Via Corp Counsel, I enjoyed this talk by outgoing SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar on "(Hopefully) Helpful Tips for New Commissioners."  Indeed, some of the people associated with this site might find it particularly interesting.  Aguilar makes being a commissioner sound a little like being a judge.  There's a staff of five, four counsels, and one confidential assistant, and you spend all your time talking to them, so they have to be good.  I also found these quotes - quotes from which Aguilar took inspiration - to be somewhat dark and foreboding:

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” — Sir Winston Churchill

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” — Vince Lombardi

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.” — Margaret Thatcher

I would have thought that being a commissioner would be much more like being the deputy secretary of an agency than a judge, but perhaps for nonstop meetings with a dizzying array of underlings, it's the chair or nothing.

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