A lot of people have to have something a little wrong with them to want to go into politics. Even if, by some miracle, you manage to be popular, you’re guaranteed to have a selection of the population who actively despises every bone in your body. On top of that, being in close proximity to all that money and power easily goes to someone’s head.

Sometimes, this happens in the ways we might expect. Corruption, scandals and broken promises are things we see from a lot of politicians at points in their careers. However, there are other occasions where things seem to go off the rails in a totally different way.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the land of the free. This country has some of the most widely talked about politics in the world, and its crazier happenings have inspire everything from news stories to memes on a daily basis.

If there’s one thing that links all of these bizarre moments in U.S. political history, it’s that they show up how much the political system loves an oddball. As if that wasn’t a sobering thought on its own, many of these people have at some point been directly involved in decisions that have a real impact on our lives. Cool!