Politician Tricksters.... well duh!

This observation is not drawn, as you might guess, from the current presidential campaign atmosphere. I'm sure there are more eloquent things that could be said on that count than what I aim to pursue here, but for now I will focus on a case study I've been working on for my leadership class. This case study involves a governor, and to be tricksterly and vague myself, I will not divulge the state. Suffice it to say that he kept jumping back and forth on a key political issue, specifically that of "smart growth" to such a degree that nobody trusted him anymore to do the right thing, and he was eventually (most likely, although the case study did not specify this) run out of office for it. I could not help thinking of coyote outwitting himself and getting caught in his own trap.

The thing is, we've come to expect this of politicians. To use the terms "politician" and "slippery" in the same sentence is not uncommon. Are they seductive manipulators? Are they variable, multifaceted, polytropic creatures? Are they likely to overindulge their appetites? In all but the rarest of exceptions, the answer is yes, yes, yes. I have yet to find clear evidence of gender variability in political circles on the whole, but anecdotal accounts of certain texting shennanigans amongst certain legislators and thoughts of J. Edgar Hoover in pink fuzzy slippers pop into my mind. Was Hoover really a politician, though? And how do we know that Warren G. Harding, stud that he was, didn't enjoy his alone time at the White House in lacey undies? Can we really know?