QotD: First rule of political campaigns

[I]f you're in politics or you might go into politics one day or you know someone in politics or near politics or hoping to do politics, tell yourself and everyone who will listen this simple fact. And then you might as well assume they won't believe it. Or that they'll forget it. And that, in forgetting it or not believing it, they will meet their spectacularly public grief:

The other guy is never so geeky or so extreme or so obscure or so ugly or so fake, tall, old, inexperienced, worn out, bearded, ungainly, earnest, slick, funny or bland that he can't rise up like the Fist of God Himself and smack your complacent ass out of the running.

Paul Wells, "The lessons nobody ever, ever, ever learns", Inkless Wells, 2006-01-18