British politician Enoch Powell wrote that “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs”. And with Donald Anderson’s announcement that he is standing down as mayor of Lakewood, yet another political life bites the dust.
Of course Anderson might argue that being mayor of Lakewood was the summit of his political ambitions. He was mayor for eight years, and what more can any man want? He had eight years as a big bully in a small pond, and an enduring part of his legacy will be the permanant destruction of many aspects of Lakewood’s ecosystem.
Yet it is a sad end for someone who boasts that in 1971, as a teenager, he was elected to the Puyallup School Board, and was the youngest school board president in the United States. But I suppose not every child prodigy can do a Michael Jackson, and make the transition to adult stardom.