The Relationship Between Political Theory and Political Practice

I think some people are puzzled and more than puzzled think it may be an exercise in bad faith or special pleading that I end up on a kind of optimistic note. It's interesting that you describe it as noble because in your accounts of what happened to you in politics, you've got all the ingredients for a dark pessimism about actually how politics works. The trouble is the distance between the theory and the action is just unrecoverable. Political theory is not a branch of public policy. That's for someone else.