"Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason"
About this Quote
Carville’s line is political realism sharpened into a moral koan: outcomes and motives don’t reliably match, and anyone pretending otherwise is either naive or selling you something. The phrasing is deceptively balanced - “right thing/wrong reason” mirrored against “wrong thing/right reason” - a neat rhetorical chassis that makes the audience feel they’re hearing a universal truth. But the subtext is more tactical than philosophical. It smuggles in a warning about how power actually moves: coalitions are built on mixed incentives, and policy rarely arrives with clean hands.
The first half offers grudging comfort. A good result can emerge from vanity, self-interest, polling, or revenge - and in politics, that’s often how progress slips through the cracks. Carville, the consummate strategist, knows voters and elites like narratives more than spreadsheets; sometimes you take the win even if the motive is grubby.
The second half is the sting. “Unfortunately” signals the real lesson: sincerity isn’t a moral coupon you can redeem at the ballot box. People can be principled, even heroic, and still produce harm - because good intentions don’t cancel incompetence, bad information, or structural incentives. That’s a direct rebuke to the political habit of grading leaders by heart rather than impact.
Context matters: Carville comes out of a late-20th-century Democratic world where message discipline, triangulation, and hard-edged pragmatism were survival skills. The quote functions as permission and indictment at once: permission to accept impure allies, indictment of sanctimony that confuses motive with consequence.
The first half offers grudging comfort. A good result can emerge from vanity, self-interest, polling, or revenge - and in politics, that’s often how progress slips through the cracks. Carville, the consummate strategist, knows voters and elites like narratives more than spreadsheets; sometimes you take the win even if the motive is grubby.
The second half is the sting. “Unfortunately” signals the real lesson: sincerity isn’t a moral coupon you can redeem at the ballot box. People can be principled, even heroic, and still produce harm - because good intentions don’t cancel incompetence, bad information, or structural incentives. That’s a direct rebuke to the political habit of grading leaders by heart rather than impact.
Context matters: Carville comes out of a late-20th-century Democratic world where message discipline, triangulation, and hard-edged pragmatism were survival skills. The quote functions as permission and indictment at once: permission to accept impure allies, indictment of sanctimony that confuses motive with consequence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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