The Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, is quoted as saying that politics is the last resort for the scoundrels.

It's a funny lie.

Quintessentially, Shaw, but its attribution to Shaw, I'm sorry to say, is dubious.

Shaw appears never to have said this.

He did say, however, that everyone over 40 is a scoundrel.

If that's true, then I should inform you in the interest of transparency that a scoundrel stands before you this evening.

He's speaking to you now.

So be forewarned.

Certain is the attribution of the following line to boys Penrose, a contemporary of Shaw and a U.S. senator.

Public office, Penrose once said, is the last refuge of the incompetent.

That's also a funny line, maybe more true.

Also, Shawesque in tone, we might wonder whether Pinrose ever applied this line to himself,

or did he apply only to the other members of the Senate? Both phrases, the dubious one from Shaw and the certain one from Penrose,

adapt an older adage coined by Samuel Johnson, the 18th century master of English letters.

Johnson's biographer, James Boswell, reports that Dr. Johnson once called not politics but patriotism,

the last refuge of this gown. At first hearing Dr. Johnson's line isn't as funny as the other two.

It doesn't cause one to laugh but to to think, and then fret about how virtue, even a high virtue like patriotism, can sometimes cloak vice.

The line warns that a politician draped in the flag might be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Even if they were delivered tongue in cheek, all three phrases express a certain unease with

politics. And more than just unease it would seem. Each expresses a certain cynicism regarding politics, both in terms

of the work of politics and of the men and women who undertake political service. The work

itself is seen as corrupting, or perhaps simply the refuge of the already corrupted. The implication is that noble souls, honest men and

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