Slippery politician's career path (6,4)
I believe the answer is:
greasy pole
'slippery politician's career path' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot tell whether it can be defined by this definition.
'slippery politician's career path' is the wordplay.
'slippery' becomes 'greasy' (similar in meaning).
'politician' becomes 'pol' (synonyms).
'career path' becomes 'e' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'greasy'+'pol'+'e'='GREASY POLE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for greasy pole that I've seen is " hard way to the top".)