Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a

Lady Bird Johnson, gentle in grace yet sharp in wisdom, once declared: “Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.” At first glance, her words seem cruel, stripping a man of family and hearth. Yet beneath them lies a keen insight: that the burdens of public service grow tangled with the bonds of kinship, and that those who govern often place their own wives and children at the mercy of scrutiny, scandal, and sacrifice. To be a politician is to live in the furnace of the people’s judgment, and Lady Bird, who knew its cost, spoke with the authority of experience.

The origin of this saying is rooted in her life alongside Lyndon B. Johnson, whose career took him from the Texas hills to the presidency. She saw firsthand how the ambitions of one man sweep up entire families, subjecting them to pressures they did not choose. The orphan is free from the weight of legacy and the pain of betrayal by family ties; the bachelor bears no guilt for exposing loved ones to the storms of public life. Lady Bird’s jest carried the sorrow of a truth: politics is never borne by the politician alone, but by those bound to him.

History offers ample witness. Consider Abraham Lincoln, whose wife Mary Todd was driven nearly to despair by the endless burdens of war, the loss of their son, and the unrelenting glare of public scorn. Lincoln bore the Union’s fate on his shoulders, but Mary bore the crushing toll in silence. Lady Bird’s words echo here: had Lincoln been “a bachelor,” his family might have been spared anguish, though the nation might still have been saved.

So too in the saga of John F. Kennedy, whose wife Jacqueline was adored by the world but endured griefs unmeasured: the death of children, the humiliation of her husband’s infidelities, and finally the horror of his assassination before her eyes. The glamour of the presidency came with a cost not only for the man but for the woman beside him. Lady Bird Johnson, who comforted Jackie in that darkest hour, knew intimately that the families of rulers carry wounds unseen by history.

Therefore, O seekers of truth, heed the wisdom behind her jest. Politics is not a solitary crown but a yoke borne by many. The orphan and the bachelor would stand unbound, carrying their burdens alone. Yet reality binds men to family, and through this binding, both love and suffering enter the halls of power. Lady Bird’s words remind us that the cost of leadership is paid not only by leaders, but by those who walk beside them in loyalty and in silence.