Humor & Life Quote by Chevy Chase

Chevy Chase is doing what he’s always done best: weaponizing a throwaway joke into a diagnosis. The line lands because it yokes politics to televangelism, a pairing that sounds exaggerated until you remember how much running for office is a performance of moral certainty, rehearsed humility, and camera-ready confession. “Anyone who wants to run” isn’t just ambition; it’s a personality type. Chase’s point is that the job increasingly selects for people who can sell sincerity as a product.

Jimmy Swaggart is a very specific reference: the tearful, finger-wagging preacher who built a media empire on public righteousness, then imploded in spectacular scandal and televised repentance. Chase’s “minus the default” is the nasty little twist. The default, implied, is the inevitable collapse: the hidden sin, the hypocrisy, the public fall. A candidate, in this logic, has to possess Swaggart’s gifts (charisma, moral theater, crowd control) without the baked-in self-destruction that comes from believing your own act.

The subtext is pure post-Watergate, post-TV politics cynicism filtered through a comedian’s scalpel: politics isn’t corrupt because a few bad people slip through; it’s corrupt because the system rewards the same traits that make a great grifter. Chase isn’t arguing policy. He’s dunking on the audition. And he’s warning that when voters keep buying redemption arcs, the country keeps electing actors who know how to cry on cue.