The Slippery Slope of Compromising One's Principles

I have to say that I genuinely enjoy City & State’s 40 Under 40 issues. While to some of our hard-boiled readers, this may seem like a gimmicky feature, to me it is a celebration of promise and idealism—two qualities given far too short shrift by the world of politics, even though they are so often extolled by elected officials in their empty rhetoric.

I delight in perusing the profiles of these Rising Stars, wondering at the boundlessness of their enthusiasm and their earnest embrace of the notion that government and human beings can truly affect change for the better. I appreciate the opportunity to publish the unsung stories of these startlingly talented individuals who drive the headlines but are not yet (for the most part) the subjects of them. I am touched by the genuineness of their smiles, and refreshed by their lack of affectation.

Of course, our honorees are not doe-eyed children, wholly naive about the harsh realities of the cynical arena in which they operate. Nor am I so foolish as to assume that all 40 of these exceptional young women and men have assiduously averted succumbing to the temptations and concessions to pragmatism their positions often impress upon them. I am certain that more than a few of you reading this column right now are fixating upon one or more of our Rising Stars, gnashing your teeth and raving, “He’s/she’s no angel.” And perhaps you are right.

But the intention of this piece is not to lay bare anyone’s soul but to offer some counsel to those who have not yet wandered astray. Though few leaders in the public or private sector will explicitly offer the advice “Go along to get along,” that essentially is the attitude they prescribe to those looking to advance in their professional lives. Nowhere is this calculation more prevalent than in politics, where the young and ambitious are warned to wait their turn, and those who ask too many questions are told to hold their tongues and accept the same old answers; where it is tacitly understood that those who rock the boat are the first cast overboard and those who speak up are those most likely to be silenced.

I can’t count how many times I have spoken with brilliant young aspiring elected officials who contort themselves into knots rationalizing why they have made a decision that conflicts with the core principles they otherwise espouse. In virtually every instance their explanation boils down to some permutation of “I have to compromise now, so I can reach such-and-such plateau, and then I’ll be able to stand firm in my convictions.”

Here’s the truth: 99 percent of the time that’s not how it plays out. (And that figure might be generous.) What begins with one compromise ends up as a lifetime of them, and before you know it you are so corrupted you can’t even recall what the ideals were that you compromised to achieve in the first place.

The activist sells out to become a Council member, the Council member sells out to go to Congress, the member of Congress sells out to become a senator, and the senator sells out to become president. And how many times in our history do you think a president has said, as Lyndon Johnson did when all his aides insisted that if he went out on a limb for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it would be the death knell for his administration: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”

Now, I don’t purport myself to be a paragon of virtue—and it would be the grossest of understatements to say that LBJ wasn’t either. I’ve made my fair share of compromises. But I don’t delude myself into depicting them as anything other than what they were.

If this year’s Rising Stars still believe the principles they so passionately expound, I hope they forever remain true to them. And if they have already begun to waver, it is my heartfelt wish that they understand it is not too late to turn back.