The Wit’s Guide to Politicians
Or, organized mendacity
Why do we hate politicians? Let’s instead ask why Evelyn Waugh hated them, a question he answered thusly:
“Politicians are not people who seek power in order to implement policies they think are necessary. They are people who seek policies in order to attain power.”
— Evelyn Waugh
This comes to mind when platforms are drawn up at political conventions. The smiling fellow behind the podium is waiting for them to tell him what to promise; the only thing he knows for certain is that he’s the best possible person to make the promises. And so every candidate is a single-issue candidate, and that issue is their own self-regard.
“A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.”
— Adlai Stevenson
Evelyn’s distaste evolved nicely into his son Auberon’s diagnosis of the mental illness that afflicts the political class. “They are driven by a sick compulsion to be on top, to organise and boss us all around,” he explained many times in his Spectator and Private Eye columns, nicely collected in the volume Kiss Me Chudleigh: The World According to Auberon Waugh.
“The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women.”
— Auberon Waugh
Why do we hate them? “It is simple distaste for the power urge,” Auberon writes, though he admits to finding slightly endearing “the way they put their heads on one side whenever you tell them this and say that such opinions should not be encouraged as they undermine the fabric of democracy.”
“A politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man.”
— e.e. cummings
It’s always instructive to find an intelligent person who escapes both politics and the urge to tell us all what to do. Often they do the former and not the latter, and so you get books with titles like Where To From Here: A Path to Canadian Prosperity whether you want them or not.
“Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.”
— George Burns
The fact that Rory Stewart, a former Conservative MP in the UK, wrote the rare good political memoir is indicated by its title, How Not To Be A Politician. The book comes highly recommended by
, the best modern observer of Canadian politics, who sums it up by saying that “the way to succeed in politics is to stop worrying about how helpless you are to change anything.” From there, the bleak satire of Armando Iannucci is a natural next step.“I can’t identify myself as a woman. People can’t know that. Men hate that. And women who hate women hate that — which, I believe, is most women.”
— Selina Meyer, as played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and scripted by Armando Iannucci in Veep
For my purposes, the best book by a recovering politician is Scorn: The Wittiest and Wickedest Insults in Human History. The compiler is Matthew Parris, the long-time British journalist who has said his brief stint as a Member of Parliament in the 1980s only came about because of the attention he got for saving a drowning dog in the Thames. Parliamentarians aren’t allowed to call each other liars, so he gathered all the euphemisms that slipped through over the decades, including doing dodges, dishonest evasions, being economical with the truth, deliberate fabrications, shameless lacks of candour, fiddling the figures, organized mendacity, numerological inexactitude, and telling porkies (though the last one was banned after the Speaker had a chance to look it up).
And also this line:
“Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, order more tunnel.”
— John Quinton
Pretend it’s a Riposte Card
The September Riposte Card has arrived! Illustrator Melanie Lambrick immediately identified Fran Lebowitz as her hero, and we batted around a raft of great lines before landing on the above quip. Gorgeous printed postcards of the above art will be shipping out soon to my 66 wonderful paid subscribers; jump on board today to ensure you get yours!
More politics? Do we have to?
Here’s my News Quiz from this week’s Toronto Star on great moments in televised political debate. I didn’t serve with Jack Kennedy and I didn’t know Jack Kennedy, but I worked in a reference to a senator who did.
Quote Vote
“Listening four or five times a day to newscasters and commentators, reading the morning papers and all the weeklies and monthlies — nowadays this is described as ‘taking an intelligent interest in politics.’ St. John of the Cross would have called it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude’s sake.”
— Aldous Huxley
Hooray for next week, when we can all stop thinking about politics. Maybe we can finally get to The Future, though of course it won’t feel like that when it arrives.
That was Issue No. 271 of Get Wit Quick, the newsletter that puts an email in every pot and a chicken in every inbox. My complete platform was printed in the book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Voting is compulsory in Australia, so my readers down under are obligated to tap the ❤️ below. The rest of you can exercise your franchise as you see fit, but don’t forget to stretch afterwards.
Perhaps one helpful step would be if we could define "statesman" as something other than, "What every politician imagines themself to be."
dear benjamin,
thank you for sharing as always! love these quotes:
“Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.”
— George Burns
“Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, order more tunnel.”
— John Quinton
much love,
myq