November 27, 2025

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006), Canadian-American economist, The Cynic’s Lexicon, Jonathon Green, ed. (London: 1986), p.82

Doesn’t somebody have to take responsibility for that disastrous or unpalatable decision? So why not us? Isn’t that what we’re paid for?

When confronted with such a choice, smart politicians table the matter, kicking it down the road so that their successors can deal with what is no doubt a permanently losing proposition.