’t a policy point I feel in any way, shape, or form qualified to unilaterally decide for TSP, especially when this is a good opportunity for newer/inexperienced legislators to participate in more than just legislative discussions (see my last attempt here, which can always be revived!).

The two matters are separate from each other. TNP’s happened from the end of March to the start of June, roughly, while Aegis was the end of June to the start of July.

Aegis unity is a tricky thing to work on, having been mildly involved in some of the discussions, but we need to have some conversations with our allies first. That’ll help us figure out the path(s) forward so all of our regions can work on rebuilding alliance trust, without a repeat of the past incident.

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Are these all of the ministries you plan to have, or do you intend to keep the other Ministers in place. Also, what do you foresee the Ministry of Roleplaying doing?

This does a lot for the off-site, but do you have any plans to make the general on-site become more involved regional events, or make more regional events such as Swanvision?

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That list is my intended Minister set-up, although it is subject to change pending discussions with possible Ministers. Ministry of Roleplay would primarily serve as a liaison between the RP community and the Cabinet, and would help to both raise general awareness of what RP has to offer, and offer more pointed advice on how we can better integrate RP into our overall integration set-up. I’d also like to run some more RP events, in a similar vein to the film festival or RP awards, but that’s dependent on the Minister to help coordinate.

(Sorry for missing this.) I would like to run Nomic, at a minimum, or a similar legislating project with the Chair of the Assembly, so that we can keep up our law-writing and debating chops without trying to drastically change how our laws look. That alone lends itself to wanting a more careful watch, vice running a poll every few days, which I’m currently doing with @North and @Shibuya-Kanon’s help. RMB Activities would continue to fall under my purview, mostly serving as a conduit for others to host events, but I’m fine with dropping Forum Activities and doing RMB Activities if there’s a capable Minister for that position who has more substantial ideas on what to do/how to do them.

It would be nice to have more RMB/gameside activities, but I ultimately think forum activities would be more substantial for the health of our community. I’ll echo the above, though, it’s not a problem to work with someone if they have a good idea of what they want to do with the RMB.

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As for the precedent-setting actions the Prime Minister will take in the upcoming term… we already have the stated Assembly preference for individual appointments rather than whole cabinet appointments. However, should you win reelection, do you plan on submitting your minister appointments to the Assembly during the transition and/or the opening weeks of the term?

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So I can’t vote since I’m not a Legislator, but nothing is to my knowledge stopping me from commenting on certain topics anyway. Today’s topic for me is going to be foreign affairs, strangely enough for me, since I’m still working on electorally relevant questions WRT the handling of RP and TSPRP.

ahem.

^^^statement being quoted.

While I will be the first to admit that I have no experience with NS politics and am not the best with these kinds of things in general, I believe that there were a few issues with the handling of the incident referenced in the above statement that I can bring up.

I would argue that some of the problems arose not with your control of the narrative, but when fragmentation of your narrative occurred and rendered the task of presenting an effective, united PR front difficult-to-impossible. The first aspect of this issue arose when some TSPers became regularly involved with commenting on threads such as TSP’s embassy topic and the “Response to allegations by LWU” topic without any visible coordination with the MoFA; additionally, when official statements were given, they were ineffective at conveying their message, were perceived as flip-flopping, contradictory, and/or disingenuous, and seemed to me to be largely drowned out by independently posting TSPers. The second aspect appeared when the various mentioned parties (TSP, TL, TGW, XKI, etc.) made responses separately, failed to check with each other, and overall failed to effectively prevent bus-throwing and other undesirable outcomes. What measures, if any, are you planning to take so that the foreign affairs ministry and the rest of TSP’s government do not repeat such a mishandling of PR in the future?

Adding more people is just adding more chances that somebody makes an unintentionally (or intentionally) damaging/inflammatory statement unless you and any potential FA minister can effectively coordinate and manage them. Do you have any plans as to how you will effectively add additional voices to your side while still maintaining a unified, controlled message?

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I’d definitely be aiming to submit the appointments during the transition period. I’ll admit I wasn’t much a fan of the idea before we switched to an appointed Cabinet, since there wasn’t necessarily a whole lot each position needed to transfer over, but the period will come in extremely handy for getting appointments in and getting the next PM up to speed on things. Since the Assembly would rather handle these votes by Minister, my goal is to at least get a name for Foreign Affairs, Roleplay, and Integration within the first four days, with others coming down the pipeline as needed.

Something that I’m not necessarily a fan of is the requirement for Ministers to pass the vote before officially entering office. If we had the current law in place during HumanSanity’s resignation, it would have been around a week before Pronoun could have entered office, which was a critical time frame for us in our discussions with TNP. There are kinda sorta ways about handling things through that, but it’s tricky. I’m hoping we can count on our current Ministers with remaining in office until their successors are approved, but that’s both their call and the next PM’s call, should it not be me.

Simply put, it’s to at least start talking. I think the most realistic case is to ask more experienced hands who have delved into NSGP peanut gallery posting to handle the heavy lifting, where appropriate, but the more ideal scenario is to train up a newer generation of South Pacificans to be able to better handle the peanut gallery through things not unlike school courses. Having an experienced individual go “Hey, how would you handle this statement, with these responses?” and run down the list of what a good response would be, what a bad one would be, etc. Part of it is also having our allies help us stand against the peanut gallery, since sometimes, it’s not just what you say, but how many people are saying it.

The specifics are something MoFA and I will be working out, but I broadly want to instill the knowledge that any public posts of FA Advisors will be scrutinized heavily, and that they should be following the guidance that we put out regarding what to keep closed lips on, what’s fine to talk about, etc. We’ll have some frank discussions with newer advisors about these topics.

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I hadn’t noticed this aspect of the Charter before, but I can see how it could cause practical difficulties. Would you support empowering the Prime Minister to appoint their nominee as acting Minister while the Assembly confirmation process is ongoing? If confirmed, the “acting” modifier would drop off, but if rejected, the minister would vacate office immediately and the Prime Minister would have to appoint someone else.

I suppose a potential downside of this idea is that having the minister already in office may create undue pressure on the Assembly to confirm them simply to avoid administrative disruption. And I’m sure there are more considerations that I haven’t thought through. Just curious to hear your thoughts.

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Ehhh. I go back and forth on this one, but I think I’d support an acting Minister vice no Minister. Would be interesting to discuss in the Assembly once we let appointed Cabinets mature a bit more.

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You’ve opined before that we could last a week without a PM. Why the rush with ministers?

Eh, I can see this from the perspective of not divulging privileged/sensitive information, but I’d still hope you’re interested in bringing on advisors with diverse perspectives — including ones you may not see eye to eye with, and including ones who may want to make public statements about their opinions… which seems pretty common for NationStates players. Is that your intention? Or do you see the role of FA advisors as not just about advising, but also about serving as spokespeople advancing the governments’ message?

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Well, you know, some stuff and/or things happened and it was crucial for us to have a quick turnaround on MoFAs at the time.

Definitely. Advisors are there to advise. If I need a spokesperson, I’ll appoint one.