Leadership Quote by Jim Hodges

A politician calling his own output "these things with light bulbs" is either deflating the room on purpose or quietly changing the subject. The phrasing is almost aggressively plain: not "legislation", not "initiatives", not even "projects" - just "things". That move reads like a refusal of the heroic language politics usually demands. In an arena where everyone is selling a story, Hodges reaches for the vocabulary of a garage, a hardware store, a back room. The light bulbs matter because they are the most cliché symbol in public life (bright ideas, transparency, "bringing light") and also the most literal. A bulb is cheap, replaceable, and functional. It's infrastructure, not ideology.

The subtext is a performance of modesty that still signals competence. "Latest works" is faintly artsy, even vain, then he punctures it with that shrugging noun phrase. It gives him two reputational wins at once: he can sound like a builder, not a talker, and he can suggest that what he does is practical enough to be touched, wired, installed. There's also a sly distancing from the permanent record. Policies age poorly; "things with light bulbs" can be swapped out when the mood changes.

Contextually, it fits a political moment that rewards anti-fluency - the studied rejection of consultant-speak. The line works because it treats the audience as exhausted co-conspirators: you know the spiel, I know the spiel, so let's talk about the tangible stuff that actually turns on.