lessons learned...............

      The judicious will not fail to extract other lessons from the two conventions.  For example, the lesson that politicians, in the main, are poor hands at practical politics—that their professional competence is very slight.  Very few of them, indeed, show any sign of ordinary good sense.  Their tricks are transparent and deceive no one, not even other politicians.  When they accomplish anything, it is usually by accident.

-Henry Louis Mencken, from a 7/14/1924 essay