June 21, 2025

As with sailing, so with politics: make your cloth too taut and the ship will dip and keel, but slacken off and trim your sails, and things will head up again. The gods…resent being importuned too much; in the same way the people dislike being pushed or hustled. Too much zeal offends where indirection works.

Euripides (c.480–c.406 BC), Orestes, 706

Do you understand what “indirection” looks like? How good are you at employing indirection to achieve some purpose or another? When—if ever—did you give up on the pushing and hustling as a way to achieve a goal? Did it last?

Euripides is right: people dislike being pushed or hustled. The task for a politician with some goal in mind is to figure out how to push and hustle her colleagues with a light but decisive touch—in such a way that they cannot resist getting on board.