"My father used to say, 'Your mind is like a parachute. If it won't open when you need it, it is not much good.' I have an open mind."
— Wilson, George C.
Adm. William James Crowe Jr., who this week begins steering the Joint Chiefs of Staff through what may be their most perilous passage in three decades, can be witty, intellectual and tough. But above all he is a skilled practitioner of the art of the possible.
"My father used to say, 'Your mind is like a parachute. If it won't open when you need it, it is not much good.' I have an open mind."
Other Croweisms charmed Democrats and Republicans at the admiral's confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) called him "the right man in the right place at the right time." Crowe's two-to-four-year tenure as chiefs chairman, the nation's preeminent military officer, begins Tuesday.
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