t was unknowable at that point-WorldCom's fraud had created pricing pressure that deprived the company of the earnings it needed to sustain its investments in cable and wireless. But part of it had been in the room with them; in the first two years of Armstrong's tenure, the company was long on vision but short on financial discipline in its acquisitions and divesti- tures. The problems of 2000 had been sown in the years before. The board had hired a great CEO, but it had waited too long to complete him with a great CFO. Part of that responsibility also falls on a CEO's PR counselor. The best advice I received when I assumed responsibility for AT&T's pub- lic relations came from my predecessor twice removed. Ed Block had been senior vice president of public relations at AT&T when AT&T still enjoyed a monopoly and was the largest company in the world, with influence that was felt from the corridors of Capitol Hill to rural village halls. Block reminded me that my job was to be a physical extension of the CEO. Good public relations was his responsibility. My job was to help him fulfill it. He was my only client, and I had better get used to his whims, eccentricities, strengths, weaknesses, and foi- bles, because I would be living with them for as long as I had my job. And if I didn't get used to them, I wouldn't have it for long. But as Block pointed out, my job was not simply to keep my job. Successful CEOs are like thoroughbred racehorses: They wear blind- ers to block out distractions and stay focused on the finish line. My job was to provide peripheral vision, even if it was occasionally at the price of being nipped. My biggest regret is that, while I had moments of clarity, I was seduced by the allure of the stock markets, as were Tough Calls most of my colleagues. This was not simply a function of my growing pile of stock options. It was the ethos of an era in which success was measured by the stock tables, anything with a "dot-com" in its name was doubling or tripling in value, and our company seemed hopeles