Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

A question that has troubled me for years is whether the characters played by Larry Hagman (Tony) and Barbara Eden (Genie) in their roles in I Dream of Genie were intimate. I bet you too have wondered this. 

It was answered once in one episode. Genie decided to run Tony for governor. She blinked and Billboards appeared! No need to worry about campaign finances. Victory was only a blink away. Alas, Tony only wanted to be an astronaut, and so running for governor was not possible as he would have to resign his commission. Tony finally convinced Genie that he did not want to be governor, and with a blink, the campaign stopped. 

The answer to the question I posed in the first paragraph was answered in the last word of the episode by Tony's friend Roger. "You know what they say about politics." Yes, politics do make strange bedfellows. 

Unfortunately there are no genies to blink, or witches to twitch, or fairies to use their magic wands. We have to deal with real people as candidates. This year the pickin's are mighty slim. 

Ambrose Pierce, the wag of the 19th century, had this to say about politics:

The public officials of this favored country are, as a rule, so bad that calumniation is a compliment. Our best men, with here and there an exception, have been driven out of public life, or made afraid to enter it. Unless attracted by the salary, why should a gentleman “aspire” to the presidency of the United States? During his canvas he will have from his own party a support that should make him blush, and from all others an opposition that will stick at nothing to accomplish his satisfactory defamation. After his election his partition and allotment of the loaves and fishes will estrange an important and thenceforth implacable faction of his following without appeasing anyone else. At the finish of his term the utmost that he can expect in the way of reward is that not much more than one-half of his countrymen will believe him a scoundrel to the end of their days.

This is from Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company, by Roy Morris, Jr. 

If you wonder why the pickin's are so slim this year, they are always slim. It takes an incredible ego, or a great desire for change, or both, to overwhelm the obvious disadvantages of a political life.  

Mr Smith needs to go to Washington.