As Levada put it in his essay, a wily individual looks to “use the rules of the game for his own interest, but at the same time — and no less important — he is constantly trying to circumvent those very same rules.” Just so with Mr. Bolton, who has sought to project loyalty to the system while looking to outsmart and subvert it when personally advantageous.

But not all manifestations of American wiliness are so openly cynical. More often, as in Russia, these choices look understandable — perhaps even commendable. It’s hard to argue with those who accepted jobs in the Trump administration and federal agencies on the grounds that they could make a difference on policy issues, or at least prevent Armageddon.

As I watched the parade of witnesses in the House impeachment hearings, like Ambassador Bill Taylor or Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, I found myself grateful for their professionalism. If it took some wiliness to remain in their jobs, then perhaps some compromises are worthwhile. The same goes for doctors and scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who have been forced to calibrate their public messaging on the real and growing threat of coronavirus with the political urges of the president to downplay the danger.

All of this has put me in mind of Russian figures like Elizaveta Glinka, or Dr. Liza, who rose to prominence as a pioneer of hospice care for the terminally ill in Russia. In 2014, when war broke out in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, she felt compelled to help its victims, especially children caught in the crossfire. She did this by appealing for help to the very people who bore no small amount of responsibility for inciting that war and keeping it going: Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin officials.

Her compromise in playing nice with the Kremlin may have looked unsavory to some, but it also provided tangible benefit for scores of sick and injured children, who without her intervention would have been left forgotten and untreated in a chaotic war zone. I found it hard to judge Dr. Glinka, even as I acknowledge that compromises like hers, multiplied many times over, are what gives the Putin system its longevity.

I also found myself comparing her predicament with, say, that of Sarah Fabian, the Justice Department lawyer who, last June, was in court defending the Trump administration’s treatment of detained migrant children. Ms. Fabian posited that soap, toothbrushes and beds were not necessarily part of the government’s obligations to provide “safe and sanitary” conditions.

In Russia, the consequence of refusing to compromise is often clear: the frustration of worthy ambitions left unrealized, a career that goes nowhere, or maybe, if the stakes are high or you’re supremely unlucky, undue attention from police and the courts. But in America, at least at the moment, a wider spectrum of choices remains. And that is the scary thing about observing wiliness at home: how readily and quickly we bend, not when there is truly no other choice, but when there are plenty of other choices, the wily one being merely the easiest and most expedient.