A Few Reasons Why You Should Not Run for Political Office
By Mike Turpen

Clarence Darrow said, “When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president. I’m beginning to believe it.” This is why I ran for district attorney, attorney general and governor. I believed that in America all things were possible. Indeed, I won two out of three, but the one I lost was my real victory. Why? Because I finally got married, started a family and began the private practice of law. I also learned a few lessons along the way. Among them:

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”
– President
Ronald Reagan

“No good deed goes unpunished” were the words that I left scrawled on a scrap of paper in Attorney General Robert Henry’s desk when I vacated the office. I believe that in public office, those folks you generally help generally forget, and those people you specifically hurt specifically remember. It just goes with the territory. It is also the reason that the act of governing is a slow, inexorable process of alienating one’s own base of support each time one makes a difficult policy decision. It gets harder and harder to get 50 percent plus one vote… if you’re doing your job. The best politics is just good government.

If You Want Friends in Politics, Buy a Dog

“In politics there is no such thing as permanent friends and there is no such thing as permanent enemies, only permanent interests.”
– Congressman Ed Edmondson

Ed shared this piece of advice with me back in 1981 when I was preparing to run for attorney general. The sooner a political participant learns this lesson, the sooner he or she will be able to cope with the pain of losing and the humility of winning. When I ran for attorney general in 1982, I won. Four years later, I ran for governor and lost in front of 3.2 million people. It was humiliating. A few good friends came walking in when everybody else went walking out. A basic life lesson: Don’t ever walk past an old friend to shake hands with a new one.

Sooner or Later, Every Campaign Brings out the Worst in Everybody

“If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.”
– Johnny Carson

You have to have the good sense of humor to keep all the down times and disappointments in perspective. Abraham Lincoln, during the famous Lincoln – Douglas debates, answered Douglas’ charges of being two-faced by asking the audience, “Do you think, if I had two faces, I’d be wearing this one in front of you here today?”

I continue to advocate that the only really important things in life are faith, family and enduring friends. They are everlasting in nature while political pursuits are essentially ever-fleeting. If the candidates of this past election season can abide by this simple premise, I am confident they will find themselves more than willing, now that the election is over, to put their political differences behind them and join together to work to build a better quality of life for all of us.

It’s hard to get politics out of your system. In fact, some say that the political bug can only be eradicated by formaldehyde. However, I must say that I have learned the valuable lesson that you can be politically active without being a political candidate. We can all make a living and make a difference in our own way. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.”