As we approach election day, I’ve been thinking about the oft asked question: “Does our vote count?” I’ll start with looking at some of the things noted Americans have said over the years about politics and politicians. George Bernard Shaw: “He knows nothing, and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” George Will: “A politician’s words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.” Mark Twain: “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.” Will Rogers: “We got the best politicians in the country that money can buy.” H.L. Mencken: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”