Theodore Roosevelt once said: “It’s not a question of whether we play a role in the world; it’s whether we play it well or ill.”

Since decisions affecting our economic and professional well-being are made by elected officials, our choice is either to allow them to make these momentous policy determinations on their own or to try our best to influence the outcomes. The UFT has chosen to be a part of that political decision-making process.

We understand that some retirees favor different policies than those supported by our elected Delegate Assembly, the Executive Board and the UFT leadership. While the overwhelming majority of retirees understand and favor our general political positions, it seems reasonable to review just why the UFT is so political.

Former UFT and AFT President Al Shanker set the tone early when he counseled that we should support our political friends and oppose our enemies.

As the UFT’s legislative/political director from 1990 through 2006, I developed a Murphy Corollary to the Shanker Doctrine: Hold their feet to the fire. Whether a public official takes office as an enemy or a friend, it is important to keep watch.

The AFT Legislative Department once asked me to speak to a local congressman’s office about a small provision he had tucked in a piece of legislation that could later have had huge negative consequences in the field of technical education. I knew the congressman, a UFT friend and supporter, and his chief of staff well so when I pointed out our concern to the chief of staff, there was dead silence on the other end of the phone.

“Tom, you caught us,” he said. “We’ll never do it again.”

That’s a small example of vigilance and one with a happy outcome.

More important, we’ve been involved during our last two friendly presidential administrations on topics like the North American Free Trade Agreement, No Child Left Behind and labor rights.

Issues at stake here in New York right now echo recent attempts in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and elsewhere to end collective-bargaining rights, curtail voting rights and end defined pensions — the kind of pensions that have provided such economic security to us in retirement.

The city’s Municipal Labor Committee is fighting off attempts by the city to charge public employees for health care benefits, and so-called education reformers continue to push to eliminate the seniority and tenure rights we have won through collective bargaining. The UFT has been steadfast in its efforts to protect our in-service colleagues from evaluations based on arbitrary and unfair measurements and to stop co-locations of charter schools and school closings.

If we thought these were issues only affecting other states, recent events have provided a stark wake-up call that we may be facing the loss of hard-earned benefits and labor rights here in our own city and state.

We are now in the midst of a mayoral primary campaign and moving headlong into the November general election. As veterans of attempts to affect the outcome of citywide elections and public issues such as the referendum on term limits, we know that winning and losing can have long-standing consequences. What matters is that we commit ourselves fully to registering the needs of our members and engage as fully as possible in maximizing the union’s political clout.

That is why the UFT is so political.