My Struggle with Political Discourse
O'ROURKE, P.J.
Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another. They all give off the same skunk whiff. Would-be...
...I could not help laughing...
...Mitt Romney explaining his shift on abortion...
...Hillary Clinton...
...To borrow a joke that's been bouncing around on the Internet, here is his interview on Larry King Live: "Larry: I hate to bring this up, but I've got to ask...
...Electoral nausea causes everything to smell equally bad...
...All the foregoing examples of rotten political discourse come from a single famously loathsome, hateful, and wretched political character...
...BY P J. O'ROURKE —John McCain explaining McCain-Feingold...
...Howard Dean...
...Candidates' staff in private, ironically...
...I had become a little ringleader...
...Guest: Ve are doing noffing to der Jews...
...O'Rourke is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard...
...Mitt Romney on being a life-long hunter...
...A lot of romping around out-of-doors, the long trip to school, and the companionship with unusually 'robust' boys, which at times caused my mother much grief, made me anything but a stay-at-home...
...And his book was a bestseller...
...Mike Huckabee...
...My Struggle with Political Discourse Will the rhetoric ever change...
...Barack Obama on growing up black in Hawaii...
...It may be that political discourse is no more indistinguishable—or putrid—than ever...
...Rudy Giuliani on Central Park after sundown...
...Wesley Clark on himself...
...Larry: I'm glad we got that out of the way...
...You decide...
...Would-be chief executives and their staffs shovel madly in the manure pile of foreign and domestic policy...
...What are you doing to the Jews...
...Woods and meadows were the battlefield where the ever-present 'conflicts' were fought out...
...It was probably at that time that my first ideals were formed...
...The absurdity of our way of arranging salaries, which considers the quesP.J...
...none of the '08 presidential candidates...
...It was a gesticulating mass, shrieking in all keys, wildly stirred, presided over by a good-natured old uncle who . . . tried to re-establish the dignity of the House...
...Rhetorical flatulence renders their positions on the global warming debate moot...
...It is only the greatest outward symptom of decay among quite a series of internal ones which perhaps would have remained hidden to the eyes of most people...
...I thank Heaven for giving me a share of the memories of those happy days...
...Hillary Clinton explaining feminism at Wellesley...
...Dennis Kucinich on Iraq...
...Tom Vilsack...
...The new movement . . . succeeded in awakening in the hearts of its adherents the sacred conviction that with it not a new election slogan was to be forced upon political life, but a new view of life...
...And the smell gets worse as the recycling center that is the 2008 election approaches...
...its dignified language . . . was revealed to me as a trick as clever as it was mean...
...Bill Richardson after a couple of drinks...
...Joe Biden about Joe Biden...
...Fred Thompson on Iraq and the '06 congressional elections...
...In fact none of the '08 candidates said any of these things...
...He was a pretty good vote-getter in his day...
...We more than deserved this defeat...
...Newt Gingrich, on the record, about everybody else...
...tion of the family and its support far too little . . ." —John Edwards addressing corporate compensation...
...Candidates in public, unironically...
...Tommy Thompson addressing tax rates...
...Barack Obama a couple of months from now...
...How are Eva and the kids...
...John McCain, off the record, about Newt Gingrich...
...Read the following genuine politician quotes and see if you can determine who cut which cheese...
...Al Gore on his youthful environmentalism...
...Joe Biden...
...I entered for the first time the sacred and much-disputed chambers— Several hundred of these representatives of the people were present who at that moment had to decide about a question of important economic significance...
...I know people who endlessly read a lot, book after book, letter for letter, yet I would not call them 'well read.' Of course they possess a wide 'knowledge,' but their intellect does not know how to distribute and register the material gathered...
...Or am I wrong...
...Newt Gingrich sober...
...Christopher Dodd on hanging out in Hyannisport and chasing girls with Ted Kennedy...
...Now I saw the liberal attitude of the press in a different light...
...Hillary Rodham Clinton...
...Hillary Rodham...
...Dennis Kucinich addressing an empty auditorium...
...The flipping and flopping and spin is making me bandwagon-sick...
...Political activity is loathsome and hateful to a really decent, and therefore courageous, man, while it is attractive to all wretched characters...
...The [farmer] receives protection for his agriculture, the industrialist protection for his products, the consumer protection for his purchases, the teachers' salaries are increased . . . widows and orphans are to be taken care of . . . the tariffs are to be lowered and even the taxes are to be abolished, though not completely, but almost...
...This campaign has been going on forever...
...Sam Brownback...
...Newt Gingrich on the '06 congressional elections...
Vol. 12 • April 2007 • No. 31
