Politics and the political world are really an illusion, separate and apart from the rest of the world.
As the late great Steve Adubato would routinely warn us, politics is a world upside down and inside out. The white is sometimes black, and the commitment to vote yes sometimes only means at that precise moment and not the moment on the Senate floor (when it really matters)—after circumstances have changed. Sounds confusing, I know.
But sometimes black is black, and grey is grey. Sometimes we find ourselves painting ourselves in a corner and making some noise or statement that can’t be walked back. It’s time for the political poltergeist to be summoned.
I hear the term “dying on the hill” a bit and think some explanation and exploration are needed to better understand and appreciate this complicated phrase. When someone invokes this term, it suggests a seemingly well-intended and fully engaged effort to accomplish something with no compromise or concern about your environment or the cost to you or your trusting supporters around you.
My message today is to be careful of those who state that they will die on a hill for any purpose or cause.
Dying on the hill will entail using all of your political capital to try and accomplish something that others might think is extreme and have dangerous or unintended consequences. And sometimes you can die on the political hill, and no one will notice or even care, except your enemies who will pounce and monetize at your expense.
Politics, by its very nature, presumes compromise and give-and-take. I have seen a number of individuals who think they are pillars of virtue, unbending, all-knowing, and omnipotent, and they stubbornly and stupidly think that this is the only way to travel politically.
Those so-called leaders will eventually find themselves like a wayward Pied Piper wandering in the wrong direction, all along leading their lemming-like followers off some dangerous precipice. Much like the seemingly unconquerable Julius Caesar was warned by the soothsayer, beware the Ides of March, so too the rest of us should be on guard for those who declare they will die on a hill for purely political purposes.
That uncompromising declaration in politics is sometimes the equivalent of crossing the Rubicon—which can end or short circuit not only you’re once promising and prolific career but also take your followers with you on that show-stopping end.