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"All political lives end in failure"

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Former Tory MP Enoch Powell, in the course of his singular career, made perhaps the most trenchant analysis of any given politician's life that has ever been made.

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

It's an adage that has been proven time and time again in varying circumstances; on occasions both notable and obscure; the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, George Bush's slinking from office, and a thousand others. It serves as a finely crafted British counterpart to F. Scott Fitzgerald's assertion that, "There are no second acts in American lives."

Term limits preclude American Presidents from decade long stretches of power, with the obvious exception of Franklin Roosevelt. In this way they provide an artificial end that can either feel triumphant or banal. Bill Clinton's sky-high approval ratings would almost certainly have propelled him to a third term, but to what end? Four more years, then the same question all over again.

Jimmy Carter carved out a post-Presidential career as a sort of conscience to much of the American left, but will be long judged by history as a failed President, simply by dint of only holding office for a single term. After the awesome power entrusted to the occupant of the Oval Office, all the fine trappings afforded to ex-Presidents are mere fripperies.

The point, friends, is this. If all a President can hope for is to effect some good in his time, before their proscribed departure from office, and later judgment in the annals of history, should we be so quick to imagine all politicians to be cynical, corrupt egotists? In some ways, with the inevitable bitterness at their end, politics may well be one of the most selfless pursuits of all.


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