Politics & Power Quote by Pamela Hansford Johnson

The line plays like a pin in the balloon of moral outrage: the public loves to turn a politician into a cartoon villain, complete with “horns and hoofs,” because caricature is cleaner than complexity. Pamela Hansford Johnson, writing as a critic with a novelist’s eye for human contradiction, punctures the smug certainty that accompanies political takedowns. The devil imagery is deliberately crude, almost tabloid-gothic, mocking how easily condemnation slides into theater.

The twist lands in the domestic and the disreputable at once: “his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.” It’s not a defense of the politician so much as an indictment of our desire for simple narratives. Johnson forces an uncomfortable concession: even people capable of harm or hypocrisy can still be charming, tender, desired. That doesn’t erase wrongdoing; it complicates the fantasy that evil is always obvious and socially quarantined.

Subtextually, she’s also skewering a certain kind of critic’s pose - the righteous voice that imagines itself above the mess. By invoking wife and mistresses in the same breath, she hints at the private ecosystems that power sustains: loyalty, denial, appetite, performance. The line arrives from mid-20th-century Britain, a culture fluent in respectability codes and the quiet tolerance of powerful men’s “indiscretions.” It anticipates a modern truth about scandal cycles: we think exposure will demystify authority, then discover charisma and intimacy are part of how authority reproduces itself. The devil, annoyingly, still gets invited to dinner.