We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.

Frank McKinney “Kin” Hubbard (1868–1930) was an Indiana newspaper humorist and cartoonist best known for his small-town sage character Abe Martin. Hubbard’s political jokes typically reflect early-20th-century Midwestern skepticism about party machines, patronage, and the gap between civic ideals and practical politics. This quip belongs to that tradition: it imagines an electorate that sincerely wants virtue and competence, yet finds that the “best” person rarely seeks office—or is filtered out by the realities of campaigning, ambition, and party selection. The line circulated widely in American quotation collections and newspapers as a compact, cynical observation about democratic choice.

The remark hinges on a paradox: voters claim they want the “best man,” but electoral politics tends to reward traits other than pure merit—ambition, fundraising, charisma, factional loyalty, and willingness to endure scrutiny. Hubbard implies that the most capable or principled individuals may avoid running, either from modesty, distaste for political compromise, or because the system discourages them. The humor is dry but pointed: it critiques both the political process (which fails to elevate the best) and the public’s wishful thinking (as if virtue alone would present itself on the ballot). The line endures because it captures a recurring frustration with representative democracy.

We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he is never a candidate.
We all want to vote for the best man, but he’s never on the ballot.
We would all like to vote for the best man, but he is never a candidate for office.