An unpopular action that is likely to cause a politician’s subsequent defeat at the polls or be cause for him or her to resign from public office.
However, as William Safire notes in Safire’s Political Dictionary, “these suicides, like the report of Mark Twain’s death, are usually exaggerations. Actions unpopular on their face can be take as evidence of courage.”
According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”
The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.
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