(Meanwhile, he brazenly cultivated a public image as a man of total integrity, far above the dirty compromises of politics).
Yes, politics is a dirty business that calls for dirty compromises — especially when you are a President with low approval ratings running for reëlection against a party that largely bases its appeal on emotional mantras about God, guns, and taxes.
Obama told the nation that he reacted to the shootings in Newtown "as a parent," and that is understandable, but what we need most is for him to act as a President, liberated at last from the constraints of elections and their dirty compromises — a President who dares to change the national debate and the legislative agenda on guns.
(Meanwhile, he brazenly cultivated a public image as a man of total integrity, far above the dirty compromises of politics). He soon occupied so many crucial government posts simultaneously that he held a trump card: if a mayor tried to restrain him in one area, he simply threatened to resign from all his jobs.
When women were eventually allowed to become priests, the synod patched together a dirty little compromise which gave the anti-women brigade a ghetto clause.
In his former role, he only ever had to worry about his own stance and his own conscience, which he could keep clean and unblemished – safe in the knowledge that his frontbench colleagues were doing the dirty work of compromise that might actually get things done.
Make sure that it's okay if that surface gets dirty or otherwise compromised.
He's done the right thing by reaching out to liberals on the Democratic side and showing a willingness to compromise (yes, that dirty, dirty word for the irrational far right and far left) to fix a major problem in our economy and society.
"But it takes two chambers to pass a law, and the other side of the building considers compromise a dirty word".
It is now a given in fiction and on screen that politics is a world of dirty tricks, scandal and compromise.
