Perhaps Douglas Adams was inspired by that observation. The position of Galactic President to which Zaphod Beeblebrox had been elected was full of publicity and celebrity, but utterly devoid of any actual power, since (entirely from memory) who would be so stupid as to give that much power to anybody who actually wanted it?
Rather, all such power resided in a dottering old man living all alone on a planet with his many cats. Every once in a while a spaceship would land and some nice person would ask him to sign some papers. He never had any idea what those papers said nor the enormous power he wielded.
Sorry, my edition of the original radio play scripts is at work, unavailable to me until the next year.
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