January 9, 2025

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long-run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

John Major, (1943- ), British Conservative politician and prime minister, Daily Express, 25 July 1989, Jay p.247

Are you capable of playing the long game? If not, why not? If yes, what is the end you are aiming for? Will it make your grandchildren proud of you? Or embarrassed?

There is much truth in these lines. The advocates of any initiative too often think it is so good in principle that all will assent to whatever is being proposed. That is the hare-ish part. But the opponents, to slow the hare, will agree the idea’s a good one, but then drag the whole process out by finding small faults of every kind, usually in the means to the end, and slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, the initiative dies.