There’s a difference between being a good politician and being a great one —and it has nothing to do with how many elections you win. In this video, political consultant Jay Townsend breaks down the four traits that history’s most consequential leaders share: passion for a cause, an unbendable moral code, communication skills, and raw political courage. If you’re thinking about running for office, this is the standard worth aiming for.
There are four things that great politicians have in common: passion for a cause, an unbendable moral code, leadership skills, and courage. History gives us clear examples of each. Understanding what these traits look like in practice — not in theory — is one of the most useful things any aspiring candidate can do.
Churchill’s career is the defining example of what passion for a cause actually costs — and what it ultimately produces.
For years before World War II, Churchill never wavered in his belief that what Hitler was doing in Nazi Germany would eventually reach the shores of England. He didn’t trust Hitler. He didn’t believe Hitler would honor any agreement. And he refused to bend from that conviction no matter what it cost him personally.
The price was steep. He spent years in the political wilderness. He was shunned. He was called names. He was excommunicated from the Conservative Party for a period of time. He was ignored by the very colleagues who would later desperately need him. But he never stopped saying what he believed.
Hitler eventually proved Churchill right. Chamberlain was removed. Churchill became Prime Minister. And the United Kingdom — and arguably the course of the entire war — turned on the fact that one man had never stopped believing what everyone else told him to stop saying.
That is what passion for a cause looks like when it’s real. Not a talking point. Not a campaign theme. A conviction you hold even when it forces you to crawl through broken glass.
Early in my career, I served on the staff of a Democratic U.S. Senator — a man who had written two constitutional amendments that are now part of the Constitution, and who had authored Title IX, which forever changed the status of women in collegiate sports.
It was 1978. A lot of Democratic senators had just lost their elections. The political winds were shifting. Sitting in his office with his staff, the Senator looked around the room and said something that has stayed with me ever since.
He said: I know some of you are going to tell me that in order to survive in 1980, I need to change my stripes — that I need to back off some of the things I believe in and pretend to be somebody I’m really not. And I want to tell you right now: I came here because I believe in what I’m doing. If those beliefs mean that after 1980 I’m no longer serving in the Senate, at least I’ll go to my grave with my dignity — knowing that I never betrayed the reason I ran.
That’s an unbendable, unbreakable moral code. When you’ve been elected to office, there are certain things you care so deeply about that you will not bend them, will not break them, will not trade them away for political survival. The great politicians have that. The merely good ones usually don’t.
Every great politician has been a great communicator — though they’ve each done it in their own way. You don’t have to emulate Kennedy’s style. But it’s worth understanding what made him so effective.
Kennedy could stand in front of a thousand people and hold them without ever raising his voice. There was no screaming, no theatrics. It was the sheer intellect — the way he assembled words in an unexpected order — that commanded attention. His inaugural address on a cold day in January 1961, where he called on Americans to ask not what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country, was not an accident. That line was the product of a man who had worked on his communication skills for a lifetime.
Those skills helped make him one of the youngest men ever elected to the presidency. And once in office, those same skills helped him stand down the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis and pull the world back from the brink of nuclear war.
Communication is not a soft skill. It is the mechanism through which every other political skill gets deployed. If you can’t speak, you can’t lead. Kennedy is the clearest proof of what mastery of that skill can accomplish.
Roosevelt inherited a country in free fall. By the time he was inaugurated in early 1933, unemployment had reached 25%. People were being thrown out of their homes, driven off their farms, losing everything they had put in banks that were now going bankrupt. The rich were in ruins. The poor were starving. There was no playbook for what he was facing.
His response was the definition of leadership under pressure. He gathered his team and said: we’re going to write down a list of ideas. I don’t care if they work or not — we’re going to try them until something does, because we have to put people back to work. And then he said something that reframed the entire political moment: if we don’t fix this, capitalism is going to lose. I have to help people now in order to preserve the system that will help this country grow in the future.
What followed was the New Deal — Social Security, programs that put people to work on public projects, a safety net that caught people when they fell. He brought the country out of the Depression and then led it through the Second World War. He was elected to the presidency four times — the only person in American history to serve that many terms.
Roosevelt’s leadership wasn’t about having the right answer. It was about the willingness to act under uncertainty, to take responsibility for outcomes, and to hold a vision of where the country needed to go even when the path wasn’t clear.
Lyndon Johnson became president after the assassination of John Kennedy. In one of his first nights in the White House, he gathered his aides and told them what he wanted to accomplish: civil rights legislation, voting rights, housing rights. He wanted all of it passed.
One of his aides pushed back. He said: Mr. President, your approval is very high right now. You’re up for election next year. Maybe we take it easy on these things for now and come back to them later.
Johnson looked at him and asked: you’re telling me I have political capital right now?
The aide said yes — a lot of it.
Johnson said: Then why the hell can’t I spend some of it? What the hell is the presidency for if I can’t spend some of that capital to do things that need to be done?
That is raw political courage. Great politicians are always willing to push the edge of the envelope. As they accumulate political capital, they’re not afraid to spend it on something that matters — a cause that needs advancing, a policy that needs to become law, a fight that needs to be had. They don’t hoard their standing. They use it.
Courage. Passion. Leadership skills. An unbendable moral code. Put those four things together and you have the definition of a great politician — not just a good one.
If you’re thinking about getting into politics someday, aim for great. The good ones are forgotten. The great ones change things. And they are remembered because of it.
Q: Can these traits be learned, or do you have to be born with them?
A: All four can be developed — though passion is the one that has to be genuine. You can train your communication skills, build your leadership capacity through experience, and strengthen your moral clarity by thinking carefully about what you believe and why. But passion for a cause can’t be faked, and voters can tell the difference. Start with what you genuinely care about fixing and build the other skills around it.
Q: What does “political courage” actually look like for a local candidate?
A: At the local level, political courage looks like taking a clear position on a divisive issue when the politically safe move is to say nothing. It looks like voting against a popular measure because it’s the wrong policy. It looks like telling powerful donors no. The scale is different from the White House, but the principle is identical: spending your political capital on something that matters, even when it costs you.
Q: How do I develop strong communication skills before I run?
A: Hire a speech or debate coach — it’s the fastest path to real improvement. In the meantime, practice speaking without notes on topics you know well. Join a Toastmasters chapter to build comfort in front of audiences. If you are lucky enough to live near a chapter of the National Speakers Association, join it. Study candidates and leaders you find compelling and identify specifically what they do that works. Communication is a craft, and like any craft, it responds to deliberate practice.
Q: What’s the difference between passion and just being angry about something?
A: Passion is sustained, constructive, and focused on a solution. Anger can fuel a campaign launch, but it doesn’t sustain a political career. Churchill wasn’t just angry at Hitler — he had a specific conviction about what needed to happen and spent years building the case for it. Ask yourself: can you talk about this issue in terms of what you’d actually do about it, not just what’s wrong with it? If yes, that’s closer to passion than anger.
Q: Is it possible to be a great politician at the local level, not just in national office?
A: Absolutely. The traits are the same regardless of the office. A city council member who refuses to bend their principles under pressure from developers, who communicates clearly with constituents, and who has the courage to cast an unpopular vote for the right reason — that’s a great politician. Scale doesn’t determine greatness. Character does.
Jay Townsend has spent 45 years helping candidates at every level — from city council to U.S. Senate — build winning campaigns. Browse the full library of free resources at JayTownsend.com, or subscribe to Jay’s YouTube channel for new campaign strategy videos every week. And when you’re ready to take the next step, watch Jay’s free video on how to win an election — the link is in the video description.
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