Politics & Power Quote by Moira Kelly

Politics, in Moira Kelly's framing, isn't a chess match so much as a contact sport with a cleanup crew. The line lands because it refuses the usual euphemisms: no talk of "tough choices" or "hard bargaining". Just blood. It's a deliberately crude image that punctures the civic-mission myth and replaces it with something bodily and faintly nauseating: if you want to last in the arena, you can't merely tolerate harm done in your name; you have to develop a palate for it.

The wording does extra work. "I think" softens the blow, signaling an offhand, experiential judgment rather than a manifesto. Then comes the trapdoor: "to be in politics you have to..". a familiar moralizing setup that typically ends in virtues (patience, principle, service). Instead, she swerves into appetite. "Taste" is the key insult. It's not about necessity, it's about preference - implying that the system rewards those who can metabolize cruelty, public humiliation, collateral damage, and the transactional violence of policy.

As an actress, Kelly isn't speaking from the inside of legislative procedure; she's articulating the vibe Americans recognize from campaigns, scandal cycles, and the way power often requires someone else to lose loudly. The subtext isn't that every politician is a monster, but that the job can condition people into a kind of moral anesthesia. If you still gag, you won't climb. If you don't, you might.