CryptoDad

Chapter 14 Checkered Flag

Life is never a straight line It's a circle never ending To get to where you're going Take another road that's bending.

—Roger Turner (poet), “Take Another Road”

Turning in My Chips

I do not often visit gambling casinos. When I do, I use a “double or nothing” method. I go in with a set amount, say $500, and then I walk out the door when that amount of money is either doubled or gone.

So it is with public service. If you think you will go in and stay until you win every battle you wish to fight, you will never leave. That is because few political battles are ever fully won. Most just evolve and get fought at another level, get subsumed into other issues, or get forgotten about as the world moves on.

On the other hand, if you enter the political arena and say you will fight hard and then retire after a set number of seasons, you will lose some battles but win your fair share and still leave on your own terms. That approach frees you to focus on the mission without always keeping an eye out for the next political job up the ladder. The problem in Washington is not that people leave too soon, it is that they stay too long.

From the beginning of my service on the commission, I knew I would leave Washington in 2019, at the end of my five-year enlistment. Not only did I know it, but I made sure that everyone I recruited to work for me knew it as well. That fact allowed us to be fully attentive to the job at hand.

It was not that I was unhappy at the ...