More than one successful candidate has awoken the day after an election to face the startling realization that, after campaigning to throw the bums out, he or she is now a bum.

It's the irony of public service. The public is seldom thankful for the service rendered, and criticisms fall like raindrops.

Which raises the question of why people run for office in the first place. Frankly, that's a question worth contemplating today as thousands of Utahns go to the polls.

Undoubtedly, a few people run to stroke their own egos or to pad resumes. A few others want the power to pull strings and demand favors. A long list of public scandals bear this out.

But many others — the overwhelming majority, we trust — run out of a sense of civic duty, or simply because they think they have the ideas, the smarts and the energy to govern in the public's best interests. Win or lose, those people deserve a lot of thanks. Without them, the great experiment started by this nation's founders would have ended disastrously a couple of centuries ago.

Running for office not only is thankless, it's also exhausting. Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, who isn't up for re-election this year, told us that campaigning for office is the "most sustained physically draining activity you can ever go through."

It also can take its toll on a person's self-esteem.

In politics, there is a heady side — the one that comes from winning the hearts of voters and gaining a share of power within government. And there is a side that constantly offers reality checks — the one that proves time and again how difficult it is to keep people happy. Elected representatives tend to be better informed on issues than are their constituents, who seldom have the luxury of full-time devotion to matters of government. But those constituents are never short on opinions or judgments.

The miracle of this Election Day isn't so much that voters continue to freely choose their leaders 230 years after the nation declared independence. It is that so many people continue to willingly stand up and file as candidates for the many available offices.

Given that level of effort on the part of so many who want to serve, the least you can do as a citizen today is to study what they wish to accomplish, understand the issues and cast an informed ballot.