Letter to Our European Friends
Everything you need to know about our presidential campaign.
by P.J. O'Rourke


America is in the midst of an all-important electoral campaign. But, talking to Europeans, I've discovered that there is puzzlement and misinformation on your continent about what's happening on ours. Europeans feel an understandable confusion when faced with a political system consisting of two houses of Congress and a White House, and nobody is home in any of them.

Also, America's political parties are indistinguishable to the European eye. A British journalist once described the situation thus: "America is a one-party state, but just like Americans they've got two of them." (I forget which British journalist said that. But there are so many British journalists who should be forgotten. Maybe it was Alexander Cockburn.)

The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay. In foreign policy, Republicans intend to pursue the war in Iraq but to do so with a minimal number of troops on the ground. This is not to be confused with the disastrous Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policy of using a minimal number of troops on the ground to pursue the war in Iraq. Democrats intend to end the war, but they don't know when. Democrats are making the "high school sex promise": I'll pull out in time, honest!

There are two factors in American politics that may seem strange to Europeans, race and religion. You, of course, don't have any religion. Except every now and then someone who came to Europe lately and is a Muslim blows himself to bits. But I understand that you have EU funding to address these social problems and help Muslims build bombs that release fewer pollutants and less carbon dioxide, reducing the threat of global warming.

After the events of the 20th century, God, quite reasonably, left Europe. But He's still here in the United States. The majority of Americans are Christians, and Christians can be divided into two kinds, the kind who think you should get Jesus and the kind who think Jesus is going to get you. Mike Huckabee is one of the latter. Then there are the Mormons such as Mitt Romney who believe some unusual things--things that no sensible European like Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Benito Mussolini, Karl Marx, Emanuel Swedenborg, or Cherie Blair would ever believe.

The question of race in America is supposed to be a matter of what one looks like. But it is difficult to comprehend how a political interest group that contains both Al Sharpton and Halle Berry could be based on looks. Barack Obama looks like he was raised in Hawaii. He may have just a good tan.

The number of American presidential candidates varies with the sunspot cycle and the phases of the moon. Being a Republican, I'm backing Hillary Clinton. Because she could lose. The reason is not that she's a woman. The reason is that she's the particular woman who taught the 4th grade class that every man in America wished he were dead in. Hillary Clinton is Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton is "America's ex-wife."

A man can be a Democrat to the core, going into the voting booth to pull the lever with the donkey label no matter what. Then he sees Hillary's name on the ballot. And it all comes back to him .  .  . the first marriage .  .  . the time he came home a little late, it wasn't even midnight, and he'd only had four or five beers, and she threw his bowling ball down the storm sewer.

The Republicans will have a hard time coming up with someone who can't beat Hillary Clinton. But I don't put it past them. You may remember Senator Bob Dole in 1996.

At the moment Republicans seem inclined to John McCain. Everyone loves John McCain. Everyone respects John McCain. He's tough. He's consistent. He's wrong. Not that I personally agree with you Europeans that John is wrong, but the voters do. John thinks the war in Iraq is a good idea. The electorate doesn't. John's campaign slogan is "Strong and Wrong."

Mitt Romney is supposed to be my own type of candidate, a true conservative. But Mitt was governor of Massachusetts. This is like applying to be pope and listing your prior job experience as "Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem."
Mitt Romney is also the "corporate candidate," promising to bring the organizational skills and fiscal discipline of corporate America to Washington.

But we are in the midst of a global credit collapse and all the air is hissing out of the world's equity market balloons. We've had big corporate scandals--Enron, WorldCom, Tyco--in the not too distant past. We may have a deep recession in the not too distant future. Is this the moment to be pitching the voters on "business savvy"?

Rudy Giuliani is a wonderful person to have around during a tragedy. His campaign promise is that there will be a tragedy every week.

As for Fred Thompson, he didn't have much impact. Yes, he's a Republican who was seen on TV a lot. But so was Scooter Libby.

Mike Huckabee lost some support among the hard-core fundamentalists when Bible Belt denizens realized that John McCain was the only candidate with enough guts to really handle rattlesnakes at church. The rest of the public remains alert to the fact that evangelical Christianity, as a movement, has two faces--the Moral Majority face and the Tammy Faye Bakker face.

Let us not forget Ron Paul who is very popular--with people who stay up all night in Ayn Rand chatrooms, bury Krugerrands in the yard, and think the Trilateral Commission causes sub-prime mortgage foreclosures.

Incidentally, there's a balanced position that all of America's presidential candidates could take on the controversial abortion issue. If they want votes they shouldn't campaign to make abortion illegal or legal. They should campaign to make it retroactive. If a kid reaches 25 and he or she is still jobless, feckless, and sitting around Starbucks acting like a--no offense--European, then whack.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic field, Barack Obama may be altering our national political equation. Obama is an indication that America has reached an important benchmark in race relations. In America it is now officially more important to be cute than to be white. Barack Obama is cute, and he's nice. It's been a long time since any political party in America had the cute, nice vote sewn up. Rudy Giuliani? Not so nice. Bill Clinton? Don't get cute.

The problem for Obama is that, as yet, he doesn't have much political stature. However, there is a "Disney factor" is American politics. Think of America's politicians as the Seven Dwarves. They're all short--short on ethics, short on experience, short on common sense, short on something. But we keep thinking that one of these dwarves is going to save our snow white butt.

We've got Dopey right now. We had Sleazy before him. Grumpy lost in '04. Sleepy was great in the 1980s, but he's dead. How about Obama?
Who else do the Democrats have? There is, of course, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Al Gore. May I ask you Europeans, are your Norwegians crazy? What does the Nobel Peace Prize have to do with global warming? Did Al forge a truce in the war with the penguins? I'm trying to lead a carbon-neutral lifestyle myself. I've given up cigars. I think Al Gore should give up blowing smoke out his .  .  .

John Edwards is a personal injury lawyer, the sort of fellow who covers North Carolina with billboards reading, "Y'all May Have Been Malpracticed on by a Doctor and Not Even Know It. Call (800) S-H-Y-S-T-E-R." One of the remaining virtues of European civilization is that you aren't overrun with his ilk. John Edwards should go sue Krispy Kreme doughnuts for making his supporters too fat to get into the voting booths.

Dennis Kucinich swept the Mars caucuses.

Then there are the Democrats who're actually qualified to be president--Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd. All three have dropped out of the race. Before they did, they managed, between them, to raise almost $1,000 (2.79 euros) for their campaigns.

This leaves the Democrats with Hillary Clinton. She's going to reform America's health care system. Memo to Hillary: You already reformed America's health care system, 15 years ago. Just the outline of Hillary's 1993 health care plan was 1,400 pages long, almost as long as that equally successful reform document, the EU constitution.

Many political analysts say that the failure of Hillary's health care plan almost destroyed Bill Clinton's first term. You'll recall that Bill Clinton had to seek help from a different woman to almost destroy his second term.

But no matter who is elected America's next president--whether Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or even Ron Paul--it is important that Europeans be reassured that ordinary Americans will not change the way they think about Europe. They will continue to think they aren't sure where it is on the map.

PJ O Rourke is funny, I will read anything I can get my hands on by him.

Parliament of Whores and that piece about comparing the biggest gas guzzlers you could buy, done in Automobile magazine, were fall on the floor funny - and true.

It was one of the funniest articles I have ever read:

"Die Eco Weenies" from Automobile Magazine, 12-1994:

Herewith a few quotes out of that one:


"If the Chevy Suburban's 13 mpg EPA city driving figure leaves us at the mercy of people who wear picnic tablecloths on their heads, then what's the US Army for? Excuse me, I forgot. The purpose of the Army is to invade Haiti"

"The green dweebs want a world where individuals don't count for much - where all the important decisions - such as whether to shift the Viper into fifth - ar made in Washington. They want a world controlled by the political process.

That's because the scrub cuddlers are, as individuals, so insignificant.

They are losers, the three-bong-hit saviors of the earth, Lava lamp Luddites, global warming dolts, ozone boneheads, peace creeps, tofu twinks, Birkenstock buttinskis, and bed-wetting vegetarian bicyclists who bother whales on weekends.

They have no money, sense, or skills. But they can make their mark on politics because the whole idea of politics is to achieve power without posessing merit.

Let's run them over with the Chevrolet Suburban. Let's crush one of those electric vehicles the enviro-pests are always building and spill D batteries all over the highway. Let's blast through a crafts fair (the Suburban has 210 bhp and it won't get snagged in any macrame) and drive into the middle of one of those men's liberation inner-warrior weekends and chase flabby guys in loincloths into the woods."

Closing paragraph:

"We're told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We're told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it's hard to reach the drive through window at McDonald's from a speeding train.

And we're told cars cause pollution. And a hundred years ago the city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or of typhoid fever at nine?
Cars have made us richer, freer, happier people. Life is better because of cars. Cars are good.

If you don't think so, try making out in a country lane on Roller Blades, you eco-weenie."

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1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

"The French are sawed-off sissies who eat snails, slugs and cheese that tastes like people's feet. Utter cowards who force their own children to drink wine, then gibber like baboons when you even try to speak to them in their own wimpy language".

You can always reason with a German. You can always reason with a barnyard animal, too. The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit, and the louder the German voice issuing demands and German orders to everybody who doesn't speak German. For this, and several other, reasons, Germany is known as "the land where the Israelis learned their manners".

Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but nobody has told the Italians"

"The Belfast pictured in Time magazine, the rubble-and-barbed wire, the litter-and-graffiti Belfast, is in fact, a highly a highly photogenic impoverishment no longer than a mile long and a half a mile wide.

It's as though Architectural Digest came to "do" a house and only took pictures of the teenager's bedroom."

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"You can't get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism."

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"You can call it the Third World, the Underdeveloped World, or the Part of the World that's Completely Screwed"

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Russia is not a threat anymore. Now it's just a disjointed group of individual states with too many "K's" and "Z's" in their names...a big conglomeration of Scrabble possibilities.

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No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

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The insurgents call themselves Zapatistas, after Emiliano Zapata, one of the heroes of the Mexican revolution. Zapata believed in land redistribution. His idea was to redistribute land so that wealthy landowners had a small plot six feet deep.

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Bill almost had me convinced the Republicans caused Whitewater until I remembered that Arkansas only has about one Republican and he had to stay home that week because his wife accidentally used the sheet with the eyeholes in it to make the bed.

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Sex toys: There are a number of mechanical devices that increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among them is the Mercedes Benz 380 SL convertible.

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Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.

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It's easy to laugh at California, and we should laugh at California. But it's easy to forget that it is just an exaggerated form of Western Democracy.

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Feeling good about government is like looking at the bright side of a catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catstrophe is still there.

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Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do, and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about "character issues".
Either that or just go ahead and determine the presidency with three legged races and pie eating contests. It would make better TV.

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I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly stern fellow. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God's heavenly Country Club. Santa Claus is another matter. He's always cheeful and he loves animals. He may know who's been naughty and who's been nice, but he never does anything about it. He works hard for charities, and he's famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no Santa Claus.

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Why is government so stupid? It's the difference between Harvard University and Harvard University football team.

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In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty, to which you would,
if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: "Dentistry."

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Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.

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I have often been called a Nazi, and although it's unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason: No one has EVER had a sexual fantasy about being tied to a bed and being sexually ravished by a someone dressed as a liberal.

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If Europeans didn't discover North America, then how did we all get here?

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There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily.

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On Nicaragua:

"They (La Prensa) accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it"

~~Nelba Blandon, Nicaraguan Interior Ministry Director of Censorship, quoted in NY Times (1984)

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Half the world's suffering is caused by earnest messages contained in grand theories bearing no relation to reality: Marxism and No-fault Auto insurance, to name two. Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college.

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Ignorance is stupid, but education leads to college students. Smart people don't start too many bar fights but stupid people don't build many hydrogen bombs. But then again, smart people would never drop one. Or would they?
It's something we ought to know.

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Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope

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When other countries demand a role in the exercise of Global Power, America can ask another fundamental American question: "You and what army?"

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My grandmother wouldn't even speak the word Democrat if there were children in the room she'd say "Bastards" instead.

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The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is jsut as ugly and just as stupid, except there's nothing in the mall and if you don't go there, they shoot you

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__________________
1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

Some of those remind me of when he wrote for "National Lampoon".

Those Europeans really keep you on your toes, don't they....?

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If it wasn't historically factual, it might just be funny ...

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Putting Words in the President's Mouth
Sixteen obvious points that George W. Bush should make during the Wednesday night debate.
by P.J. O'Rourke
10/12/2004 12:00:00 AM

(1) My opponent, Massachusetts senator John Kerry--or, as I like to think of him, Teddy Kennedy with a designated driver . . .

(2) There are two organizations pushing for change in November--al Qaeda and the Democratic party. And they both have the same message: "We're going to fix you, America." On the whole, the terrorists have a more straightforward plan for fixing things. They're going to blow themselves up. Although, come to think of it, Howard Dean did that.

(3) Senator Kerry, what do you mean my administration "lost" 1.6 million jobs? Did Dick Cheney accidentally leave 1.6 million jobs in the Senate men's room or something? Did you find them? Have you got 1.6 million jobs that you're hiding, Senator Kerry? And if you're elected, are you going to give them back?

(4) Speaking of jobs, Senator, how come every illegal immigrant who wades the Rio is able to find one in about 10 minutes? Meanwhile, your Democratic core constituency has been unemployed for years. Are your supporters lazy, Senator Kerry? Or are they stupid? Back when Clinton was president, did your supporters think they got their jobs at Burger King because Bill was sleeping with the cow?

(5) You say health care costs are soaring? Well, I'm not the one with a personal injury lawyer on my ticket. I loved the billboards that John Edwards used to have all over North Carolina: "Y'ALL MIGHT HAVE GOT HURT AT WORK AND NOT EVEN KNOWN IT" and "FEELIN' POORLY? LEMME SUE YER DOCTOR!"

(6) Yeah, we're running a deficit. Like Democrats never did that. But at least we're borrowing the money when interest rates are low. It's the same as refinancing your home loan. Not that you'd know, Senator Kerry, since your rich wife paid off your mortgage.

(7) You say that we won the war, but we're losing the peace because Iraq is so unstable. When Iraq was stable, it attacked Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars. It attacked Iran. It attacked Kuwait. It gassed the Kurds. It butchered the Shiites. It fostered terrorism in the Middle East. Who wants a stable Iraq?

(8) No, it turns out Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And how crazy does that make Saddam? All he had to do was tell Hans Blix, "Look anywhere you want. Look under the bed. Look beneath the couch. Look behind the toilet tank in the third presidential palace on the left, but keep your mitts off my copies of Maxim." And Saddam could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld gets elected head of the World Council of Churches. But no . . .

(9) You say I didn't have the answers in Iraq? Well, what were the questions? Was there this bad man? Was he running a bad country? That did bad things? Did it have a lot of oil money to do bad things with? Was it going to do more bad things? If those were the questions, was the answer "more time to let international sanctions and U.N. weapons inspections do their job"? No, the answer was blow the place to bits.

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What's That Smell?
The GOP is stinking up the joint.
by P.J. O'Rourke
10/23/2006, Volume 012, Issue 06


LIKE OTHER DEEP-THINKING people, I'm full of principled, idealistic, high-minded indignation at the GOP. What a stampede of sleaze. Jack Abramoff is the world's best lobbyist--for the Federal Penitentiary System.

Bob Ney was deep in the ethical rough at St. Andrew's. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's favorite weap ons system turned out to be the political suicide bomb. Tom DeLay may or may not have broken campaign finance laws, but he did his best to look like he was breaking them. He might as well have tied quail feathers to the GOP majority in Congress and sent it hunting with Dick Cheney.

Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs. Splash! There goes Mark Foley! Now the news networks are broadcasting G.O.P.U. around the clock.
Actually, the Republicans should be grateful for their lying, thieving scum.

It distracts the public from the things the Republicans have done that are honestly bad. Our postwar policy is creating Weimar Iraq. And when the Islamofascist Beer Hall Putsch comes there won't even be beer.

Social Security privatization was presented to the electorate with a public relations and marketing flair not seen since New Coke. Intelligence collection has been given an additional bureaucracy to correct the problems created by too much bureaucracy in intelligence collection.

"Homeland Security" sounds like a failed 1980s savings and loan. Didn't Grandma lose $20,000 when Homeland Security went under? Then there's No Child Left Behind. What if the child deserves to be left behind? What
if the child deserves a smack on the behind? We have a national testing program to test whether kids are . . . what? Stupid? You've got kids. Kids are stupid.

Immigration policy will fence the border, providing economic stimulus to the Mexican ladder industry. The National Guard is stationed on the Rio Grande--U.S. troops standing be tween you and yard care. President Bush said that if illegal immigrants want citizenship they'd have to do three things: pay taxes, hold meaningful jobs, and learn English. Bush doesn't meet those qualifications.

And Republican federal budgets have shown less self-restraint than Mark Foley's instant messaging. Billions are being spent so college students will have someplace below sea level to get drunk during Mardi Gras. Hundreds of billions are being spent indiscriminately dumping Medicare prescription drugs on old people. There's a new warning on the Levitra bottle: If arousal lasts more than four hours you haven't screwed the taxpayers enough.

I am so moved by principle and idealism, so indignantly high-minded, that I'm changing sides. At least the Democrats aren't hypocritical about being scum. After Gerry Studds was censured for molesting an underaged congressional page, he was reelected six times. Therefore, in the mid term elections, I'm working to get Demo crats into office.

And work it is. There's the problem of putative speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whose very name summons images of children coming home from day care madly scratching their scalps. Then, when you see Pelosi speak, it's impossible not to think of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. I hope her campaign slogan isn't "A New Kick-Off for America."

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The guy can write. I read one of his books (title eludes me) and it was so painfully accurate that laughing hurt.

B

I like this one:
And when the Islamofascist Beer Hall Putsch comes there won't even be beer.

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