Two faces.

It's said that Henry VIII, king of England and all that, fell in love with his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, before he'd even met her. He had gazed upon her portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger and got all worked up. I recall hearing that Hank the Ocho was so thrilled when Anne's ship arrived that he rode his horse right up the gangway in excitement. 

She looks nice.

It fell apart quickly. Will Cuppy, in The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, puts it this way: 

"Anne of Cleves had been much admired in the Low Countries, but in England she just wouldn't do. The way she got herself up, they thought she was playing charades. Anne of Cleves couldn't play or sing like Anne Boleyn. She could only spin, and nobody asked her to spin. Henry had seen her portrait by Holbein. She was a picture bride. Cromwell, who had helped arrange the wedding, was beheaded nineteen days after the divorce."

Cuppy says in the footnote, "Henry should have beheaded Holbein instead." 

I don't want to be picking on Anne of Cleves, whose looks may not have been all that Holbein made her out to be, but whose brother was a leader of Protestants in Western Germany. Henry was eager to make an alliance with them. However, with her lack of English skills and yes, her looks not being what that fat bastard was hoping for, Henry said screw the alliance and it was soon off to wife #5, and Cromwell's head in a basket for good measure. 

But that's not why I bring up any of this. Paul Begala is credited with the notion that politics is show business for ugly people, and that's why I thought of poor Anne of Cleves. In show business, most people who aren't character actors are expected to be good-looking, but in politics, you can be ugly. In fact, some of them abuse the privilege. However, I've noticed that more politicians are trying to gussy themselves up for the campaign season than in years past. 

The literature that stuffs the mailbox and the online ads show much more appealing people than the ones we see out pressing the flesh. The problem is, because these are local guys and gals working retail politics, we know what they look like. A touched-up photo from 1999 isn't fooling anyone.

Of course, their opponents will gladly use more realistic visuals of these politicians, rendered in horror-movie black-and-white, with narration by murder-show enthusiasts. Sometimes you can't even tell it's the same person.

This goes for everyone in the stupid game of politics, so I'm not singling any party out. And because politics is stupid, maybe these gimmicks work, although it would have to be on the most easily swayed independent ninnies. I loathe our state's senators, and it has nothing to do with their looks; one is passable and the other looks like a gnarled catcher's mitt with glasses perched atop an enormous baked ham. They're both liars, socialism-for-thee-but-not-for-me creeps who would run over the bodies to get on camera even if the blood from the train wreck was still flowing. I wouldn't trust either of them to manage nap time at a preschool. Half the children would die and the rest found wandering across town five days later.

My point today, though, is that if you went by campaign literature, our political class would be a collection of fine-looking youth, happy warriors, and genial sages; to go by their opponents' literature, you would move away from them on the subway platform. We have to stop paying so much attention to looks, or the political class will keep treating us like morons. 

♔📖♔📖♔📖

COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: We all know the mnemonic to recite the ends of Henry VIII's wives: 

Divorced, Beheaded, Died

Divorced, Beheaded, Survived

Well, one of my all-time favorite book titles came from that, a youth novel by Barbara Williams published in 1987. If anyone out there has read it, I'd like your review; I never got a copy. The plot:

During a summer tour of England, two troubled teenagers--Lowell, upset by the remarriage of his mother, and Jane, a diabetic struggling to cope with her illness--come to terms with themselves and each other.

The title: Beheaded, Survived. 

I've had days like that.