James Garner and the politician's credo

James Garner has died at 86. I see from his obituary that his "Maverick" television show ran for only three years, but it gave me many hours of pleasure at the time and in reruns. His character, Bret Maverick, had wit and good humor. He was laid back before it became popular.

I don't know who wrote the scripts, but  I still remember fondly many of Garner's lines, often attributed to "My old pappy." Best of all is one I came to call "the politician's credo" after working in Washington for a few years.

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time," Bret Maverick said, "and those are pretty good odds."  How true.