Hawai'i Congressman Neil Abercrombie has rolled a pair of hot dice with his proposal to enforce prevailing Hawai'i wage laws on the planned multibillion-dollar upgrade of military facilities on Guam.

His plan — and he presumably has the congressional clout to enforce it — would add millions to the cost of the project designed to move U.S. troops from Okinawa to Guam. Military officials are publicly stamping their feet about the proposal and the Japanese government — which had agreed to largely pay for the transfer — is wondering whether it bought into a deal it cannot afford.

From the Abercrombie perspective, the explanation for this controversial position is clear and simple: unions. He needs union support in his upcoming run for governor and this is one way to get it.

To be fair, Abercrombie has been a union man throughout his political career. It would be out of character for him to oversee spending of millions of U.S. dollars for a military project that would be built largely by overseas workers (primarily from the Philippines) who are more than willing to work at less than prevailing Hawai'i wages.

So this is a tricky deal. And it helps explain the calculus that any politician faces in a campaign: How do you balance out your natural instincts and tilt toward natural constituencies against what makes the best political sense? Do you follow your core values right over the cliff, thus denying the value of your service to your constituents?

Or, do you compromise, accepting a half-victory as better than none at all?

This question has come to the forefront recently with President Obama, who is pushing hard for some kind of reform of the U.S. health care system, which is arguably one of the worst (from a cost standpoint, if not from a service perspective) in the world. But Obama has also signaled that he won't go down in flames on this issue. That is, he will take the reform he can get, even if it is not entirely the reform he wants.

Politics, as they say, is the art of compromise. Obama knows he is unlikely to get all the health care reform he wants. But he knows that without something — no matter how it is eventually sold to the American public — he will be judged a failure.

In the case of Abercrombie, he might understand that he will not achieve the goal of making every Guam military construction job available to a Hawai'i worker who wants one on the terms and conditions they enjoy in this pro-labor state. But if he moves the needle even a little, his labor constituency will be pleased. And it will remember those efforts come Election Day.