Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

The quip satirizes politics as a profession of confident prediction coupled with retrospective rationalization. It suggests that political authority often rests less on accurate foresight than on persuasive narrative control after events unfold. By listing successive time horizons—tomorrow through next year—the line mocks the escalating boldness of political prognostication, while the punchline underscores how failure can be reframed as inevitability, miscommunication, or the fault of others. The humor carries a skeptical view of political accountability: leaders may be judged not by whether their forecasts come true, but by how deftly they explain away outcomes and preserve credibility.